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It was not a decision made lightly but the lure of an LPGA Tour card was enough to convince Kirsten Rudgeley to skip this week’s ISPS HANDA Australian Open in favour of the Ladies European Tour season finale.
As her fellow countrywomen tee it up at Kingston Heath and Victoria Golf Clubs, Rudgeley is the lone Aussie at the Andalucia Costa Del Sol Open de Espana.
A member of the Golf Australia Rookie Squad, Rudgeley sought the advice of the national body before committing to a hit-and-run mission to Spain.
Currently 11th on the LET Order of Merit, a good result this week would propel Rudgeley inside the top 10 and secure a place at LPGA Q-Series Final Qualifying next week in Alabama.
“Talking to Golf Australia, they turned around to me and said definitely play [in Spain],” Rudgeley told LET Media.
“They know your goal is to be on the LPGA. Best of both worlds, I’ll be able to do both next year.
“[But] it was very good to be at home and have some heat. It was nice to be home and see family and friends in Australia.”
Currently 168th in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Ranking, Rudgeley continues to establish her international credentials.
She has missed just one cut on the LET this season while amassing six top-10s – a run which included losing in a playoff to Chiara Tamburlini at the Lacoste Ladies Open de France.
It’s opened up a pathway to join a growing list of Australians with status on the LPGA Tour in 2025, albeit not one she had considered at the start of the year.
“It wasn’t my aim at the start of the season,” said Rudgeley, who currently trails Alexandra Försterling in 10th by 43.13 points.
“You know me, I just play golf and see what happens. But an opportunity has opened up so why not.
“It’s a long way to come for one event but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.“
While Rudgeley flies solo in Spain, there is a healthy Australian contingent teeing it up on Wednesday in Round 1 of the International Series Qatar.
Two-time Australian Open champion Matt Jones has been paired with Asian Tour Order of Merit hopeful Ben Campbell of New Zealand, New South Welshman Travis Smyth hoping to push into the top 10 on the Order of Merit.
Photo: Tristan Jones/LET
Round 1 tee times AEDT
Asian Tour
International Series Qatar
Doha Golf Club, Qatar
2:15pm Aaron Wilkin
2:15pm* Wade Ormsby
2:35pm* Ben Campbell (NZ), Matt Jones
2:45pm Kevin Yuan
2:55pm Zach Murray
2:55pm* Jack Thompson
3:05pm Scott Hend
3:15pm Andrew Dodt
3:25pm* Justin Warren
6:35pm Travis Smyth
7:25pm* Maverick Antcliff
7:35pm Jed Morgan
9:45pm* Marcus Fraser
2023 champion: Andy Ogletree
Past Aussie winners: Nil
Prize money: $US2.5 million
TV times: Live 8pm-12am Wednesday, Thursday; Live 7:30pm-11:30pm Friday, Saturday on Fox Sports 507 and Kayo.
Japan Golf Tour
Golf Nippon Series JT Cup
Tokyo Yomiuri Country Club, Tokyo
11:50am Michael Hendry (NZ)
2023 champion: Yasuka Semikawa
Past Aussie winners: Paul Sheehan (2004), Brendan Jones (2007)
Prize money: ¥130 million
Ladies European Tour
Andalucia Costa Del Sol Open de Espana
Real Club Guadalhorce Golf, Spain
9:39pm Kirsten Rudgeley (AUS)
2023 champion: Aditi Ashok
Past Aussie winners: Corinne Dibnah (1987), Rachel Hetherington (1995), Nikki Garrett (2007), Stacey Keating (2012)
Prize money: €700,000
TV times: Live 12am-3am Friday, Saturday, Sunday on Fox Sports 507 and Kayo.
The R&A has confirmed that three spots in the 2025 Open Championship will be offered to the top three non-exempt players at the ISPS HANDA Australian Open this week.
This continues a relationship that has been in place for the past few years. Last year in Sydney, Joaquin Niemann, Adam Scott and Rikuya Hoshino all booked places in the Open field for 2024.
