THE 154TH OPEN

July 16, 2026

Travis Smyth

Mixed Zone

TRAVIS SMYTH: I don't know how many fairways I hit, but I made it so hard for myself.

Q. Just a rundown of how it went.

TRAVIS SMYTH: It was good. I was extremely nervous. Didn't feel like I was playing that well. Found it really hard to just see good golf shots. Like off the tee, I just struggled off the tee a little bit and made it hard work for myself.

But really proud of the way that I hung in there. It could have got pretty messy pretty easily. Didn't hit many greens but sort of grinded out a lot of pars. I think I shot 1-over in the end and I can go out tomorrow and have a great round.

Q. Talk about the dry conditions out there and how does it compare to what you thought at the start of the week?

TRAVIS SMYTH: I had a round last week on Wednesday and Thursday, and the rough was pretty juicy, and then just every day that I've been going out there the rough keeps dying out and dying out. Funny enough, the few times I was in the rough, I had pretty thick lies.

But you can easily just hit it up the rough and get away with it. You can get lucky out there for sure. It's not that bad. It's making it playable. But in saying that, it's not like it's easy to hit it close, but you can make pars quite easily from the rough.

Q. After a couple of bogeys, what are you telling yourself?

TRAVIS SMYTH: Just some good swings, honestly. I hit a couple rough sort of -- I was trying. I was committing to my shots. Feeling just some bad tendencies, as you do under pressure, and didn't have control of my ball. I was really just trying to -- as cliche as it is, visualise the shot and really just commit. Yeah, just didn't pull it off today.

Q. How does this compare to the last Open you were at, do you think?

TRAVIS SMYTH: I think I'm ready to compete this time. Last time I was just like a deer in headlights; didn't really know what was going on. Everything was a completely new experience. This is a different experience, too, to that. I've only played three majors. I still shit myself on the first tee. It's still not easy yet. It's never going to be easy.

It's just great. Majors is where you want to play, and it's awesome. Pretty much every hole, apart from 16, was filled, just filled with people that are just parked up there for the day, plus people walking around. The atmosphere was incredible.

Q. That round yesterday for you, what was that experience like?

TRAVIS SMYTH: Yeah, yesterday was sweet, playing with Scottie for the first time. Watching the precision of his iron play was amazing. It was kind of demoralizing a little bit. It was like, damn, when I play good, I don't think I have that in me.

But it was good. It lights a fire in my stomach and makes me want to work hard. Now that I've seen what No. 1 in the world looks like, a little bit of a taste -- it was only nine holes, but it was a great experience watching him play.

He's a lovely guy, really down to earth, which I'm happy about. He's not like a dickhead or anything. So it was good.

Q. Did he say anything to you after the round?

TRAVIS SMYTH: Just thanks, enjoyed it, good luck this week. That's pretty much it.

Q. How does that come about? How did you land that --

TRAVIS SMYTH: I got lucky. I booked in right on Saturday or Sunday, and yeah, Tuesday morning I had a look to see who would book in with me, and it was Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns and the other amateur. So it was cool. So I've played with Cam Smith, Herby, Alex Noren, Scottie, Sam. It's been amazing so far. It's really, really good.

Q. Looks like you're getting a bit of consistency on the LIV side of things as well after this. What does the next sort of period bring?

TRAVIS SMYTH: Yeah, so I think there's maybe three, four more LIV events so there's a lot of golf, a lot of high-level stressful golf. It's tough competition, so I'm really looking forward to the next period. Then after that I've got a really important stretch of Asian Tour events and then ending in Australian Open, Australian PGA. It's great. I've got I don't know how many tournaments left, probably 12 tournaments left for the year, and they're all world class, so can't wait.