Who is Elvis Smylie? Meet the Australian golf prodigy who had superstars on speed dial
Growing up as the son of Australian tennis stars, having a casual hit with grand slam champions, and being able to pick the brain of golf greats? That’s par for the course for Australia’s latest budding golf superstar.
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Elvis Smylie talks about a childhood hit and giggle on the tennis court with Ivan Lendl and Todd Woodbridge like it’s no big deal.
I mean, which teenager doesn’t have the opportunity to pick the brains of a couple of sporting legends while trading gentle backhand slices?
He’s known Australian golfing stalwarts Ian Baker-Finch and Wayne Grady from his school days. If he wants to ask for a bit of advice, he picks up the phone. They’re only happy to part with some wisdom.
And after all that, he’s spent his entire childhood sitting down to dinner with his parents, former professional tennis players Peter and Liz Smylie, the former of which was so obsessed with Elvis Presley he once tried to break into Graceland with John McEnroe, and later named his son after the entertainer.
These days, on the rare occasion when the Smylies are in the same town, they’ll break open a bottle of red.
“I do like a red,” Elvis, 23, laughs. “I’ve hung around a lot of older people growing up as a kid and I feel like that’s what’s helped me mature so much.”
Spend a couple of minutes with Australia’s latest golfing phenom and you would swear two things: firstly, his pencil thin frame and weight yet to get past 80kg would have him better suited to banging down aces on centre court at Wimbledon than being a professional golfer, and secondly, how is he still only 23?
Next week, Smylie will belatedly have the chance to pit his wares against Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and co when he tees up in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow.
It will be just his second appearance in a major, a path anyone who knew him as a child prodigy would claim he was destined to walk.
But getting there has been a challenge.
There’s isn’t a playground in Australia with more temptations for kids than the Gold Coast. No sporting franchise has ever truly taken off on the holiday strip, and countless athletes have been courted one too many times by Cavill Avenue.
Smylie stayed away, ensconced in the bubble of The Glades golfing resort where he lived. Instead, he would practice until dark and then turn a torch light on so he could practice a bit more. The day he watched Adam Scott become Australia’s first Masters winner, he walked onto the golf course at age 11 and said: “That’s what I want to do.”
“Growing up, I was very focused going down that golf path,” Smylie says. “Hanging out with mates is a great thing, but I was more so just focusing five or 10 years down the track. I had a path planned, and I just never saw myself going away from that.”
Having turned professional at just 18 – “I never wanted the perfect amateur resume” – the big-hitting left-hander heads into the PGA Championship after a year to remember.
His primal scream under darkening skies when winning the WA Open last year for his long-awaited first professional win was a glimpse into the enormous pressure he’d put himself under.
He quickly followed it up with a final day bout with Cameron Smith at the Australian PGA Championship, beating his idol who once hosted him in Florida as part of a scholarship intake.
The next week the pair were grouped together in the Australian Open, and after Smith slid out of contention on the back nine of his second round, jogging to play shots after the group were warned about slow play, he took a swipe at Smylie over his pace.
It caught Smylie by surprise.
“It was a bit of a mix-up of communication between the media and Cam,” Smylie says.
“Cam never personally came up to me and said there was an issue so I didn’t think there was an issue. We were really good mates and if there was something he wanted to talk to me about, I’m sure he would have come up and said it.”
Have they spoken since?
“We have.”
It’s debatable whether Smylie, Smith, or even both were responsible for the pace of play warning, but watching Smylie’s response was to see the obvious: an old head on young shoulders.
He’s a man committed to his faith. He’s turned to Pilates to help his wiry body stay sound. He’s methodical in his golfing routine, rarely showing a lot of emotion, almost robotic.
That’s a good thing in professional golf.
“Sometimes, there are putts that are worth $1000, maybe $10,000, even hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the world No.202 says.
“Hopefully millions of dollars in the future. You learn a lot about yourself in pro golf.
“Golf’s a very humbling game at times. Sometimes, you feel the highest of highs, but it can bring you down pretty quick. I think I’ve just done a really good job at having really good composure throughout the last five or six months. I’ve stayed really patient.
“I knew it was a marathon, not a sprint.”
Says coach Ritchie Smith: “The good thing is he’s still got a lot of growth in him. His body has got to fill out a bit more. He can get a lot stronger in terms of ball striking and ball speed. Technically he’s pretty good, but I think we’ll get heaps of gains through body work. The world is his oyster, but he’s going to have to work on it.”
Which should be no problem to anyone who knows him.
But what has changed is Smylie opening up his mind to even more creativity.
On the final day of his last tournament of the PGA Tour of Australasia season as he was about to be crowned order of merit winner, he trialled a reverse putting grip.
He now spends non-tournament weeks playing a round with just odd numbered irons, even the next. It helps him “put different tools in the toolbox”.
This week, newly-minted Presidents Cup captain Geoff Ogilvy described Smylie as “excelling”, so much so that he’s on the radar for the Internationals in the seemingly never-ending quest to beat the United States.
“It felt like he was green for a couple of years because he missed that window with COVID, but he looked amazing (as a kid),” Ogilvy said.
“That freedom he’s now got with two or three years of exemption into Europe should definitely free him up to go a long way.”
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Originally published as Who is Elvis Smylie? Meet the Australian golf prodigy who had superstars on speed dial
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