In the event of a tie for a qualifying place, the player with the higher ranking in the Official World Golf Ranking at the beginning of the week commencing 25 November will be awarded a place in the 153rd Open.
In a change to previous qualifying criteria, the place of a successful qualifier who later becomes exempt via another category will not pass to the next non-exempt golfer from that Open Qualifying Series event.
The R&A will publish the full schedule for the Open Qualifying Series and list of exemptions for the 153rd Open early in 2025.
Three players in the field are already exempt: defending champion Joaquin Niemann, 2022 Open champion Cameron Smith and Englishman Jordan Smith.
The Open is at Royal Portrush from 13-20 July next year.
For Elvis Smylie, the sound of doors creaking open is would be almost deafening if it wasn’t so good.
The 22-year-old Australian has a shot at the ISPS HANDA Australian Open this week at Kingston Heath and Victoria, but by Monday he will be enroute to South Africa for the Nedbank Challenge in Sun City.
It’s a $US6 million tournament with a limited field of 66 and it represents his future as a world player.
All of it has come as a result of winning the co-sanctioned BMW Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland last Sunday, holding off no less a star than Cameron Smith. As a tournament winner he is now a full DP World Tour member for the rest of this season and all of next.
It has been a whirlwind for the Golf Australia Rookie Squad member, including a night at home on the Gold Coast followed by a 7.30am flight to Melbourne. He’s opened a taste of the numerous congratulatory messages on his phone, and one that stuck out was from Ivan Lendl, the eight-times Grand Slam singles tennis champion who is a friend of the family and who watched the coverage from overseas.
But he has not touched a drop of alcohol; he fits the modern template of the golfer-athlete. “I’ve been quite on my best behaviour,” he said. “There’ll be a time to celebrate, but for now I’m really looking forward to doing my best here at Australian Open.”
Smylie’s new-found fame has piqued some media interest particularly in his name, which comes from his father Peter’s Elvis Presley obsession. At Royal Queensland last week, a spectator asked him to sing but he politely declined.
His physique – pencil-thin with no dramatic signs of change despite the weights regime he has put in place with Golf Australia’s strength and conditioning guru Luke Mackey – is another point of interest. He still hasn’t reached 80 kilograms despite his substantial height, and the chicken and rice diet that amounts to “eating as much as I can”.
He looks something like the kid who won the Australian Junior championship in 2019 at the peak of a stellar amateur career.
Smylie is negotiating his new world a step at a time and focusing on his national Open in the Melbourne sandbelt this week, where he will again take on Australia’s best along with numerous European players and the likes of defending champion Joaquin Niemann.
“I think the biggest thing that I’ve spoken to, especially with the team that I have around me is not to get too complacent with what I’ve achieved so far,” he said. “Obviously it’s been a dream start to the Australian season for me, but there’s more that I want achieve this year and what my team have done a really good job with is easing the reins a little bit and focusing on what needs to be focused on. And that’s this week for me and making sure that I’m doing all the stuff that I need to do by the time I tee it up on Thursday.”
The left-handed Smylie is now eyeing the DP World Tour’s Middle East swing in January, but he also wants to come home to achieve his original goal for this summer – winning the Order of Merit on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia, which concludes in March.
Two years after his first, faltering foray into Europe, the world is suddenly opening up for him. And quickly.
PHOTO: Elvis Smylie addresses the media at Kingston Heath today. Image: Daniel Pockett
As the players filtered into Melbourne today for the ISPS Handa Australian Open and began their working week on the driving range and the practice putting green, one figure looked especially comfortable and familiar in the surrounds.
Karl Vilips has not played in an Australian Open since 2017, when he received an invitation at The Australian via Golf Australia as one of the best young golfers in the national. He missed the cut; feeling the nerves of the occasion unsurprisingly for a 16-year-old.
But today not even a dank Melbourne ‘pea souper’ of a day, nor the unrelenting flies, could contain his excitement at teeing up in another Open.
Vilips played the 2019 Junior Presidents Cup representing the International team at Royal Melbourne, but in truth most of the past 10 years of his life have been spent in the USA, both at high school and Stanford University.
