Jordan Smith insists rules must CHANGE after rival’s £4m LIV Golf payday robbed him of his lifelong dream and a place on the PGA Tour
They say an ability to handle disappointment is the dividing line between good and great golfers. By that theory, Jordan Smith warrants a higher ranking than 107th in the world.
Of the many routes to frustration in his sport, few can match the scenario involving this son of Bath at the turn of the year.
That he can laugh about it says much for his nature, form and direction of travel – having qualified for the US Open next week, the 32-year-old is in a good place.
But could he be in a different one? Or to frame that another way, should Smith be rubbing shoulders with the elite on the PGA Tour by now?
Therein lies an unfortunate situation that he describes as ‘annoying’. And it’s one he believes should provoke a rule change, because last November, at the conclusion of the DP World Tour season, Smith was the 11th in line for one of the 10 golden tickets they hand out each year to the PGA Tour. The big league.
Jordan Smith has endured a frustrating few months ahead of the US Open
The 10th was Tom McKibbin and the issue there was known to just about everyone at the time – the Northern Irishman was considering an offer to join LIV. It’s a proposal he went on to accept.
The irritation? Had McKibbin crossed over before December 31, Smith would have filled his spot. But McKibbin took his time, as was sensible, and those deliberations extended beyond the PGA Tour deadline before he finally settled on leaving just a couple of weeks later.
If you’re Smith in that picture, you can laugh or cry, or at the very least nurture a minor regret that a rival’s decision wasn’t reached a fraction quicker.
‘That’s exactly what I was thinking when it when the news came out (about McKibbin’s departure),’ he tells Mail Sport.
‘At the time (of the deadline) he might have not known that he was definitely going to be on LIV. But for me it was a hard blow to miss out. Getting on the PGA Tour is a big goal of mine.
‘At that time, I was like, ‘Look, I didn’t have a card, I didn’t get in the top 10, and I still don’t have a card, so there’s nothing I can do about it’. But obviously it was annoying.
‘There are no hard feelings towards Tom. I was playing on the same side as him in the Team Cup (in Abu Dhabi) in January just before he announced the decision but we had already heard which way it might be going. We didn’t really talk about it but we got on great.
‘Thing is, something similar happened to Rasmus Hojgaard the previous year when Adrian Meronk got a card and then went to LIV. It’s something they (the PGA Tour) probably need to change and it would be nice if they did change it.
‘With Tom, when he announced it, he hadn’t played any PGA Tour events to that point. You would think they (the PGA Tour) would be like, ‘Yeah, we’ll let Jordan in, seeing as Tom hasn’t actually played any events’. If he had played a handful it would have been more difficult.
‘But it’s just one of those things you have to take on the chin and use it as fuel to get one of those cards the next time.’
On that front, the situation is looking promising – with five months to run in the season, Smith is again in serious contention for one of the 10 spots.
In a more immediate sense, he has travelled to the US Open on the back of two top-four finishes in his past four DP World Tour starts. Alongside that run, he won a qualification tournament at Walton Heath three weeks ago to secure his ticket to Oakmont, arguably the hardest test on the major circuit.
‘I’ve not played it but heard it’s brutal,’ Smith says. ‘I’m excited. My game feels very close to being where I want it to be to win events.
‘In the past couple of months, I’ve been close. At the China Open (in April) I was probably one good tee shot away. Same in Belgium a few weeks ago.’
The itch owes something to the three-year gap since his second of two victories on the DP World Tour, with the first coming on his debut season in 2017. Back then, he also secured his first and only top-10 from his 10 major appearances – the 2017 PGA Championship – and he was narrowly beaten to the rookie of the year award by a man who has proceeded to win two majors. Jon Rahm.
‘I suppose he’s gone on to do okay!’ says Smith, whose career earnings of £7.5million from 226 tournaments mean has done just fine in his own right. Indeed, for the past two Ryder Cup cycles, he has been namechecked regularly by European captain Luke Donald as one of those contenders on his radar.
Smith has been namechecked regularly by Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald as a contender
‘The Cup was definitely my biggest goal this year,’ Smith says. ‘Being realistic at this point, I need a couple of wins before the end of the season to get into the next one (in September) and a big performance at the US Open.
‘I might need to pull a rabbit out of the hat, especially as Luke will favour players with Cup experience as they will be playing in front of New York crowds. Those crowds will be brutal.’
Mention of the crowds brings to the surface a different recollection from that Team Cup in week in January, which Donald used to trial some unusual methods around the handling of hostile crowds. One was a loud speaker booming during the tee-shots; another was the deployment of an American heckler.
‘He was targeting Tyrrell Hatton a bit,’ Smith says. ‘Tyrrell had a bit of a beard going and the guy kept shouting out stuff about him being Amish and whatever. It was good fun.’
As it transpired, Smith and McKibbin were on the winning side that week. One man has since moved on to LIV and the other remains on the cusp of a big step to the PGA Tour. The next week at Oakmont could have a significant bearing on whether he gets there.
