Elvis Smylie has made a dazzling start to his life as a LIV Golf player, winning the season’s opening event under floodlights in Saudi Arabia on his tour debut with a flawless display that left even mighty Jon Rahm in the shade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Australian left-hander recorded a wonderful bogey-free final-round 8-under 64 to win the title by one shot from Spanish great Rahm in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
Rahm had put massive pressure on the Queenslander with four successive birdies to finish his round, meaning Smylie needed to par the final hole for victory.<\/p>\n
The debutant only made the fringe of the green with his approach and had to get down in two from distance for the victory, which he achieved with a superb long putt that drifted just past the hole and a return three-footer for the lucrative triumph.<\/p>\n
“I mean, it’s a dream come true. I really didn’t know what to expect this week, playing at night, obviously a whole different ball game out here,” Smylie said.<\/p>\n
“And I wanted to come out here and make a statement. I wanted to prove that I’m one of the best out here, and I feel like I’ve done that.”<\/p>\n
It was the culmination of a magnificent week’s work featuring a consummate front-running display as Smylie dropped only two shots all week while finishing on a 24-under par total of 264.<\/p>\n
Astonishingly, he covered his final 39 holes in 17-under without a bogey.<\/p>\n
His solo triumph was also part of a huge double success for the former Australian PGA champion as he and his “Ripper” colleagues \u2014 Cameron Smith, Lucas Herbert and Marc Leishman \u2014 took the team trophy in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
Smylie, son of former tennis stars Liz and Peter Smylie, was watched anxiously by his sister Laura at the floodlit Riyadh Golf Club, as Rahm produced a fantastic finish on 23-under par, almost eagling the 396-yard final hole when he drove on to the green.<\/p>\n
But he just missed the putt that would have taken the tournament into a playoff, as Smylie made no mistake and earned the victory, which will set him up perfectly to travel to Adelaide next week for the Australian leg of the LIV Golf tour.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elvis Smylie has made a dazzling start to his life as a LIV Golf player, winning the season’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,3193,238210,5506,755,6410,14640,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-465355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cameron-smith","11":"tag-crusher-gc","12":"tag-elvis-smylie","13":"tag-golf","14":"tag-liv","15":"tag-saudi-arabia","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}