Inside the making of LIV Golf champion Cameron Smith’s circle of trust

Sam Pinfold has spent a large portion of his adult life wearing someone else’s name: “Smith.” Or even: “Smith C,” as it said when Cameron Smith won The Open Championship in 2022.

Pinfold is the caddie for the LIV Golf star. And so that’s his job: dedicating himself to Smith and — frankly — not thinking twice about wearing his name from Wednesday to Sunday this week at The Masters. 

What makes the relationship between Smith and Pinfold special is that Smith reciprocates that dedication.

In a sit-down interview with FOX Sports, Smith talked at length about his circle of trust, which includes Pinfold, swing coach Grant Field and performance coach Tony Meyer. Field and Meyer have known Smith since he was a 9-year-old tearing up the courses around Brisbane, Australia (and, soon after, the world). Pinfold has been on Smith’s bag for the vast majority of his pro career, missing only a few tournaments here and there.

“We’ve definitely evolved into a different golfer than we were 10 years ago,” the 31-year-old Smith said ahead of LIV Golf Miami last weekend.

We? We. Plural.

That’s the interesting dynamic at play behind Smith’s career accomplishments, which include the win at The Open, top-10 finishes at the other three majors and a LIV Golf team championship with Rippers GC in 2024. That’s the push and pull in every golfer’s career: the athlete’s public accomplishments and the team that quietly surrounds and supports him.

But again, that’s where Smith seems to stand apart. 

In the world of golf, where pros are so often thinking about themselves (because that’s the name of the game, of course), Smith thinks also of his team: “We.”

“I trust them,” Smith said of his inner circle. “We’ve been working together for so long, and there’s no reason [to make any changes]. We’ve made so many good decisions. We’ve made so many bad decisions, too, but you learn from it, and yeah, you move on.”

* * * * *

We’ll start with Pinfold, one of Smith’s best friends. Or, as they say, “best mates.”

The Aussie and the Kiwi golf together. They fish together. They live near each other and their families meet for dinner often. And they vacation together, more than once heading to the Australian barrier reef for a few nights on a 50-foot fishing vessel. Smith and Pinfold are beer buddies, sipping on the Aussie beer XXXX to decompress after their rounds. When they’re in the U.S., Smith goes for Busch Lite (and makes fun of Pinfold for drinking Heineken). 

Pinfold made it clear that there’s a brotherly dynamic between these two men.

If you want a good example, just watch the videos from Smith serving as caddie to Pinfold. The Rippers’ four caddies were playing against each other for a round and Smith took the chance not just to wear the bib but to grab a beer and boss Pinfold around — perhaps in retribution for the years and years of back and forth they’ve had together.

“We play a lot of golf together in the off week, so we sort of banter. He knows my game quite well, and he certainly knows my strengths, and there’s not many of them,” Pinfold said, cracking up on the putting green at Trump National Doral. “And he points out the weaknesses a lot. But no, he was really fun [as a caddie].”

Their relationship dynamic was an instant success. They’ve both told the story a hundred times, but when they first worked together, Smith was 20 years old and had never had a pro caddie. It was the New Zealand Open and Pinfold’s golfer missed the cut, so he jumped on with Smith, who hit all 18 greens and shot a 66 on Sunday to finish in the top 10. 

Not bad. At all.

This was the phase of their friendship when — whether Pinfold knew it or not at the time — Smith was vetting the new guy. Everyone who has grown close to Smith seems to remember the day it happened for them. For Field, it was an invite to a National camp with Smith, where Field immersed himself with tour professionals and came back demonstrating the ability to coach Smith in ways others could not. For Meyer, it was coaching Smith for Team Australia during a trip to Turkey for the World Amateur. They spent time chatting about life — beyond golf — at the pool and during long walks on the beach. 

Most recently, Rippers GM Nick Adams joined this circle of trust. It was Smith who hired Adams to run the team back in 2024. Smith, the captain who has a 25 percent equity stake in the team, staged six different interviews with Adams: multiple dinners, a round of golf and a sleepover at Smith’s place in Florida.