Now he’s back and trying first and foremost to get his hands on the Stonehaven Cup but also to get his game together for the PGA Tour in 2025.
As soon as next month in Hawaii, Vilips will debut as a full member of the tour, having graduated from the Korn Ferry Tour in 2024. It’s a task about which he’s talked a lot with his coach Colin Swatton of Jason Day fame.
He’s only a year older than Elvis Smylie the Queenslander who jumped up to win the BMW Australian PGA Championship on Sunday. Vilips said he was “really proud of Smylie’s achievement at such a tender age, and he is using it as motivation. “The ascension can be quick and he’s a good example.”
His appearance at Kingston Heath and Victoria this week will come with some expectations, but he is cool with that. “That’s what comes with it, so I’m just looking forward to embracing that and just trying to do my best.”
Vilips grew up in Perth but spent three years in Melbourne as a boy around 2010. It was the time that he came to notice as a world junior champion and a wunderkind, reeling off records and titles with a Tiger Woods-ish relentlessness.
Fortunately like Woods, he did not turn out to be a child prodigy who fell away like many do. His first pro win, on the Korn Ferry Tour in Utah this year, helped him qualify 19th of the top 30 who graduated from the KFT to the PGA Tour for 2025.
“It’s great to be back home,” he said today. “I haven’t been back in a while, but I’m also very grateful to Golf Australia for giving me the invite this year. Nothing really beats the sandbelt, so excited that I get to show everyone that (I’ve) gotten a lot better since the last time I was here and I’m really excited to show my game in front of the crowds here.”
Photo: Rob Prezioso
On Sunday it was Elvis Smylie who had the chance to win his first Australian major in front of his home crowd, and this week Victorians Marc Leishman and Lucas Herbert have the same opportunity at the ISPS HANDA Australian Open.
After growing up in country Victoria, Leishman and Herbert both graduated to Sandbelt clubs in their teenage years, and are excited to be back on courses they know so well at Kingston Heath and The Victoria golf clubs.
While they used to battle it out around the Heath and Victoria for Pennants flags, this week it will be for the coveted Stonehaven Cup, a piece of silverware that has eluded both men in their illustrious careers.
“I grew up watching them, seeing Greg Norman and all the big Aussie guys winning them,” said Leishman.
“It’s obviously a trophy that I want to hold up and probably something that’s missing from my resume.”
While Leishman won several times at home before taking his talents internationally, Herbert claimed his maiden Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia victory on home soil two weeks ago at the Ford NSW Open, and was immediately hungry for more.
It wasn’t the week he would have liked at the BMW Australian PGA Championship in Brisbane, but he is confident he can turn it around now he is back in his home state on familiar turf.
“I just struggled on the greens, I struggled reading the greens,” Herbert said of Royal Queensland.
“They were really tricky up there and felt like if they hadn’t of written them in braille, I might’ve been half a chance.
“I’ve just done some playing drills here this morning and they’re starting to go in again, so I’m looking forward to this week.”
Unlike Herbert, and indeed their Ripper GC captain Cam Smith, who has been back in Australia for several weeks, Leishman arrived at Royal Queensland after a significant break from tournament golf.
The man from Warnambool came to play though, and has a lot of confidence arriving in Melbourne off the back of a T3 finish at Royal Queensland.
“It was a fun week,” Leishman said. “Nice to play well, obviously not quite the result I was after, but it was great playing with Cam and Elvis in the last round and to see Elvis do what he did, it was pretty impressive.
“Wish it was me, but it’s good to see the young lad do so well and handle the pressure and (he’s) certainly got a very bright future.”
The young talent in Australian golf is something both men have noticed on their trips home this year, and while encouraging, both recognise there are serious players standing in the way of their quest for the Stonehaven Cup.
“There’s just a bunch of guys like that out here that you just forget play out here and you come back to these events and you think every year ‘oh surely we’ve got to win one of these’, but every year just it sneaks up and you’re like, ‘gee, these guys are still really good’,” said Herbert.
