Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen made every shot that counted on Sunday at Royal Melbourne. The crowd applauded for him, but they clapped a little louder for someone else. The 26-year-old Dane claimed his maiden DP World Tour title at the 2025 Australian Open, edging out Cameron Smith by a single shot. But walking those final holes in front of 30,000 fans, victory felt less like triumph and more like survival.

“Yeah, it definitely felt like an away game at the end there,” Neergaard-Petersen admitted on The Smylie Show.

Over 113,000 spectators attended this week’s event, and the final two days drew 30,000 each. Fans lined the fairways five and ten deep, especially in the final group. Many came for one man: Cameron Smith, Australia’s most popular golfer, and rightfully so. He is the 2022 Open champion and a three-time Australian PGA winner. However, for years now, he has been chasing a trophy that keeps slipping away: the Stonehaven Cup.

He entered the week carrying a season’s worth of frustration, having described his 2025 campaign as “defeating” and expressed frustration at being “on the cusp” without results. He had missed seven consecutive cuts in OWGR events, including all four majors. The Australian Open was supposed to be his redemption. The fans thought so, too, and so did Neergaard-Petersen. He felt the shift as Sunday’s final holes approached. The respect remained, and applause continued, but something underneath had changed.

“I could kind of feel as we got closer towards the end yesterday that it was getting a little bit dicey out there,” he said. “It got pretty loud there, let’s say.”

On 17, Smith sank an 18-footer up the hill to stay tied for the lead. The two came to 18, locked at 15-under. Neergaard-Petersen’s approach drifted right, catching rough between the bunkers. Meanwhile, Smith found the green.

“I heard him cheering up by the green,” Neergaard-Petersen recalled. “Probably not because it caught a piece of the green.”

He scrambled anyway. Got up and down from nowhere. Smith three-putted for bogey, and the Dane eventually won. The crowd fell silent before polite applause arrived. For Smith, the wait for now continues.

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Cameron Smith’s Australian Open heartbreak adds to Stonehaven Cup drought

Cameron Smith has now finished runner-up at the Australian Open twice, first in 2016, when he lost a playoff to Jordan Spieth, and now in 2025. No Australian has won the event since Matt Jones in 2019.

His resume needs no validation. The Open Championship at St Andrews. The Players Championship. Three LIV Golf individual titles since joining the Saudi-backed circuit in August 2022. A career-high world ranking of No. 2, but his national open remains the gap in the trophy case. His last victory anywhere came at LIV Golf Bedminster in August 2023, over two years ago. Notably, Smith declined to speak to reporters after the final round.

Neergaard-Petersen understood the weight of what he’d navigated. The fans weren’t hostile. They clapped when he executed. They just wanted someone else lifting the Stonehaven Cup. “It’s not like they weren’t clapping or cheering whenever I’d do something good,” he said.

The applause was real. The allegiance was elsewhere.