Golf: Smail to work overtime

David Smail is content with how the year has progressed. Picture / Dean Purcell

While Michael Campbell takes the high road towards the British Open, mere golfing mortals such as David Smail will fill the back-country lanes leading to St Andrews.

Campbell and Smail are the only New Zealanders confirmed in the field for the third major of the year next week at the game's spiritual and historical home on the rugged east coast of Scotland.

The shared land of birth is about the only thing they have in common counting down to the sport's iconic event, though.

Campbell, of course, has joined the celebrity ranks since his US Open triumph last month, an achievement which understandably left him, and countless others, giddy with delight.

Champagne, and lots of it, parties, chauffeur-driven limousines and many other trappings of success have left Campbell in no doubt what it means to become just the second New Zealander - after Bob Charles at the 1963 British Open - to win one of golf's four majors.

World No 111 Smail, meanwhile, has quietly gone about his business in Japan, his adopted home for eight years, where he booked a ticket to the British Open just last month when finishing in a tie for second at the Mizuno Open.

He followed that with an identical finish seven days later when losing a three-way playoff in the Japan GT Championship.

Smail was 17 under for the two tournaments, lifting his career earnings in Japan alone to close to $5 million since 1997 and leaving himself in a good head space approaching his biggest challenge of the year.

With four career titles, including the 2001 New Zealand Open, Smail, 35, appreciates his game is in need of some minor tinkering before he steps on to the first tee on the Old Course at St Andrews, the original template for classic links layouts.

A lowered ball flight off the tee and fairway, an ability to duck in under the wind and play the bump-and-run shot - not to mention accuracy - are all vital tools.

Many of the courses in Japan can kindly be described as bland - in aesthetics and nature - and errors in execution can escape the severe punishment they would attract elsewhere.

Smail knows there will be no such luxuries at St Andrews. In fact, the opposite often applies as undulating, narrow fairways can deliver perfectly well-struck drives into haystack rough courtesy of a wicked bounce.

He has played the famous course only once before, as part of the 2001 Dunhill Links Championship.

The seaside course - very pleasant in a Scottish sort of way on a still, sunny day, but which can turn decidedly nasty when the sky darkens and the wind howls - left Smail feeling underwhelmed.

Like many before him, he was uncomfortable not being able to sight his target, and he just did not get the Old Course's peculiarities - the unfairness of cruel bounces stripping away a player's composure, the hidden bunkers pock-marked around the course awaiting their victims.

"I'd played Carnoustie and Kingsbarns first before going to St Andrews for the last two rounds and it was a bit disappointing.

"The other two were a bit more modern and it was easier to see what you're doing," Smail recalled.

 

With time, though, he has warmed to St Andrews' old world charms.

Two British Open campaigns on English links courses have led to an appreciation of the special challenges awaiting him next week.

In 2001 he finished 68th with a four-round card of 298, including weekend rounds of 76 and 79, at Royal Lytham and St Annes, while two years later he comfortably missed the cut at Royal St George's after efforts of 77 and 83.

" It is a different game, but I like it. It's tradition isn't it, it's the home of golf. It's not meant to be easy," Smail said.

 

He expects his temperament, which has served him just fine for years, to be fully tested when the tournament starts on Thursday.

"I had a bit of trouble with that at St George's. Every bounce just seemed to finish in the worst possible spot and it got to me.

"St Andrews is a bit different to that though. There's less real heavy rough. It's more likely the bunkers will kill you around there."

Smail knows he and long-time caddie John Bennett will need to work overtime during the three practice rounds he hopes to get in before the championship.

He is to make the trip a family affair, with wife Sheree, children Charlie and Emma, and both sets of grandparents joining him for the championship.

He has spent more than 4000 ($10,560) to rent a house about 10km from the course for Team Smail.

As for his own game, Smail is content with how the year has progressed. After a slow start, three top-10 placings place him 13th on the Japan Tour's moneylist with tournament income of $312,000 after nine appearances.

"I've really hit it well these last few weeks so I'd like to that some of that confidence through and make the cut.

"I want to try to finish somewhere among it . . . somewhere in the top 20 would be fantastic."

Fantastic it would be.

- NZPA