Cameron Smith has arrived in Melbourne with a bee in his competitive bonnet after three near misses in Australian tournaments without securing a first individual victory of the year.

Smith, the 2022 British Open champion at St Andrews, will tee up in the final leg of his whirlwind tour of his homeland – the Australian Open at Kingston Heath and Victoria GC – determined to lift a trophy.

The men and women’s Australian Opens will be held concurrently across the two iconic Melbourne Sandbelt courses this week, as well as the Australian All Abilities Championship. Smith is the men’s drawcard at this week’s Open while major winners Minjee Lee and Hannah Green are the headliners for the women’s event.

It would be the first individual win of the year if Smith were to pull it off. While Smith and his Ripper GC teammates took out the season-long teams victory on LIV Golf, Smith posted three-runner up results on the league without getting over the line. He was also T-6 at the Masters at Augusta National.

The 31-year-old delighted domestic fans wanting to see the mullet-wearing superstar in person when he played the Queensland PGA at Nudgee GC in Brisbane last month for a T-3 finish, before a T-2 behind winner Lucas Herbert at the NSW Open on the Murray River.

Stepping up to the Australian PGA last week, the first of the two Australian majors, Smith shared the lead going into the third and final round of a rain-shortened tournament at Royal Queensland. But six birdies and four bogeys on the final day, including two costly three-putts after hitting the green in regulation, relegated Smith to solo second behind breakthrough winner, Elvis Smylie.

“I feel like the last couple of weeks, not Nudgee, but the last couple of tournaments, I’ve done all the right things, and I’ve had a day in there where things haven’t gone my way,” Smith said. “So, yeah, so hopefully we can just kind of get through that next week and just keep digging. It’s definitely some more motivation (to try and win the Australian Open).”

Smith was proud of Smylie, 22, who in 2019 as an amateur was a recipient of Smith’s annual scholarship, where he flies two Australian juniors to the US to practice and play golf with him for a week. Smylie secured his maiden DP World Tour title and now has two years of status in Europen. But Smith was only at Royal Queensland to win and his putting was frustrating.

“I think it would have been a different story if (I hadn’t) had three bogeys on the front nine which really cost me,” Smith said. “For two of them to be three-putts (that followed) very decent shots into those greens pisses me off more than anything else.”

This week is where Smith has focussed all his energy given the Stonehaven Cup is the biggest trophy in Australia Smith has not yet lifted.

He won the Australian PGA in 2017, 2018 and 2022 but has never tasted success at the Open. His closest call came in 2016, when Smith was in a sudden-death playoff at Royal Sydney with Jordan Spieth and Ash Hall. American Spieth bagged his second Australian Open with a birdie on the extra hole.

“I’ve managed to play pretty well in a lot of them and win a few as well,” Smith said. “I think the biggest one for me is trying to get that Aussie Open, something that I haven’t been able to do yet.”