He was Australian golf’s shining light, a likeable everyman whose career has found the rough. Now, Cameron Smith “may be rethinking” his decision to stick with LIV Golf, according to the head of the PGA of Australia, after Saudi Arabian investors withdrew funding from the upstart tour.

The entire Australian golf sector is wrestling with what a future without LIV – or with a fiscally restrained LIV-lite – might look like, as the South Australia government pushes on with spending $45m for an upgrade to a course still scheduled to host a LIV tournament from 2028.

Australia’s golfing institutions are immune to any collapse of LIV, yet the links within the sport run deep. As the body for golf’s professionals, the PGA of Australia wants the best for Smith and his countrymen. A junior entry program run by Golf Australia is sponsored by Smith’s LIV team Ripper GC, and the sport’s governing body celebrates the nation’s best golfers performing at their peak. All rely on the sport’s biggest names playing local tournaments.

Smith was one of LIV’s highest-profile recruits when he joined in 2022, weeks after winning the Open, in a deal reportedly worth more than $100m. He has missed the cut at his past six majors, even if two eighth-place finishes at LIV tournaments this year are a reminder of his quality.

Still just 32, Smith stuck with LIV earlier this year during a window when the PGA Tour offered a way back for players that would involve a financial penalty.

Five-time major winner Brooks Koepka took up the offer, signalling a shift in momentum back towards the incumbents. Former LIV player Patrick Reed is playing on the DP World Tour before a return to the PGA Tour later this year.

Gavin Kirkman, chief executive of the PGA of Australia, said Smith will be discussing his future with his management in the coming weeks, before a meeting with Kirkman and his team later this month.

“What we’re hearing, he’s too young to retire, and then, where he made that decision based on where LIV Golf was at that stage, he may be rethinking with his management,” Kirkman said.

While there appears to be efforts underway to continue operating LIV even without the investment of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, any salvaged operation is unlikely to resemble the flashy disruptor that has burnt through more than $5bn.

Some have called for bans and severe penalties for players seeking to rejoin the established tours if LIV falls over. However, the figurehead of the professional game in Australia urged golf officials with the majors and international tours to remember the best interests of the sport.

“They’ll have to come together and work out how they’re going to get the best golfers in the field, and then we want the best golfers to come to Australia because we know we’ve got the courses, the capabilities,” Kirkman said, noting LIV has several esteemed Australians on its books who are already full members of the PGA Tour of Australasia.

“Our focus is on Cam, Marc Leishman’s still got a lot of golf to play, Elvis Smylie is a superstar and Lucas Herbert is capable of winning a major, so those four players are very important to Australian golf.

“We can’t make their decisions for them, but this is where we hope the global golf ecosystem really comes together because I can say that all the tours and all the majors want the best golfers playing.”

South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas said last week LIV Golf’s chief executive Scott O’Neil had assured him Adelaide would host a LIV tournament next year. The city has a deal to host a LIV tournament until at least 2031.

James Sutherland, chief executive of Golf Australia – the sport’s broad stewards in Australia – said: “We’re certainly not blind or ignorant to some of the discussions going on with LIV and uncertainties around all of the golf course developments and what have you in Adelaide.”

But he was eager to highlight how LIV’s popularity in South Australia has unlocked a new formula in golf that blends sport, lifestyle and music, akin to a similar transformation in tennis.

“We look really closely at what the Australian Open tennis does in creating a great spectacle, in terms of sports entertainment with a lot on the line, but at the same time [giving] a reason for people to come to the event, to be in the precinct, to enjoy the atmosphere and to have a whole lot of other form of entertainment in and around it. ” he said.

“LIV’s done that really well. I’m not sure that we we will be able to afford the sorts of artists that they attract to their events, but just trying to find a way to have a varied offering and improve that and get bigger crowds at our major events and maybe even extend beyond being four days of entertainment in the way that tennis has.”

Sutherland is preparing for a board meeting this week in Adelaide, where the future of the LIV tournament remains a source of consternation. He said there will be more opportunities to attract elite golf to South Australia, although he noted there may now be more competition. “We want all of our states to be vying for major events,” he said. “We haven’t necessarily enjoyed that demand in the past.”

The 2025 men’s Australian Open in Melbourne was boosted by the appearance of Rory McIlroy, who will return later this year. The women’s edition in March was hosted by Kooyonga Golf Club in Adelaide, the first under a three-year deal with South Australia that will conclude with the 2028 edition at the renovated North Adelaide public course.

Sutherland said golf’s new recipe for fan engagement – thanks, in part, to LIV – leaves it well placed. “We’re really confident that state governments and other municipalities will come in behind and be coveting the hosting rights to major tournaments.”