Newsletter Signup
Subscribe
Account Login
Username:
Password:
Remember me
login
Forgot your password?
Don't have an account? Register now!
AFL
Cricket
Football
Golf
League
Motorsport
Union
Women
More Sport
Win
Account Login
Username:
Password:
Remember me
login
Forgot your password?
Don't have an account? Register now!
AFL
Cricket
Football
Golf
League
Motorsport
Union
Women
More Sport
Win
+ All Sports
Newsletter Signup
Subscribe
Matt Cleary
Send a message to Matt
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
Ruffels focused, confident and in-form ahead of first women's major
Gabi Ruffels is in a sweet spot. She’s 24 years old, seeing the world and playing golf for fun. And, ahead of the first women’s major championship of the year, The Chevron Championship at The Club at Carlton Woods in Texas, she’s in pretty tasty form.
17 Apr 2024
Cleary: The Green Coats, The Stories, The Nirvana of Augusta
David Gair Inglis was a man who would introduce himself as “DGI – it stands for Damn Good Ideas”. In 1979 he had a damned good one – a golf tournament called ‘The Australian Masters’, a complete and unashamed rip-off of the Masters at Augusta National in the United States.
15 Apr 2024
Feature: Once upon a time...
In the months after his father passed away in 2006, Tiger Woods became so obsessed with the elite special forces known as Navy SEALs that there were fears among his inner sanctum that he might quit golf and enlist in the military. The fear was real. Tiger was banging himself up so badly they staged an intervention.
11 Apr 2024
Cleary: LIV Golf is not a meritocracy, Augusta should embrace it
LIV Golf’s one great issue in its Quixotic quest for legitimacy remains that its tournaments are not ranked by the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) body and its players cannot earn points to qualify for majors such as this week's Masters.
8 Apr 2024
Cleary: Coach, confidant, crutch: why caddies should have no place in professional golf
When Jason Day became world number one and won the Wanamaker Trophy at Whistling Straits in 2015, bagman Colin Swatton was acknowledged as a massive part of it. But in the heat of battle, on the course, in a so-called individual sport, shouldn't Day have had to do it by himself?
2 Apr 2024
Cleary: Pay the money, take the ride - how to make golf fun again
Mike Clayton, as legend promulgated by his playing partners would have it, was at the famous par-3 seventh hole at Barnbougle Dunes, the one called ‘Little Devil’, when he hit a four-iron 112 metres into a howling nor-west wind and stuck it to three feet.
25 Mar 2024
Cleary: Scottie Scheffler and the triumph of the most boring man alive
‘Schadenfreude’ is a cracker of a German word describing “the pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune”. It talks to a certain, half-dark part of us. It talks to the pleasure of death-riding certain golfers in tournaments on television.
18 Mar 2024
Cleary: Why LIV Golf needs Johnny Miller
On a fold-out and aptly-named Lazy Boy lounge, with LIV Golf in HD on a Smart TV, with Cowboys and Dolphins streaming via the magic of Bluetooth (I will not ever fathom how) onto a less smart but still very adequate other TV, and with a cold tinny of beer wedged into the excellent can-holder socket thing on the hand-rest, you could make a case this was the perfect Sunday afternoon.
11 Mar 2024
Cleary: Fear, loathing and exceptionalism - why the PGA Tour is bad for world golf
There’s a theory, a term, you could call it a Thing, called ‘American exceptionalism’, in which many of our dear, sweet and slightly left-field cousins in America believe to their star-spangled bootstraps that they live in the greatest land of liberty in the history of humankind.
4 Mar 2024
Friends again: What a 'perfect' World Golf Tour would look like
It was the sainted Rory McIlroy who said: “If we can create a perfect golf calendar, what would it look like? I don’t think it would look like it looks right now. I think there would be changes made.”
14 Feb 2024
Latest News
Preview: The PNG Open
13 Aug 2025
Make that three 2025 titles - Steve Allan strikes again
11 Aug 2025
Burmester claims LIV Golf Chicago in three-way playoff
11 Aug 2025
Most Read
Nineteen NSW golf clubs set for major upgrades after huge funding win
8 Aug 2025
Lyon wounded; Lions tamed
4 Jul 2023
Gallery: 2025 Bahrain Grand Prix
14 Apr 2025
Updated: AFLW Round 2 preview and schedule
14 Jan 2022
.jpg&h=338&w=600&c=1&s=1)
