‘Scared of the dark’: Smith hurls ball as tempers boil

Despite that, there were still moments of frustration – he threw his ball into a pond after he made bogey on the 17th from the middle of the fairway.

“That ball has been scared of the dark today,” Paul Gow quipped in commentary, a reference to the ball not wanting to go in the shadows at the bottom of the hole.

At that point, Smith looked to be building some momentum before the bogey put him back within a shot of the cut line.

“It was just frustrating – I did everything I needed to do but had a bit of a crappy number into 17 and just hit a poor shot,” he said.

“To walk away with five after a perfect drive is pretty frustrating.”

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That aside, Smith said he had been dudded by longer putts not dropping – which is virtually the opposite of what Min Woo Lee has been doing.

“I did everything I needed to do today except hole the putts,” he said.

The 2022 British Open winner will head into the weekend some eight shots behind Lee, with whom he also played with in the opening two rounds of the Australian PGA last week.

Smith made a crucial birdie on the 18th, which gave him some breathing room to the cut line.

He said he would do some putting practice on Friday night, but otherwise won’t be making too many changes.

“I just need to go out there tomorrow and do much more of the same – just hopefully some of those putts over 10 foot go in.

“It’s just golf sometimes. I’ve been in the spot that Min (Woo Lee) is in where everything goes in and you’re hitting perfect shots and things just keep running hot.

“It’s just that golf is a hard game at the moment for me, and that’s just sometimes how it is.”