Golf has a way of making a season’s biggest question mark arrive right when the tour is meant to be looking its most settled. LIV Golf rolls into Trump Bedminster this week for another stop on the calendar, except the real story isn’t the leaderboard; it’s the $40 million event still waiting on a golf course without apt infrastructure. That’s the backdrop Cam Smith walked into before a single shot was struck, and his answers this week say plenty about where LIV Golf’s Team Championship uncertainty actually stands.

Smith didn’t hedge when asked what the league means to him amid the doubt. “I want it to work, really, to be honest,” he said. “It’s great fun out here. The team that we’ve got, I feel like we make each other better, better people and better golfers as well. I’d hate to see it go away. We’ll see what happens.”

Smith’s confirmation about the Team Championship carries that same weight. He revealed that players have been told to prepare as though the season-ending event is still happening, even as doubts continue to build around it.

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“We’ve been told to prepare as though it’s going ahead,” Smith said. “So we’re expecting it to happen. I’m really unsure but we had a great year there last year in Detroit and we’re hoping we get back there. It’s a great golf course, a great venue and the crowds really turned up as well. So we’d be disappointed if it wasn’t.”

The instruction to prepare regardless matters because of what it’s asking players to ignore. The Cardinal course at St John’s in Michigan has no infrastructure in place yet for an event scheduled in a matter of weeks, the kind of gap that normally forces organizers into contingency mode rather than treating it as routine.

Marc Leishman, Smith’s teammate, backed the same line while admitting the obvious. It would be “a real shame” if the event got cancelled, he said, adding that the team is preparing to play without knowing what’s actually going to happen.

Set against that is Martin Kaymer, who told Today’s Golfer the event carried only a “five percent chance” of going ahead as scheduled. One LIV player expecting Michigan to happen and another putting it at five percent points to something simpler than optimism versus pessimism. The league hasn’t given its own players the same story, which is exactly what Tuesday’s meeting at Bedminster needs to sort out.

Could Cam Smith return to the PGA Tour?

Smith hasn’t gone looking for a way out of LIV despite everything swirling around it.

“I’m a positive guy, so I’ve made no effort to go seek anything else,” he said.

That’s not the same as ruling out a return altogether.

Pressed on the PGA Tour question directly, Smith kept the door open only barely. He’d consider it, he said, “if it was the only option,” a scenario that has nothing to do with where he sees himself right now. His contract holds through the end of next year, and his plan is to renegotiate when it does, not to walk away early.

By Tuesday, the players’ meeting should settle what’s been left hanging: whether the instruction to prepare for Michigan reflects real planning or just buys time before an announcement. St John’s still has no infrastructure in place, and that fact doesn’t change based on what players are told to expect. The next word out of Bedminster carries more weight than anything said this week. It’ll show whether Smith’s read on the season or Kaymer’s math was closer to the truth.