The Masters: Cameron Smith 'disappointed' with four under opening round

Australia's Cameron Smith had mixed feelings after his first round at The Masters on Thursday.

Smith finished the day with a four-under 68, which was enough for outright second on the leaderboard, trailing leader Sungjae Im by one stroke.

It was an action-packed day for the most famous mullet on tour, tallying a round-high eight birdies, but shooting himself in the foot with double-bogeys on the first and last hole.

Speaking to the media after stepping off the 18th green, Smith said he is not going to dwell on his painful ending to his round.

"I’ve moved on already," he said.

"The less you guys bring it up, the quicker I’ll forget about it. I’m done with it. I think the stuff in between was really nice, and [I'll] just take the positives out of it.

"I feel like I played some really solid golf today, and to be four under is a little bit disappointing.

"But given the condition of the golf course, and the condition with the wind and stuff like that, if you had given me four under at the start of the day, I would have taken it.”

The clubhouse leader, Cameron Smith. #themasters pic.twitter.com/QWCHpDnDHo

— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 7, 2022

Touching on his double-bogeys, Smith said they were more of a case of misreads rather than mis-hits.

"To be honest, those couple of double-bogeys really didn’t have too bad a shots in them," he said. "It’s not like I was scratching it out of the trees.

"I got my second shot into a reasonable spot, and just misjudged the wind on both wedges."

In a spectacular run of form, which includes a win at The Players Championship this year, Smith credits his ascension to increased professionalism off the course.

"I feel as though the last five or six years I’ve been really inconsistent with my training, and probably the last eight months or so I’ve been just really consistent," he said.

"I’ve made lots of good changes, I think, to my body, and I just feel like I’m able to walk off the golf course and not be wrecked.

"Most of the time I feel pretty fresh walking off the golf course, which is a feeling I don’t think I had for a long time, and it’s I think why my game has probably got a lot more consistent through four rounds.

“I lost a little bit of weight – my body moves a little bit quicker when I don’t have so much around my belly.

"I think I’ve definitely started to see my driver going probably a little bit further, definitely the swing speed up a little bit.

"I just need to – now I think the next step is just being able to control that and hit more fairways."