Leishman added with a smile: “There’s definitely a lot of young guys coming up. I think there’s probably not just Elvis, there’s probably a couple others that I’m sure Cam’s having a look at as I get a little bit older and Jonesy gets a little bit older.”
“It’s nice to have someone, have a bit of pressure from up-and-coming guys to want to play well.”
While coming back to Australia in general is always a highlight of Leishman and Herbert’s year, the Open being in Melbourne this year makes this trip just that extra bit special.
“We look forward to getting back to Australia and particularly Victoria all year,” said Leishman. “Now we’re finally back here we’re filling ourselves up on the good breakfast and coffees and all the food.”
Photo: Daniel Pockett
The co-hosts of the first ever joint format Australian Open in 2022, Kingston Heath and The Victoria golf clubs, are the hosts again to the ISPS HANDA Australian Open this week, but this time the roles are switched.
Play will be across both courses on Thursday and Friday, with Kingston Heath to decide the 2024 champions across the weekend.
Both 2023 titleholders in South Africa’s Ashleigh Buhai and Chile’s Joaquin Niemann are back, with Buhai vying for an incredible third Patricia Bridges Bowl in a row.
The Australian All Abilities Championship will again be held in conjunction with the men’s and women’s championships. Unfortunately 2023 champion Lachlan Wood has had to withdraw due to illness, meaning a new champion will be crowned this year.
Many of Australia’s stars who play much of their golf internationally have returned to vie for their national title, keen to battle it out on two gems of the Melbourne Sandbelt.
2023 CHAMPIONS:
PRIZEMONEY: $3,400,000 (M & W)
LIVE SCORES: https://www.golf.org.au/ausopen/
TV COVERAGE: All four rounds of the ISPS HANDA Australian Open is live on the 9Network and Fox Sports, available on Foxtel and Kayo.
*All times AEDT.
Round 1: Thursday, 12pm-5pm
Round 2: Friday, 12pm-5pm
Round 3: Saturday, 2pm-7pm
Final Round: Sunday, 1pm-6pm
THE COURSES
Having played joint hosts in 2022, the first playing of the joint format, Kingston Heath and The Victoria Golf Clubs are no strangers to hosting the ISPS HANDA Australian Open.
Designed in 1925 by Dan Soutar, Kingston Heath also enlisted the help of Dr Alister MacKenzie to consult on its bunkering a year later in 1926, the Heath’s bunkering some of the best in world golf.
MacKenzie’s influence also led to the 15th becoming a world-renowned par-3 that will be sure to provide drama and intrigue as the week intensifies.
Kingston Heath has employed OCM (Ogilvy, Cocking, Mead) as consulting architects for a number of years, and the focus has been to make sure the course remains as close to the vision of Soutar and MacKenzie as possible.
Measuring out to 6638 metres for the men, and 5937 metres for the women this week, Kingston Heath is not significantly long in modern terms but is the longer course of the two.
Without serious length and sitting on a relatively flat piece of land, the bunkering provides the Heath’s primary defence, the course forcing golfers to plot their way around carefully.
Victoria was originally designed by Oscar Damman and Bill Meade in 1927, and like Kingston Heath, has been touched up by both MacKenzie and more recently Clayton.
With more elevation changes than The Heath, Victoria has some more dramatic holes, but the focus is often on the short holes, the same as its co-host.
The first is always a talking point. At 230-metres for the men, it is a par-4 that is reachable for everyone, but a chance of an opening birdie or even eagle can quickly turn into a double or worse with the amount of trouble around the green.
The same can be said for the 15th, another reachable four, where the risk can often outweigh the reward. Closing with a short par-5, an eagle on the last at Victoria can often shake-up the leaderboard at the final hour.
HEADLINERS
Men:
Joaquin Niemann: Defending champion, PGA TOUR and LIV Golf winner
Cameron Smith: 2022 Open Champion, Captain of Ripper GC
Cam Davis: Two-time PGA TOUR winner; 2017 Australian Open champion
Elvis Smylie: 2024 BMW Australian PGA champion and 2024 WA Open winner
Marc Leishman: Six-time PGA TOUR winner, T3 at 2024 BMW Australian PGA Championship.
