Smylie’s Aus PGA triumph a win for the ages

Twenty-two-year-old veterans aren’t a thing yet as more accomplished players stumbled around him, Elvis Smylie stayed the course to claim the 2024 BMW Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland.

It’s what we expected when he burst onto the professional scene as a 19-year-old more than three years ago and very nearly won first time out.

He’d finished second as an amateur the week prior.

It was what was predicted as his potential and elite sporting bloodlines flourished as a teenager under the guidance of Ian Triggs on the Gold Coast.

Yet professional sport is littered with talented teens who struggle to transition into stable playing careers.

Smylie is no different, having used up sponsor invitations to play a dozen events on the DP World Tour before ever having the status to be in the field on his own merit.

Before this week, the first event of the 2025 DP World Tour season, Smylie had played 12 DP World Tour events outside Australia across three seasons.

He cashed a cheque in just one.

Something had to change, and change quickly, so he didn’t suffer the same fate of so many who disappear into oblivion.

He handed the keys to West Australian coach Ritchie Smith and surrounded himself with a proven team that now includes Luke Mackey (strength and conditioning), Marty McInnes (physiotherapist) and Michael Lloyd (mental coach).

His body has also undergone a transformation, almost five kilograms added so that a powerful swing was grounded in stability.

It was evident at the WA PGA Championship in October that something had changed.

Smylie carried himself differently. The skinny kid with a silky swing had been supplanted by a young man who looked in control of his own destiny.

He led by three through 52 holes at Kalgoorlie before finishing one shot shy of the playoff.

A week later he demonstrated his exceptional ball-striking in ferocious winds to win a playoff against Jak Carter and claim the WA Open at Mandurah Country Club.

If that was a coming of age, Sunday’s showdown with Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman put the golf world on notice that he is ready to go toe-to-toe with any player on the planet.

Smylie had half a dozen opportunities to fade from the top of the leaderboard in front of thousands of Smith’s faithful fans on Sunday yet declined each and every one.

He sent a message to his idol, no less, with two birdies out of the blocks and entered the back nine of what had become a 54-hole sprint with a three-stroke lead.

Time and again he conjured recoveries that can only have exasperated Smith, a major champion and former world No.2 known to inflict short game wizardry of his own.

Smylie in no way disrespected his elders; he simply played as though he was now one of them.

Some of that stems from exposure to the highest levels of sport at a young age, mother Liz and father Peter both highly accomplished professional tennis players.

As Liz stood to the side watching her son stand over a four-foot putt to change his life with tears in her eyes, Elvis stayed resolute.

Just.

“It was close. I saw Mum crying before that last putt but I wanted to keep my bogey-free round going.”

The job wasn’t done until he stepped up and calmly completed the mission that he and his team devised and which has now secured a place on the DP World Tour for the next two years.

At 22 years of age, he suddenly looks the complete package, an exceptional athlete with a mentality well beyond his years.

“I knew that it wasn’t going to be smooth sailing,” Smylie said of his first three years as a professional.

“Everything that has happened in my career so far, it’s been a blessing in disguise.

“It was just my time. Everything that happened today happened for a reason.

“I’m a Christian and I believe in God and I knew that He was looking down on me today.

“Everything that happened today happened for a reason and it was my time today, definitely.”

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