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Matt Cleary
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Video Lesson: Chipping to a tee, with a tee
Many golfers, as soon as they’re over the ball and about to chip, have it in their heads to “lift” the golf ball into the air.
17 Jul 2024
Cleary: A golf course so good you'll write love letters about it
And so to New South Wales GC, a golf course so good you could write a story of every hole.
15 Jul 2024
Cleary: John Deere in the headlights a 28-under snooze-fest
Following the Great Rebellion of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket series, in which Dennis Lillee, Viv Richards and the Chappell brothers wore coloured clothing and played “Super Tests” under floodlights with a, gasp, white ball, Australian cricket reunited for season 1979/80.
8 Jul 2024
Travel Feature: Capital Country
The best thing about Canberra is the air. Now, now – none of your cheek. Not the stuff out of the buffoons we send to the Capital to look after our interests, the gibbering nincompoops whose bluster could power so many of Canberra’s much-photographed hot-air balloons.
2 Jul 2024
Cleary: If Trump and Biden are single-figure markers, I am the ghost of Sam Snead
And I am not the ghost of Sam Snead. At least far as I know.
1 Jul 2024
Cleary: if bunkers are hazards, why do we rake them?
The venerable game of golf, according to the noble Scottish weirdos and beardies and old-money dandies who first decided the sandy dunes “linking” the arable land and the sea could be used to to whack feather-filled leather balls about the place and thus fill in the new thing called "leisure time", was never meant to be fair.
24 Jun 2024
CLEARY: PINEHURST NO.2 THE GREAT STAR OF U.S OPEN
The U.S Open had a brilliant and compelling finish as the game's superstars rose and fell until there could be only one. And it was Pinehurst No.2 that made it happen.
17 Jun 2024
Where dreams are made... and broken
It’s long been decreed by those dungeon masters of the United States Golf Association that U.S Open venues must have super-thin fairways and thick, chunky, chop-it-sideways rough. Thus, the first two times Pinehurst No.2 hosted the national championship (1999 and 2005), it was a beast more penal than Pentridge. Yet the USGA appears to have mellowed, and bucked the trend of punishment for the sake of it. And it’s been Pinehurst at the vanguard. And this year's U.S Open should be entertaining indeed.
12 Jun 2024
Our Experts' Tips for the U.S Open
Replete with Sandbelt references, the Aussie chances and the ritual writing-off of Tiger, Rory and Robert Rock, our panel of experts tip their certainties, their roughies and their day-dream believers ahead of the 124th U.S Open at Pinehurst No.2.
12 Jun 2024
Cleary: Golf must adapt to climate change because we can't trust the pols
And so it was to golf on Saturday at my home track, except there was no golf because it rained as if Moses had thrown open the Tasman Sea. Fairly hosed down, friend. You know those colours on the radar that illustrate rain density? There was a melange of orange, purple and puce. There was Sydney Sixers magenta. There was the rich black of Satan.
3 Jun 2024
Cleary: Grayson Murray and the power of golf
Every Saturday afternoon at my golf club, the tables of knowledge convene. Men, mostly, in groups, yapping, shouting, putting shit on each other. It's socialising, though these men would never call it that. They’d never call it anything.
27 May 2024
Cleary: The PGA Championship should be the world's major
If there are to be four major golf championships - and it’s a number that seems to work - then the PGA Championship of the United States should no longer be one of them. The fourth major should belong to the world.
20 May 2024
Cleary: Australian golf right to play Switzerland in game's civil war
As critiqued on social media by his excellency, the Great White Shark Greg Norman, the PGA of Australia didn’t use the names ‘LIV Golf’ or ‘Ripper GC’ when congratulating the all-Aussie team that had won back-to-back LIV tournaments in Adelaide and Singapore.
13 May 2024
CLEARY: How Aussies' LIV win is explained by Rocky IV
As ever, it’s Rocky Balboa who says it best.
6 May 2024
Cleary: Merge? Forget it. LIV Golf should take on the PGA Tour
Greg Norman has this line when asked about the ‘Framework Agreement’ or ‘merger’, or whatever they call the interminable discussion between the Strategic Sports Group, PGA Tour Inc. and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia to decide what ‘golf’ will look like in 2025 and beyond. And it goes, effectively, like this:
29 Apr 2024
Ripper! Aussie team downs South Africans in raucous LIV Adelaide play-off
We’re at The Grange GC for the LIV league's first teams play-off and the crowds line the 18th fairway 20-deep all the way down its 345 metres. The humanity forms an eddy around the green which spills upwards into the stands and the suites called ‘Club 54’. It's the all-Australian Ripper team taking on the all-South African Stingers. There are people in the trees.
28 Apr 2024
Herbert Smokes 7-under 65; Ripper GC within two of LIV title
Lucas Herbert finished round one at LIV Adelaide at The Grange as one of nine players in the 54-man field over-par. In round two on Saturday he smoked eight birdies in a 65 that could've been anything, and had the home team Ripper GC just two shots off the lead.
27 Apr 2024
Ripper: Aussies in touch after entertaining day one at LIV Adelaide
The big sign at the front gate of The Grange says 'WELCOME' in LIV Golf's recognisable font with aquamarine plumage, and on Friday for day one of the second annual golf-, drink- and music-fest maybe 35,000 fans said don't mind if they do.
26 Apr 2024
Cleary: If nobody cares about LIV Golf, why do so many people care?
The man on talkback radio was adamant: it’s party golf. It’s an exhibition. It isn’t real golf. The punters on Facebook agree: no legacy, no history, no value. And the kicker, uttered without irony, without reading this yarn: nobody cares.
25 Apr 2024
Turn it up: Greg Norman on Rory McIlroy, LIV Adelaide, and the "best golf event that's ever been to Australia"
And so to Adelaide for a movie we’ve seen before - call it 'LIV Adelaide II: Return to The Grange' - and we’re straight into a mighty marquee for a Big Cheese Presser, Matt Cleary reports.
24 Apr 2024
Cleary: The LIV Golf vs PGA Tour argument is a rabbit hole full of Komodo Dragons
LIV Golf’s on this week which means one thing: golf’s version of #CodeWars will heat up again, with punters and pundits shouting opinions into TikTok, or what have you, about whether the PGA Tour or LIV Golf is better, and denigrating the other one to make their point.
22 Apr 2024
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