Elvis Smylie on his mum’s famous chewing gum ad and getting a text from Ivan Lendl after winning the Australian PGA

Elvis Smylie is taking Australian golf by storm. Let’s get to the most pertinent matters. Can this Elvis hold a tune? What’s his warm-up music?

Elvis Smylie with parents Peter and Liz after winning the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Elvis Smylie is inside Kingston Heath Golf Club. Only the corniest sportswriter would suggest he’s in the building. We’d never stoop so low in this mighty publication. A little less of that sort of conversation and a little more action, please. All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me.

We should refer to the young bloke as Smylie during the Australian Open. My journalism handbook says surnames are to be used for athletes, but handbooks are chronically overrated. Smylie sounds too much like a character in a John le Carre novel, anyway, and if there’s ever been a first name worth repeating, it’s this one. Elvis has the best name in Australian sport since, well, the best of the best, which belongs to Bradman Best. I love these names. I love them tender, love them true.

Let’s get to the most pertinent matters. Can this Elvis, the golfing Elvis, hold a tune? What’s his warm-up music? Jailhouse Rock? Are You Lonesome Tonight? Hound Dog? Viva Las Vegas? “Someone actually asked me on the 18th tee at the PGA, at Royal Queensland last week, can I sing?” he grins. “I just smiled and said, ‘Nowhere near as well as Elvis.’ My dad was a massive fan and I actually don’t mind his music from time to time.”

Elvis is the 22-year-old lefty who upstaged Cam Smith, Jason Day, Min Woo Lee and Marc Leishman to win the Australian PGA Championship at Royal Queensland on Sunday. He’s the son of a couple of tennis parents and good eggs, Peter and Liz Smylie, but the bloodlines have nothing to do with nothin’ during a tournament. Elvis is the one swinging the club, not his dear old mum and dad, and so while they can support him with a hunk, a hunk of burning love, they can’t do much to keep his ball on the fairways and greens.

Which means we’ll learn a lot about Elvis at the Open. Wise men say only fools rush into predictions but back-to-back triumphs are rare in golf. He’s up against it. It’s difficult to ride a high for consecutive events. Elvis’s triumph in Brisbane sent him 483 places up the world rankings to a career-best No. 253, and earned him a full-time card on the DP World Tour, and enough cash to avoid staying at any more heartbreak hotels, where you get so lonely baby, so lonely you could die, which is all heady, life-changing stuff before he tries to knuckle down again and win the Stonehaven Cup.

Only three players have peeled off the PGA/Open double this century. Peter Lonard in 2004, Robert Allenby in 2005 and Greg Chalmers in 2011. Most PGA champions finish the Open in the ghetto, in the ghetto. Elvis has some big blue suede shoes to fill in trying to emulate Lonard, Chalmers and Allenby.

Elvis Smylie on the practice putting green on Tuesday ahead of the Australian Open at Kingston Heath. Photo: Getty

Elvis is in a good mood. Three emojis. Smyley face, smyley face, smyley face. “I’ve been on my best behaviour,” he says of his post-PGA celebrations. “No alcohol for me. It’s been a quick turnaround. There will be a time to celebrate but for now I’m really looking forward to doing my best at the Open. The biggest thing I’ve spoken to my team about is not getting too complacent with what I’ve achieved so far. There’s more that I want. I’m focusing on what needs to be focused on before I tee it up on Thursday.”

Here’s the funny thing about this Elvis, the golfing Elvis. He’s no showboater. Unlikely to arrive on the tee wearing Cuban collars, bubblegum pink blazers, crop tops, trousers with pleats and wide legs, blouson jackets or loafers. He could play up to his name and mumble “uh-huh-huh” when tapping in for par; he could mark birdies with some vigorous hip-thrusting. But that ain’t Elvis, this Elvis, the golfing Elvis, an understated Elvis.

“I like to think of myself as someone who keeps their emotions in tact a little bit more,” he says. “If you go back to Perth, where I won my first tournament a couple of weeks ago, I let out quite a big roar. But generally I’m quite a calm, composed individual.”

Presley was an old soul. Asked for a comparison, this Elvis says: “I feel like as my career’s gone on, I’ve hung around people a lot older than myself. I learned how to mature quite quickly and beyond my years. That’s something that has put me in good stead because when you’re in moments coming down the stretch on a Sunday afternoon and you’ve got the likes of Cam Smith and Marc Leishman breathing down your back, as well as the other top players that were playing last week, those kind of calm, composed moments are really important to remember.”

Elvis Smylie reacts to sinking his putt on the 18th green to seal victory in the Australian PGA Championship while Cam Smith and Marc Leishman look on. Photo: AFP

Elvis’s elevation to the DP World Tour, the old European Tour, will have him on a plane to South Africa next week for the Nedbank Challenge at Sun City. He’s going global. “There’s definitely plans that have changed since last week,” he says. “It’s a good situation to be in with so many opportunities that I have now. It will be my first trip to South Africa. I’ve heard so many amazing things about the tournament. It’s a six-million dollar event and I’m really looking forward to competing. I’ve briefly had a look at the schedule … I’ve always wanted to play at Wentworth over in the UK. I quite like the classiness of that course.”

Liz Smylie was a World No. 20 tennis player in the 1980s. Being a good egg, she featured in a TV commercial for Extra chewing gum that accentuated her lisp. Has Elvis seen it? Uh-huh-huh. “Yeah, I actually posted it on my social media a couple of years ago for my mum’s birthday,” he says. “She’s running on the beach and chewing a piece of Extra chewing gum and it’s quite funny because people who know my mum, she has a bit of a lisp, so whenever she says, ‘long-lasting taste,’ you can really hear the lisp coming out. It’s pretty funny trying to rip into her about that kind of stuff.”

Young Elvis seems a good egg, too. Smyley face, smyley face, smyley face. His phone exploded with congratulatory messages after his PGA triumph. He drove from Brisbane to the Gold Coast on Sunday night for dinner with mum and dad. Caught a flight to Melbourne on Monday morning. Played a practice round on Tuesday with Min Woo Lee, who won last year’s PGA before finding the ghetto, the ghetto, at the Open. Asked to reveal the most famous name who texted a well done, mate, Elvis says: “Ivan Lendl.”