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Matt Cleary
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Top-100 Spotlight: Commonwealth Golf Club
Brian Slawnik and Tom Doak of Renaissance Golf Design have long been unabashed fans of the Sandbelt, and of Commonwealth Golf Club in particular. When asked to redesign the course, the first thing Slawnik told members was that it’s already great and that RGD would approach the work as preservationists. What Slawnik, RGD and Commonwealth greens staff did since has reimagined and reinvigorated one of Australia’s great courses.
18 Jun 2025
Cleary: Crime and punishment the USGA way, but it limits the U.S Open
Once a year in their U.S Open, the United States Golf Association attempts to find the greatest exponent of driving straight, hacking out from long grass for luck and making knee-trembling pars. Their tourney. Their style. Viva la difference. But it makes for a limited and overly-penal style of golf, even if it is the intention, and even if it produced a wild and compelling Sunday, opines Matt Cleary.
16 Jun 2025
Cleary: A LIV player can win the U.S Open, Brandel's off his head
With nine holes to play in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, there was an old-fashioned two-horse war. It was like Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star at Moonee Valley in the 1986 W.S Cox Plate. Two mighty thoroughbreds, straining, fighting, charging home for the win. It was quite exciting.
11 Jun 2025
Say her name: U.S Women's Open tip is in
She's the favourite for the U.S Women's Open. She's number two in the world. She may be the best player you've never heard of.
27 May 2025
Cleary: our mate Digs and a jock called Pikey
After tragic news about a pal from golf, Matt Cleary and his mates gathered at the club and did their best to make sense of it, and to honour their friend as best they could. They had a little help from a legend of the west.
26 May 2025
Cleary: PGA's a bludger of a major, and two-time major champion can't change my mind
Many people agree that holding three of four major championships in the United States, particularly one that invites 20 club professionals from that country, should not be a thing in these globalised times. One two-time major champion and legend of Australian golf does not agree, however.
19 May 2025
Jo Flaherty on the fried egg
Teaching professional Jo Flaherty of Commonwealth Golf Club on how to extricate yourself out of the bunker when faced with the dreaded fried egg.
15 May 2025
Cleary: Rory to Repeat at Happy Hunting Hollow
Our man Matt Cleary tipped him to win the Masters, and he's tipping him to win the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow, too. Rory McIlroy has no more monkey on his back, is in the prime of a stellar, generational playing career, and, in the parlance of the great Australian mug-punter, is in ridiculous form.
15 May 2025
Cleary: Lookin' at you, America. Spread the love and gift fourth major to the world
In Part Three of Matt Cleary's plea to the powers-that-be to confer major status on a different country's national Open each year on a rota, he declares that while it will be anathema to America - sorry, America - the PGA of America needs to relinquish major status of its PGA Championship and gift it to the world.
14 May 2025
When a gin-slinging journo pal of Arnold Palmer's created golf's grand slam
The concept – some would describe it as a “construct” – of major championships, as we know them today, first gained traction in 1960, when Arnold Palmer was on his way to play the Open Championship at St Andrews after winning the Masters and U.S Open.
13 May 2025
Cleary: PGA Championship is generic, beefed-up Tour event not befitting major status
It is the mangiest of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It is the drummer in Spinal Tap. It is the character “Mike” – the not very funny one – in The Young Ones. It is a fifth wheel in a four-event swing. It is, of course, the United States PGA Championship, known as a “major” championship. And its time should be up, reckons Matt Cleary.
12 May 2025
Cleary: "Maybe more is more": How established tours trump LIV Golf
Despite a motherlode of publicity in the popular, social and anti-social media - not to mention an estimated $US5 billion in seed money from Saudi Arabia - LIV Golf's TV ratings reflect that it hasn't shaken its "exhibition" tag, reckons Matt Cleary (and LIV Golf insiders).
7 May 2025
Rory the winner, but Augusta the undefeated champion of the 89th Masters
The Masters has been run and won, and the great Rory McIlroy has fulfilled his destiny, despite being hunted down like a bloodied fox by the great hounds of our sport, Justin Rose, Ludvig Aberg, the ever-compelling Bryson DeChambeau, who thrilled us with sublime and ridiculous golf on a course we would sell a kidney to play. Augusta National remains golf's great muse. Augusta National is the champion forever.
14 Apr 2025
In case you missed it: Moving Day at Augusta as it happened
What a day at Augusta National. Rory McIlroy goes into the final round of a major championship with the 54-hole lead for the first time since 2014. He leads DeChambeau by two heading into Championship Sunday while Canada's Corey Conners loiters at eight-under-par.
13 Apr 2025
C'mon, Aussies: the local hopes to get Australia out of bed Monday morning
It’s been 12 years since Adam Scott drained that mighty 25-footer to birdie the second play-off hole of the 2013 Masters; 12 years since we raised the rooves of living rooms and golf clubs around the land; 12 years since the greatest excuse for breakfast beers since Bob Hawke gave everyone the day off in 1983.
9 Apr 2025
Health and head space keys to McIlroy's Masters
After being cut off at the knees when Jay Monahan quite surprisingly went on television with the head of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, to announce what was perceived then to be a “merger” between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, Rory McIlroy quit his role as the establishment’s pseudo-spokesman in the great pro golf imbroglio of our times. And it’s looked like the outlook has agreed with him since. The man looks like he’s free.
9 Apr 2025
Hits and memories of Rory at Augusta
He’s missed the cut (three times), he’s led after three rounds, he’s notched four top-5s and eight top-10s. There were years he was never really in it, others when he most certainly was. And there were years when you thought – surely, this time – Rory McIlroy will up and win the first major championship of the year, The Masters, at venerable Augusta National in Georgia.
8 Apr 2025
Cleary: Horror movie, right there on my TV: Greg Norman's Masters of 1996
The Masters at Augusta National is special because the course can tell stories. Glorious ones, compelling ones. There's been happiness, hubris and horror shows. And then there is Greg Norman in 1996, which nearly 30 years on remains borderline unwatchable.
7 Apr 2025
Head, heart and elbow, it's Rory's Masters
I want it to be Rory. Chances are you want it to be Rory. And the editor of this crackerjack journal would like it to be Rory, given he’s splashed the man all over the cover and throughout the pages of our glossy bit of kit which is still a bargain at $9.08 per month at all respected subscription services.
7 Apr 2025
Ripper GC leads in Miami, Leishman three back of DeChambeau
Ripper GC leads the teams event at LIV Golf Miami while Marc Leishman will head out in the penultimate group on Sunday afternoon at Trump National Doral, three shots behind the leader, Bryson DeChambeau, reports LIV Golf Media.
6 Apr 2025
Ford NSW Open heading to the Hunter Valley
The NSW Open is heading to the Hunter Valley.
3 Apr 2025
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