It was a wild finish at the Australian Open.
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Cam Smith were tied at 15 under par heading to the final hole. Then, Neergaard-Petersen shanked his drive into the right rough. The 26-year-old Dane, however, scrambled to make par with a 12-foot putt.
Smith, meanwhile, made birdie on No. 17 and faced a long birdie putt for the win on Royal Melbourne's par-4 18th. That settled inside five feet before his par putt to force a playoff missed left.
“It’s hard. I’m really at a loss for words. It’s been a battle all day,” Neergaard-Petersen said, who earned an invitation to the Masters with the win. “Even from the outside, you can look calm, but it was a storm inside [for me] all day. But I managed to keep battling and to get it up and down to make that putt on the last. I don’t know what to say, to be honest.”
"I'm at a loss for words" 🗣️
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) December 7, 2025
Rasmus reflects on becoming a DP World Tour winner and the first Danish golfer to win the Stonehaven Cup.#AusOpenGolf pic.twitter.com/iYRJ2BpLeV
It’s Neergaard-Petersen’s biggest professional win of his career. And he has a PGA Tour card locked up for next year after he birdied three of his last four holes at the DP World Tour Championship last month.
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen made this up and down to win his first DP World Tour title 🤯#AusOpenGolf pic.twitter.com/EG0MHHVg5V
— DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) December 7, 2025
Smith, on the other hand, may have fallen short of the victory in his home country, but it had been a long time since the 2022 British Open champion was in contention. The 32-year-old LIV golfer hasn’t won anywhere since 2023 and the Australian Open was the first non-LIV cut he’s made in eight starts.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had this feeling to be honest,” he said. “I love that it’s the Australian Open. I couldn’t think of a better place to get back into form. It would shut a few people up.”
The biggest headliner of the week, though, was Rory McIlroy. With a final-round 69, he placed T10.
Royal Melbourne was hosting the country’s national open for the first time in 34 years, and attendance records were set with over 112,000 fans on site.
Yet, McIlroy feels that with the grand atmosphere, there’s a chance the Australian Open can become one of golf’s premier global events at another time of the year.
“I obviously would love to have a few more players come down and play, but it’s hard with three tournaments going on in the schedule this week,” McIlroy said, as the event coincided with Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge and the DP World Tour’s Nedbank Challenge.
“There need to be conversations had with people much more important than me that set the schedules, and hopefully the Australian Open can find a date that accommodates everyone and everyone can at least have the option to come down.”
McIlroy added: “People seeing the scenes here on TV … it’ll definitely pique their interest.”
But for those he did tune in this week, they were treated to a dramatic conclusion that left Neergaard-Petersen hoisting the Stonehaven Cup.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen Denies Cam Smith Australian Open Win in Dramatic Finish.