Lucas Herbert: 2024 NSW Open winner.
Women:
Ashleigh Buhai: Defending champion and multiple Australian Open winner
Hannah Green: 3-time LPGA Tour winner in 2024
Minjee Lee: 2-time major champion
Jiyai Shin: Former world No.1, 2-time major champion and former Australian Open winner
Steph Kyriacou: LPGA Tour player
Jenny Shin: LPGA Tour winner
Danielle Kang: Former world No.2
All Abilities:
Johan Kammerstad: Two-time AAAC winner
Kipp Popert: 2022 champion and world No.1
Simon Lee: US Adaptive Open winner
Ryanne Jackson: 2023 US Adaptive Open winner
Brendan Lawlor: 2023 G4D Open winner
A new national marketing campaign highlighting the expertise of PGA Professionals across all areas of the golf industry has gone live.
Launched during the final round of the BMW Australian PGA Championship on Sunday, ‘The Pro Will Know’ is designed highlight that PGA Professionals are there to assist all golfers with everything they need to enjoy the sport.
Whether it’s coaching, equipment, club-fitting, course management, or anything else to do with our sport, PGA Professionals and the ones every golfer should engage with.
“With their extensive knowledge, training, and passion for the sport, PGA Professionals are unquestionably the experts in golf,” said Geoff Stewart, General Manager – Education and Training for the PGA of Australia.
“At every level of the game, PGA Professionals are there to guide all types of golfers in their journey in the sport.
“From beginners just getting started through to the scratch marker looking for the putter that fits them perfectly, PGA Professionals are there to provide friendly, expert advice.
“We hope that this latest campaign emphasises that in a fun way that I’m sure every golfer can relate to.”
A heart-to-heart with one of the most famous names in Australian golf is behind Anthony Quayle’s decision to return home to kick-start his international career.
Gold Coaster Quayle matched the low-round of the tournament to finish third at the BMW Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland, rolling in a putt he estimated to be 115 feet from four metres off the front of the 18th green to close out a round of 8-under 63.
His 11-under total held the clubhouse lead for three hours, eventual champion Elvis Smylie (14-under) and runner-up Cameron Smith (12-under) in the final group the only players to move past him by day’s end.
In his 16 most recent starts, Quayle had made just one cut and withdrawn twice, his career stagnating as he struggled with the solitude he experienced as one of very few Aussies playing the Japan Golf Tour this year.
Seeking a sounding board, Quayle turned to Adam Scott’s father, Phil, who advised using the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia to find a pathway back to a major international tour.
“I skipped the last six events in Japan to come back and focus here instead,” said a jubilant Quayle after his Sunday flourish.
“I just wasn’t enjoying it. I wasn’t having fun. I didn’t feel like I was in an environment where I could be the best that I can be.
“I feel like if I can create an environment where I feel happy, I feel confident, I feel comfortable, I feel like I can really kick on and do some really great things.
“Phil Scott actually was pretty crucial in consulting me with a lot of this stuff. He was a massive advocate for me coming back here and playing this tour and committing to this over the next six months as a bit of a re-route in my career.
“Hopefully this is a nice step in the right direction.”
His third-place finish in a tournament co-sanctioned with the DP World Tour certainly sent his world ranking and position on the domestic Order of Merit in the right direction.
The 30-year-old will tee it up at this week’s ISPS HANDA Australian Open ranked 617 in the world (up 260 places) and seventh on the Order of Merit (up 119 spots).
It has suddenly put a DP World Tour card for a top-three Order of Merit finish within reach, and given the two-time PGA Tour of Australasia winner a much-needed injection of confidence.
“The only thing I’m really thinking about right now is just that I feel like my good stuff is good enough and I feel like I just need to be happy and comfortable and confident for that to happen,” added Quayle, who missed the cut at both the Queensland PGA and Ford NSW Open.
