Cameron Smith has made his first big move as captain of his all-Australian team for the LIV Golf season, drafting in young Queenslander Jed Morgan at the expense of veteran Wade Ormsby.
The Herald can reveal world No.4 Smith has recruited fellow Queenslander Morgan as the fourth member of his Rippers team before the season-opening event in Mexico.
The swap has left South Australian Ormsby, 42, frozen out of the powerful Smith team, which will start among the favourites for the 2023 LIV season.
According to sources speaking on the condition of anonymity, Smith invited former Australian PGA winner Morgan onto his team after the 23-year-old broke out of a mid-year funk in 2022 to finish the LIV season strongly.
Morgan is ranked 351st in the world standings, 82 spots higher than Ormsby, who was one of the first players to join the controversial Saudi-backed league when it launched last year.
The decision will be a difficult one for Ormsby to take given the riches on offer in Greg Norman’s rebel league, which rewarded each member of the Australian team $2.9 million for finishing second in the season finale in Miami last year.
LIV Golf players Wade Ormsby, Cameron Smith and Jed Morgan.
Smith was the spearhead of the runner-up finish behind Dustin Johnson’s 4 Aces side, and has retained Marc Leishman and Matt Jones as teammates in 2023.
Morgan finished last year’s LIV season as part of Joaquin Niemann’s Torque team, but the Chilean has since recruited Mito Pereira, who blew a final-hole lead in the PGA Championship, and Presidents Cup star Sebastian Munoz to his side after they defected from the PGA Tour.
LIV Golf has promised to create controversy with roster shake-ups before and during subsequent seasons with its 2023 schedule to include an event at Adelaide’s The Grange Golf Club in April. It will be played two weeks after The Masters at Augusta National.
Smith remains the highest-ranked golfer on LIV’s 48-man roster, maintaining his lofty position by virtue of his stunning maiden major at St Andrews despite being ineligible to earn points in the no-cut, invitation-only events.
He returned home with the claret jug to win the Australian PGA in his hometown of Brisbane, but endured a slow start to his 2023 season when missing the cut at the Saudi International earlier this month.
Smith will come up against PGA Tour stars Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and green jacket champion Scottie Scheffler for the first time since his The Open win at Augusta.
“I don’t know that the reaction is going to be [towards LIV players],” Woods said before hosting the Genesis Invitational. “I know that some of our friendships have certainly taken a different path, but we’ll see when all that transpires.
“The champions’ dinner is obviously something that’s going to be talked about. We, as a whole, need to honour Scottie, it’s his dinner. So making sure that Scottie gets honoured correctly, but also realising the nature of what has transpired and the people that have left, just where our situations are either legally, emotionally … there’s a lot there.”
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