{"id":465934,"date":"2026-02-08T06:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/465934\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T06:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T06:48:09","slug":"australias-elvis-smylie-wins-major-liv-tournament-on-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/465934\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s Elvis Smylie wins major LIV tournament on debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Elvis Smylie has made an extraordinary debut in LIV Golf<\/a>, winning the season opening event in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old impressed greatly under the floodlights, finishing with a bogey-free final-round eight-under 64 to narrowly hold off Spaniard Jon Rahm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rahm finished strongly with four straight birdies, leaving Smylie with an uncomfortable putt for par on the final hole to claim the win. <\/p>\n

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\"Elvis<\/p>\n

Elvis Smylie of Ripper GC poses for a photo with the trophy after winning the final round.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

He finished 24-under par to secure the first LIV debut win since Henrik Stenson in 2022.<\/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

Smylie signed with Ripper GC ahead of the 2026 season, with the left hander hailing from Queensland.<\/p>\n

He emerged on the scene across 2024 and 2025, with wins on the PGA Tour of Australasia and the BMW Australian PGA Championship. <\/p>\n

But this LIV Golf victory will certainly go a long way, earning him $5.7m in prize money, which reportedly quadruples his prior career earnings.<\/p>\n

American Peter Uihlein came in third, just three off the lead after shooting five-under in round four.<\/p>\n

Aussie Lucas Herbert tied for ninth at eight-under, while Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman finished outside the top 10.<\/p>\n

Smylie celebrated with a Daniel Ricciardo-style shoey on the podium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Elvis Smylie has made an extraordinary debut in LIV Golf, winning the season opening event in Saudi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-465934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465934","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=465934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}