Cameron Smith is stuck in a dilemma regarding his chances of selection in the 2024 Olympics. While being a part of LIV Golf came with its share of benefits and lucrative sums of money, the golfers ended up missing out on other important opportunities. The major setback being not getting points from the OWGR association. In October, the Greg Norman-led league sent a plea to the OWGR which ended up being denied for its no-cut 56-hole format.
Now, the problem here is that the Olympics use the OWGR rankings as a standard to determine who is worthy of selection and participation and who is not. And that stands as a major hurdle between Smith achieving his dream.
Cameron Smith Reflects on His Zealous Attitude to Participate in the 2024 Olympics
In 2022, before Smith joined LIV Golf, he was ranked second on the OWGR. Besides, he had also come out of winning the Open Championship at St. Andrews Links (Old Course). But after defecting to the Saudi-funded league, the golfer’s rank has dropped to 18.
Smith has performed exceptionally on the LIV league, garnering the LIV Golf London and the LIV Golf Bedminster titles. Even on the PGA Tour, he had a few top-10 finishes at majors like the PGA Championship, where he stood at T9, and the US Open, where he ended up at T4.
Despite trying his level best, the achievements he had would only count for a little because the Olympics only consider the top 15 on the OWGR list. After the top 15, the rest of the 60 men’s field is composed of two golfers from every country.
As per the rankings of the Aussie, he would soon be overthrown by Jason Day (21), and possibly Cameron Davis (44) or Min Woo Lee (45), who play on the PGA Tour and have a better chance of gaining their rankings. Thus, Smith has to go the extra mile to keep his dream alive of competing in Paris next year, and travel to the corners of Asia to gather points. In a recent interview, he talked about the same and the hardships of the situation.
As the Aussie joined in a press conference at the Australian PGA Championship, he explained how eagerly he wants to be a part of the Olympics. “I definitely want to be there, mate, 100 percent”. As the interview went on, he explained the hardships of the situation and further talked about how he would exert every effort to secure a place.
“I know the criteria, I don’t know if that can change, but I’ve got these couple of events here [the Australian PGA and the Australian Open, which are co-sanctioned by the DP World Tour and therefore receive world ranking points] and probably more looks again in the [2024] majors, so hopefully I can keep that ranking up and wear the (Australian national) coat of arms on the chest again, it’s pretty special”
Cameron is keeping all his hopes on the remaining events and majors to secure points. Thus, only time will tell if he will be a part of the Olympics or not.