“If nothing, he is extremely thorough,” Adams said. “He asks a lot of very poignant, and I would say, oftentimes blunt questions. But he’s a truth killer, right? Like everyone on our team, honesty is a big, big thing, right? You say you’re going to do something, you do it. Maybe that leans into how we are as Australians, especially existing globally, but trust and truth are really important pillars of who we are as people.”

Smith hasn’t let many folks into his inner circle since Pinfold. And that was a decade ago. So, yeah, you can bet Smith is going to choose carefully who he invites into his life.

About a year and a half after Smith and Pinfold paired up in New Zealand, Smith got his PGA Tour card by making the top four in the 2015 U.S. Open. They hadn’t worked together since New Zealand, but Pinfold had been watching Smith’s early success from afar and was really hoping he’d get a call. Because not only did that U.S. Open performance get Smith a tour card, but it also got him an invitation to the 2016 Masters.

“When the phone lit up a week or so later, it was certainly a very, very nice phone call to receive. And obviously he’s changed my life in so many ways,” Pinfold said.

Smith said it was “almost” like a marriage proposal.

Back then, they were still learning each other. How to communicate. How to agree to disagree. How to plan for a course. How to execute and adapt that plan over a weekend. All of it. Now, their plans are so well constructed and their chemistry is understood. 

“He’s very simple on the golf course,” Pinfold said. “We get a number, get the wind, what it’s playing, and then basically look at what’s the top shot we’re going to hit. And we generally go through things quite quickly compared to some pairings. But yeah, we just really, really understand each other very well now after 10 years, and when to talk, when not to talk, and what he wants, basically.”

Now … this is golf we’re talking about. Anyone who has picked up a club knows that plans often go awry.

“There’s still moments now where it’s like, ‘What the f— were we doing there?'” Smith said. “But again, we’re humans, and we all make mistakes. But the mistakes that we make now are so — golfers are so weird. This is such a perfectionist’s game. We could be off by one percent and be like, ‘What were we doing there, or what were we thinking there?'”

It’s nothing an XXXX (or a Busch Lite and Heineken) can’t solve.

“There’ll be a little bit of abuse back and forward, and shaking a head at each other these days. But at the end of the day, we have a beer and a smile on the face. And you know that you’ve got one of your best mates by your side.”

Every plan for a tournament will include input from Field and Meyer as well. They’ll be the first to admit they’ve grown as much as Smith has. Back when Smith was a teenager, Field indicated that he realized just how much he had to learn as a swing coach — and he decided to step up to the occasion.

“I took it upon myself to keep improving my skills and to get better and surround myself with people that were doing that sort of thing with developing players and tour players,” he said. “I was of the opinion that if I didn’t believe that I could have helped him, then I needed to sort of pass him off to somebody that could.”

Smith noted in our chat that he admired the way Field grew early in their careers. And it inspired Smith to step up his own game. That’s why he has never moved on from Field.

“I’ve never felt the need to go searching for anything,” Smith said of Field. “I feel like we’ve been on a really good journey.”

Meyer’s role has evolved, too. He once helped Smith in many of the same ways as Field, but more recently, Meyer has taken on a more holistic vision for managing Smith. When Smith encounters problems and stumbles in performance, Meyer is there to present solutions.

“It might be his coach, it might be his trainer, it might be psychologist. It might be something that’s going on away from golf that needs addressing,” said Meyer, who remains the performance director for Golf Australia. “My role is to sit back and have an impartial lens around, ‘OK, where are the gaps? Who are the best people to fill those gaps? What are the interventions that need to come in?'”

