Cam Smith suffers meltdown at Open as LIV Golf stars struggle to tame Troon

Former Open champion Cam Smith had a day to forget at Royal Troon , effectively kissing goodbye to his chances of reclaiming the claret jug this year.

The Aussie golfer had a nightmare round, clocking in a nine-over-par that plummeted him to a tie for 145th place near the leaderboard's bottom. Smith's afternoon tee-off on Scotland's west coast was nothing short of calamitous, with a bogey right off the bat and a crushing triple-bogey hot on its heels.

A lone birdie on the third hole offered a brief glimmer of hope for the LIV Golf sensation, but a string of four additional bogeys on the front nine dashed any lingering aspirations of climbing the ranks. Now, Smith is staring down a steep climb just to make the cut on Friday, needing a significantly under-par performance to stay in the game.

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"Just a bad day, really," Smith said. "I mean, if you had have told me yesterday that I was going to shoot that, I wouldn't have said that was possible. But yeah, just a bit of a crappy start and didn't really manage to hole any putts when I needed to to get back in it. It was just a bad day and some bad breaks, as well.

"[The course is] hard, mate. A lot of crosswinds. Hard to keep your ball in the fairway, and when you're in the rough, you're kind of guessing with landing something short with the bounces you get. It was brutal. It really was a good test of golf, and you needed to be on your A+ game to shoot under par."

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Smith wasn't the only big name to falter amidst Ayrshire's challenging weather conditions on Thursday. Tiger Woods and Rickie Fowler posted an eight-over round, while Rory McIlroy ended with seven-over. They were joined at the bottom of the leaderboard by 2023 US Open champion Wyndham Clark, who is likely out of contention with a seven-over score.

Smith's LIV colleagues Bryson DeChambeau, David Puig, Louis Oosthuizen, and John Catlin also found Royal Troon a tough nut to crack. DeChambeau managed to keep some hope alive with an eagle on the par-five 16th, ending the day at five-over.

However, Puig had a rough start with a nine-over-par round of 80, putting the young Spaniard at risk of missing the cut in his Open debut. Catlin, who has been filling in for DeChambeau's Crushers team as Charles Howell III recovers from an injury, also risks missing the cut at The Open for the third consecutive appearance after finishing at five-over-par.