Greg Norman is being implicated of robbing Cameron Smith of the opportunity to create among golf’s terrific professions after enticing the British Open champ to his Saudi-backed rebel league.
Polarising expert Brandel Chamblee compared Smith’s short-game wizardry to that of legends Seve Ballesteros and Tom Watson, and states the Australian searched a course towards numerous significant champion triumphes after ruling at St Andrews last July.
Rather, Smith is not able to even protect his title at today’s prominent Players Championship in Florida after being suspended from the PGA Tour.
Smith lives at Jacksonville Beach, 10 minutes from Players Stadium, and is fishing friends with course superintendent Jeff Plotts, yet is personality non grata at TPC Sawgrass after, Chamblee states, being misdirected by his idol Norman.
“It’s paradoxical to me that it may perhaps be an Aussie that will keep another Aussie in Cameron Smith potentially from rising to an area where he’s thought about the best gamer of perpetuity (from Australia),” Chamblee informed the Golf Channel.
“Supplanting Peter Thomson, he had that type of skill.
“Norman didn’t arrive however (Smith) might have quickly supplanted Greg Norman as the second-best gamer of perpetuity from Australia. That’s at least in my view where Cameron Smith was headed.
“That’s what he’s turned his back on and a great deal of it relates to Greg Norman, and Cam Smith got a great deal of bad guidance from his representatives and other individuals in the video game around him attempting to draw him into LIV.”
Chamblee misses out on enjoying Smith use the PGA Tour.
“He had the prospective to be an outright terrific gamer,” he stated. “If you take a look at the qualities that he had, the age that he was, he was a terrific scrambler – and is most likely (still) – an excellent scrambler, fantastic putter, an excellent shot maker.
“Players like Tom Watson enter your mind. At the age of 25 up until (Watson) was 35, he had 35 wins, won 8 significant champions, truly struck his stride at 27, which is what Cam Smith was in 2015.
“Twenty-seven, 28, 29, 5 wins, 5 wins, 5 wins in each of those years. 7 wins when he was 30 years of age, these prime years.
“And when you think about Seve Ballesteros, from the time he was 22 till he was 31 he won 5 majors. He set the world on fire and was relatively similar kind of gamer that we saw in Cameron Smith in 2015 at St Andrews.
“These are amazing gamers – scramblers, they’re unforeseeable, they break your heart and after that they do monumentally amazing things.”
Smith, still world No 5 in spite of not getting rankings points playing LIV Golf, stays qualified to object to the 4 yearly majors for a minimum of 5 years.
Chamblee fears the Queenslander – and other LIV stars like previous Masters champ Dustin Johnson – will do not have a competitive edge at Augusta National next month for the season’s very first significant.
“You can not encourage me that week-in and week-out playing versus the absolute best gamers in the best competitors does not make you sharper,” he stated.
“Think where they are going to be a week prior to the Masters, generally the very best gamers worldwide in the week prior to the Masters