Crossword Genius

Perhaps green's smooth for golf tour recently (2,4)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

of late

I'm a little stuck... Click here to teach me more about this clue!

'recently' is the definition.
(synonyms)

'perhaps green's smooth for golf tour' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'smooth' could be 'flat' (I've seen this before) and 'flat' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'oe' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for of late that I've seen before include "Not long ago, in recent times" , "In the past few days" , "In the recent past" , "recently, not long ago" , "Alternative to 21 down" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.
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