Cameron Daddo spent nearly 25 years in Los Angeles, was a comrade of a young Indiana Jones, and once went low on the set of Happy Gilmore. Our man Matt Cleary tests out the Daddo golf game over 18 holes at Manly GC.
We’re on the first tee of Manly Golf Club on a pure and dewy morning in June and have decided that the golf swing of Cam Daddo is not the mangiest bit of kit.
Tall and languid, a leftie, there is crisp connection and the ball sails into the morning light like a ... well, not a tracer bullet. He’s a 60-year-old actor, not Min Woo hitting stingers. But you would be happy enough, in the way of these things, with most of his action. It’s surprising he’s never been handicapped under 10. Particularly given he did once shoot 75 on the set of Happy Gilmore.
“I was shooting a show in Vancouver and we played a round at Furry Creek, the course where Bob Barker beat the shit out of Happy Gilmore,” Daddo recalls. “And I was quite hungover. I staggered onto the golf course and I guess that’s how it goes. I didn’t think about things. Also managed an eagle that day, so it was a day of firsts.”
For nearly 25 years, Daddo lived in Los Angeles and worked as an actor. And thus, to paraphrase the great Troy McClure, you might remember him from such shows as The Mentalist, Boston Legal and Big Momma’s House 2.
He was Professor Michael Lovecraft in Pterodactyl. He was Reverand Daniel Cooper in Love Island. He was Matthew Gill, the mining engineer who helped rescue Todd Russell and Brant Webb in the hit film about Beaconsfield called Beaconsfield.
He was Jack Anders, an officer in the Australian Light Horse Brigade who, along with his horse “Phyliss”, was first through the German lines in the successful cavalry charge and invasion of Be’er Sheva, gateway to Jerusalem. He and Phyllis were later helped with much-needed water by 14-year-old agent of the French intelligence, Indiana Jones.
And you think: sounds a touch fanciful. But also: how cool would that be – playing a daredevil of the desert in The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils Of The Desert. You could hang a slouch hat on that, baby.
Yet while the show business career of one of the estimated 137 Daddos on the telly is all very interesting, what we would most like to know, of course, is how the man goes at golf and what flash courses he has played in his travels.
Of his time in L.A, Daddo says his neighbourhood course, Riviera Country Club, was his favourite. He wasn’t a member, but knew a few people who were and would play five or six times a year. He also played L.A Country Club, host of the 2023 U.S Open won by Wyndham Clark, but wasn’t a member there, either. His type wasn’t allowed…
“It’s an interesting place, LACC,” Daddo muses. “They probably won’t like me saying this, but they wouldn’t allow actors to be members. Even Sean Connery couldn’t join. He was rejected.”
And so, we golf with a couple of friendly members and talk of acting and golf and the other 136 Daddos, and golf again. We talk of Golf Australia magazine’s podcast, The Thing About Golf, which attempts to drill into that elemental thing that we all love about the game. It’s obviously the sum of many parts and there are many reasons we play. But, if our man Daddo had to, head on the block, describe that thing, what is that thing about golf for him?
“I think it’s presence. I think it’s being present. I love the metaphysical side of golf,” he says.
Given my raised eyebrows and that I will later have to Google that metaphysics is a “branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality”, according to the internet, Daddo goes on. And makes a lot more sense.
“I love the feeling of envisioning a shot – its shape, how it feels off the club face, how it will run out or stick on a green – and then making that happen. When your mind and body are working as one to create an outcome ... that’s golden.
“But I love so many things about golf. I love reading about golf. I like talking about it. I like writing about it. I’ve actually got a script in waiting called Slice Of Heaven about eight guys on a golf trip.”
An L.A actor with a script? Knock us down with a king-sized Tontine. It would seem remiss not to ask that he give us the pitch.
“These eight guys have been playing together for a year and they’ve each put money in for an end of year golf trip,” Daddo explains. “But they only have enough for the best four to go. So, when it gets to the pointy end, it gets very tense.
“Anyway, the four top guys end up going to this resort in Palm Springs and the other four turn up. They end up playing against each other. And it becomes like LIV versus PGA.
“All these guys think they know each other, but they really don’t. One’s a cheat. One guy’s completely broke. One is fighting for his life but the others don’t know he is dying.
“Another has been told by 10 psychics that he is going to be dead before he is 50. And his 50th birthday is that weekend. So, he thinks he’s going to die and is living as if he’s dying.”
Another lesson in golf and life for us all, perhaps metaphysical.
Daddo’s journey in golf began as many of ours did: watching the old man head off to play on Saturdays. His mum played on Thursdays. His grandma was Ladies Captain at Metropolitan on Melbourne’s Sandbelt. His grandad taught etiquette with a kindly, iron fist.
“Golf was the family game,” Daddo says. “They all wanted us to play and they’d come down to Peninsula [now Peninsula Kingswood] and we’d have a week with our grandparents and they’d put us in the golf clinics and things like that. I was about 10 or 11 and it just became what we did with Dad, what we did with our Pop, with Mum, with the brothers. Golf was my happy place.”
Daddo’s brother, Andrew, who you might remember from such Golf Australia magazine articles as Soundtrack To A Streak from our June 2025 issue, is an inveterate creator of things. In his garage at home he makes putters. He makes trophies. He creates wedges from imported Japanese blanks. Cameron quips that his brother makes things for less than selfless purposes.
“I’ve figured Andrew out,” Cameron laughs. “He makes a trophy so he can win it. And when he doesn’t have it, he gets quite upset. That said, in his older age he’s becoming more gracious. The nieces and nephews are playing golf, so the game is growing within the family, which is really fun.”
For those of us of a certain middle age, our man Daddo will be forever remembered as the host of Perfect Match, the blind-dating show with the robot from Lost In Space as co-host, in which one contestant asks questions of three potential suitors, before the one person picks one and they go to Fiji to decide they’re not into each other.
A few years after they canned it – and several years before they worked out that it would draw far greater ratings if they just went straight to marrying the mad bastards before they had even met – Daddo met and married Alison Brahe (now one of those many Daddos), and with whom he shares three children.
Alison is the best-selling author of Queen Menopause: Finding Your Majesty In The Mayhem and runs a company called Aviiana with her friend Mary Doube, which focusses on creating awareness around menopause and perimenopause.
Knowing the difference probably wouldn’t hurt men to learn, given there’s every chance every one of us will be somehow affected by it.
“Menopause can affect everyone. Every woman on this planet will go through it, so there’s a need to educate men about what women go through. Understanding what it is and the effects are key,” Daddo says.
“When Ali went through it, I was as confused about her mental and physical state as she was. She bravely penned what has become a best-selling book about her journey. I found it compelling and couldn’t believe I was so ignorant. No one was talking about it.
"Thankfully, this is no longer the case, although more can always be done.”
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