“There was food poisoning and a few beers, but I can hardly remember the rest!” CAMERON SMITH, the architect of a famous comeback at St. Andrews, looks back on his stormy Open victory in 2022

• Among the four LIV Golf Open winners, Smith is the youngest
• Two years ago he won at St. Andrews after beating Young by just one stroke.
• Smith has never made a secret of the financial incentives for his move

There’s a good reason Cameron Smith can only remember sketchy details of the best week of his career. But there’s one small memory he hasn’t shared that makes him smile.

It goes back to July 2022, St. Andrews, and happened shortly after his arrival in the most famous golf city for the 150th Open Championship.

“You know, I actually had food poisoning,” he tells Mail Sport. “I had some oysters for dinner one night and yeah, it was a pretty unpleasant Monday and Tuesday.”

“I did it!”

Smith can laugh about it now because, as he says, it worked. History shows that from such a dubious position he won the Claret Jug with one of the greatest final rounds of all time at the biggest major in his sport.

Watching him tear down the Old Course that day and knock Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland off their four-stroke overnight lead was a feat to behold.

The fact that Smith, 30, can barely remember more than a few strokes from the 64 holes he hit on Sunday could be considered the definition of being in the zone. It’s the place where everything is natural, easy and second nature. “Autopilot,” he calls it, and not many golfers can reach that state when the stakes are at their highest.

“It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years already,” he says. “I don’t even know if I’ve fully realized it yet. But to be honest, I can’t really remember the finals. It was all such a blur for me.”

“I remember parts of the week – there was the food poisoning and I was quietly drinking a few beers with a few mates one evening. I remember that. And I remember calling my parents back home in Australia after the win – that was pretty cool.”

“But there wasn’t much to see from the last round. There was my tap-in on 18 for the win and for some reason I still remember my tee shot on 11. The rest is a blur.

“It’s interesting. I was talking to Matt Jones (a fellow Australian golfer on the LIV Tour) about it. He can remember what shot he made on the third hole at some golf course five years ago. I mean, it’s weird, but I’ve honestly never been able to do it. I think for me as a golfer, trying not to remember the last shot is almost a blessing in disguise.

“That’s probably one of the reasons why I don’t remember much. But when I’m racing, it definitely gets worse, I’ll put it that way.

“Yeah, it’s a nice feeling. When you’re playing golf really well, it kind of becomes easy and you go on autopilot. You don’t even really think about your swing or what you’re trying to do. It’s almost like you just throw all that out the window.”

Out with it and in through the door came Smith’s first major win. It was something of a turning point in his career for other well-documented reasons as well, with rumors of a move to LIV leading to questions immediately following that win.

As Smith prepares for his bid to reclaim the Claret Jug in Troon this week, talk of golf’s new frontiers is far less explosive, with drier discussions taking place instead about the sport’s next journey and the fraught negotiations over a merger that has yet to materialise.

Smith has never made a secret of the financial incentives of his move – it was worth around £92 million to him – but the greatly reduced schedule compared to the PGA Tour has also given him a new lease of life. He does not regret his decision in the slightest.

“Honestly, I have never been happier in my life,” he says, but admits that part of the joy of weeks like this is that they bring the best golfers back into the same orbit.

He hopes that this will happen more regularly in the future, whatever the outcome.

“I think it would be nice if we all got together maybe a couple more times,” he says. “Out of all of this, the majors have probably gained the most – they bring us all back and I think the receptivity of those guys (the four majors) has been really good, especially this year.”

“I don’t know where it goes from here. But I would like to play against these guys more often.”

“I’m really happy where I am now. I enjoy team competition and was able to spend three months at home in Australia at the end of last year. I haven’t been able to do that since I was 19 or 20.

“I was always grinding away, playing golf tournaments and making sure I played the golf tournaments I needed to play to keep my job. To have an off-season is unreal.”

Smith isn’t the only one who thinks it would be “a fun one-off thing” to arrange some sort of match between LIV and the PGA Tour, but as always, orchestration would be problematic given the uncertain state of golf.

“If we do that, it would probably have to happen pretty soon,” he says. “I don’t know how long these negotiations will take.”

At this point, few have an answer. There are many on both sides of the divide who have taken an active role in the process, and there are others, like Smith, who are known to be calm and blissfully indifferent to the political drama.

He shares the view that people like Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, both of whom have close relationships with Yasir Al Rumayyan, the governor of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, have a far greater interest in the machinations of power than he does.

“I think you hit the nail on the head with those two,” he says. “There are definitely some more curious guys, and there are also a lot of guys who just take what comes to them, which is probably true for me and a lot of others.”

“But we’re definitely trying to improve the product and make the tour as good as possible for everyone, and I think we’re all really behind the product.”

It is certainly no longer the case that there were any doubts as to whether the LIV golfers would be sufficiently prepared for the Majors in their new environment.

Brooks Koepka’s victory at the US PGA Championship last year nipped the debate in the bud, and DeChambeau won the US Open last month. Smith, for his part, has three top-9 finishes in the seven matches he has played since moving, including a shared sixth place at the Masters in April.

“Bryson at the US Open was a pretty cool scene,” says Smith, who suspects Dean Burmester and Joaquin Niemann are close to joining LIV’s list of major winners. “I think it’s great for all of us here when one of our colleagues wins a major. I think as far as the next tournament goes, I also think my game is good enough for that.”

No one who saw Smith at St. Andrews would speculate for long about whether he would be able to repeat the feat this week. With or without an oyster diet.