It’s a lot of input from a lot of different people. But that’s exactly how Smith likes it. Because every one of those people has been there for him through the thick shots and the thin ones. Back in 2016, his first full year on the PGA Tour, Smith got a stomach infection that initially went undiagnosed. He lost weight. He dealt with homesickness and loneliness. And then he lost his tour card. Meyer remembers working with Smith’s manager to make the necessary arrangements for the qualifying school — just in case Smith couldn’t get his card back by playing the Korn Ferry Tour. Smith, fittingly, told them that they didn’t need to bother. He was going to make it happen on the Korn Ferry Tour. And he did exactly that.

And even at The Open in 2022, Smith had a rough third round and shot a 73 — much worse than his 67 on Thursday and 64 on Friday. Rather than moping or checking out, he locked in. That Saturday, he looked at Pinfold and said: “We had to give them a four-shot head start, didn’t we?” They shared a laugh. And the next day, they won it — jumping past the tied leaders Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland.

Most recently, Smith has been inconsistent on the LIV Golf tour. In 2023, his first season with LIV, he finished second in the individual standings after notching two individual tournament wins (London, Bedminster). Last season was marked by close misses: three second-place finishes and seven top-10s. This season, Smith’s results haven’t been up to his standard — until Miami, when he finished in the top 10 for the first time. But all week, his inner circle told me that his game was much better than his statistics were showing. 

“I think right now is one of those times where there’s a lot of people saying, ‘Did he make the right decision [going to LIV]? And his game’s struggling,'” Meyer said. “But then I think, actually, those that know him well know that his game’s a lot closer than it looks and that he’s working harder than he ever has. I think this will be one of those moments where we see him really take off again.”

The Masters could be an opportunity for exactly that. Smith thrives on Masters weekend as much as any other major. In his eight appearances, he has five top-10 finishes, including a second-place finish in 2020.

Just about every LIV golfer noted the similarities between Augusta and Trump National Doral, which hosted the LIV tournament last weekend. Both courses present mental and physical challenges. Conditions at LIV Golf Miami were particularly difficult, with fast greens and heavy winds tossing a whole lot of golf balls into the many water features. So it’s a good sign that Smith finished ninth and his team won the weekend.

“He’s someone that’s really enjoyed the big stage, and he’s always been able to elevate himself when things get harder,” Field said. “So I don’t think it’s any different this year. … Last week was a step in the right direction. His last round in Miami, he had a lot of good shots. There were a lot of really good signs. So if we can keep moving off that this week, I think we’re in a really good position to do well.”

There are two other people in Smith’s inner circle who could be as influential as anyone this weekend. The first is his wife, Shanel, a chiropractor who taught Smith about work ethic. He said he’d try to spend time with her while they were dating, but she’d always be studying. That kind of discipline put Smith to shame. “Compared to me — you know I spent a few hours at the golf course and maybe played nine holes. It felt like nothing,” Smith said. And so it was surely no coincidence that he won his first major not long after meeting Shanel.

And then there’s the newest member of the inner circle.

It’s his son, Remy, who will be about a dozen days old when Smith tees off at Augusta. Any parent will remember the sense of perspective that comes in those first few days with a baby. So I asked Smith whether Remy’s arrival has changed his mentality around golf. 

“Even last week of practice, I just feel not a sense of like, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ but a sense of like, ‘It’s really not that serious.’ You know?” Smith said. “And I’ve kind of always played golf like that anyway, but I feel like there’s been a lot of times recently where I’ve been quite uptight and very hard on myself, and I feel like that may have just gone away.”

There are plenty of golfers who toil and brood over improvements, like Brooks Koepka. Some grind away by tweaking and adjusting and changing and redirecting, like Bryson DeChambeau. That’s not Cameron Smith.

I mean, come on, he is the man with the mullet. He’s the Australian dude that you wish you could invite to your party. His mustache is a thing of legend. And so this sense of perspective might be exactly what Smith needed to chill out, knock down a 60-foot putt or two and ignore all the pressures that come with The Masters.

We’ve seen that version of Smith look dangerous. Whether it’s on the LIV Tour or in one of the majors, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before we see that version of Smith look dangerous again.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna. 

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