Lights, camera, action ... Cam Smith out to star again

LIV Golf is set to launch its new season under lights - with Cameron Smith determined they'll be shining on him and his Aussie champion mates again after his own personal win drought in 2024.

The fourth edition of the lucrative breakaway Saudi-based tour begins on Thursday with its players all having been practising under floodlights as they prepare to tackle the Riydah Golf Course at night.

Leading the way in the Saudi capital will be the Australian quartet of Smith, Lucas Herbert, Marc Leishman and Matt Jones - aka "Ripper GC" - who are defending the team title they won last year.

Their captain Smith, the former British Open and Players' champ, loves the team aspect of LIV Golf but wants to also make sure his own personal campaign in 2025 is a step up from his rare winless season worldwide last year, the first campaign in which he'd gone without an individual triumph since 2020.

"I don't like to put too much pressure on myself," says Smith. "I think I just expect to prepare well and work as hard as I can and be competitive, be there on Sundays and hopefully get a couple of wins.

"This was my first winless season for a while, so it's definitely been in the back of my mind."

His victory with his Aussie colleagues helped make up for that in 2024, as the quartet won three times, and they're looking to repeat their overall triumph, with a particular focus on the tour's next stop after Riyadh back home in Adelaide.

The South Australia event has been moved from the back half of April into next week, with the Rippers keen to get off to a blistering start.

"The talk of our team since we finished has been all about preparing for Adelaide," said Smith.

"We've typically had three or four events before Adelaide and had a little bit of time to get into the speed of things. This year we don't. It's by far our more important of the year. So, we need to be ready."

The Rippers started slowly last year, not scoring points in three of their first five events before they triumphed in the Adelaide play-off.

"We came in, I'd say, sluggish or underprepared to start the year last year," Jones said. "We want to get off to a better start and be ready to really go in Adelaide."

The quartet got together in January in Florida to get in some practice time together, with Leishman flying in from his Virginia base.

"I think we'll be better prepared for the first few events this year compared to last year," he said. "Adelaide is definitely extra motivation to do that."

LIV Golf has changed its scoring format for the teams this year, with every player's score in every round counting towards the team's total score, as opposed to previous campaigns when only the teams' best three scores were taken in the first two rounds.

The tour's officials were also celebrating the US Open's announcement on Wednesday that the event will offer an exemption to a leading LIV Golf player to compete.

So the top LIV player, who's not otherwise exempt and is in the top three of the standings on May 19, will earn a place in the field at Oakmont from June 12-15.