“This reaffirms that and it also shows me that I’m not that far away. I don’t feel like I’m a crazy person thinking, yeah, no, it’s not far away, even though the results suggested otherwise.
“It just gives me that trust that I’m doing the right things and it also really reaffirms that I’m the sort of person that loves being around people.
“I’m a social sort of person. I love chatting with people. I love being around people.
“Coming back here these last few weeks playing in Australia, I feel like I have so much support.
“I had so many of my friends come out yesterday and today. It just felt awesome, feeling like I had people around me rather than me just feeling like I’m alone out there.
“It was awesome.”
Hannah Green is winging her way to Melbourne to have another dash at the ISPS HANDA Australian Open that has eluded her after completing her season on the LPGA Tour today.
Green finished tied-19th in the LPGA Tour Championship in Florida behind Thailand’s Jeeno Thitikul, who picked up the biggest prize in women’s golf history, $US 4 million after rolling in a birdie putt at the 72nd hole.
The Australian was one of four of her countrywomen to reach the tour championship, which is for the top 60 players on tour, and she ultimately finished in seventh place on the points table having won three events in 2024.
She will hit Kingston Heath and The Victoria Golf Club on Wednesday in some of her best form ever as the No. 5 player in the world – albeit likely battling some jet lag at the end of a long season overseas.
Green, 27, was tied-fifth in Sydney last year and third at Kooyonga in 2018 having started her Open journey back in 2016.
But neither Green nor Minjee Lee has been able to win the national title thus far despite both climbing into the highest echelon of women’s golf.
Karrie Webb was the last Australian winner in 2014.
Lee finished tied-30th in Florida and Grace Kim tied-25th, both also heading to Melbourne for this week’s Open. Gabriela Ruffels, who was on debut in the tour championship, finished tied-35th.
It was a good weekend for Kiwis, with Lydia Ko racing home to finish third in Florida, Michael Hendry third in Japan and Ben Campbell runner-up in the Asian Tour’s Hong Kong Open.
CAPTION: Hannah Green on her way to a top-20 in the LPGA Tour Championship today in Florida. Image: Getty
Results
LPGA Tour
CME Group Tour Championship
1 Jeeno Thitikul 71-67-63-65 – 266 $US4 million
3 Lydia Ko (NZ) 67-74-67-63 – 271 $550,000
T19 Hannah Green 69-71-69-69 – 278 $80,167
T25 Grace Kim 68-74-70-68 – 280 $73,000
T30 Minjee Lee 68-76-69-68 – 281 $68,500
T35 Gabriela Ruffels 69-74-71-68 – 282 $64,750
PGA TOUR
RSM Classic
Sea Island, Georgia
1 Maverick McNealy 62-70-66-68 – 266 $US 1,368,000
MC Aaron Baddeley 71-73 – 144
Japan Tour
Casio World Open
Kochi Kuroshio Country Club, Kochi
1 Hiroshi Iwata 66-67-73-68 – 274 ¥40,000
3 Michael Hendry (NZ) 69-66-69-72 – 276 ¥13,600,000
Asian Tour
Hong Kong Open
Hong Kong Golf Club
1 Patrick Reed 65-68-59-66 – 258 $US 360,000
2 Ben Campbell (NZ) 63-65-68-65 – 261 $220,000
T4 Wade Ormsby 67-67-64-65 – 263 $91,000
T26 Matt Jones 68-65-68-68 – 269 $17,366
T32 Kevin Yuan 63-68-74-65 – 270 $14,000
T45 Maverick Antcliff 69-67-71-66 – 273 $10,500
T45 Aaron Wilkin 68-67-69-69 – 273 $10,500
MC Deyen Lawson 72-67 – 139
MC Justin Warren 67-72 – 139
MC Sam Brazel 70-70 – 140
MC Zach Murray 70-72 – 142
MC Jack Thompson 70-73 – 143
MC Jed Morgan 74-70 – 144
MC Andrew Dodt 76-68 – 144
MC Shane Kuiti (NZ) 75-71 – 146
MC Marcus Fraser 76-71 – 147
MC Scott Hend 72-76 – 148
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.”
