Deputy Editor Matt Cleary tags along as rugby codes great Mat Rogers shares tales of teeing it up with rock ballad royalty, witnessing Elvis’ greatest round, and a finger grip secret on a golden-hour wander around Glenelg GC.
Michael Bolton was singing a love song down the phone to Mat Rogers’ mother-in-law, after the crooner and the dual international had played golf at The Grand on the Gold Coast.
The pair was having dinner in the casino at Broadbeach when the multi-Emmy-award winning vocalist gave Rogers’ relation a few bars of How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?.
For Rogers, though, cool a tale as this is, it’s not even the most interesting part of this particular day out.
“I was four down with five to play – he had me done,” Rogers explains, while piloting a golf cart up the par-5 fifth hole at Glenelg. “But I beat him! I won the last five holes and knocked him over on the last. And he gave me this big basket of goodies.”
What? Back up, man. What are you talking about? He gave you what?
Rogers backs up, and explains: “He had been looking for someone to play with because he was on the Goldie, performing his greatest hits [with a 30-piece orchestra at The Star]. So, I got a hit with him.
@golfaustraliamagazine It’s a living, somehow, golf with the great Rat Rogers at the really excellent Glenelg GC. It’s three months since the full 18 has been reopened after the refurbishment and redesign, and it’s never ever been better. It’s mint, and quirky-cool on occasion, and just great, great fun. The GM reckons he’s had three months of plaudits from happy members, and now there’s a 10-year waitlist to join them. It’s a beauty, and a must-play on your next Adelaide adventure
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"He was a really nice guy. We played 18 holes and I got up, and he had this basket which the casino had prepared for him. Like wine and stuff – a gift basket. And he says, ‘I’m not taking this home. You beat me. Take it.’
“And then we went to dinner that night and he sang a song down the phone to my mother-in-law. He’s a really good fellah. Loves his golf. Loves it.”
As does our man Rogers, as flat-out a golf nut as has graced these pages. Rogers loves golf so much, he chopped his finger off to improve his grip.
No, he didn’t. What happened was this: after retiring from a footy career that featured 200 games of rugby league and 45 Tests for the Wallabies, a “messy” broken knuckle and a snapped tendon meant his little finger was as good as useless. So, Rogers decided it should come off.
There followed a 10-year break from golf before Covid struck and Rogers decided, like so many house-bound Australians, to break free and get back out on the golf course. And, when he did, the nub of his little finger fit snugly into his grip. Not so much interlocking as wedging in like a wooden dowel. So good did it feel, Rogers reckons he “discovered a secret”.
“The finger slotted in like Tetris,” Rogers says. “When I came back to playing, I didn’t change anything with my swing and my best handicap had been like seven.
"But with the cool, new grip, within a year I was off scratch. If you want to lose seven shots,
get rid of your right pinkie!”
Rogers takes out a club and demonstrates his secret grip.
“Look at it,” he says. “It just sits in there like a little block of Tetris. It’s perfect.”
What’s perfect, friend, is our day at the glorious Glenelg GC, bathed as we are in “golden hour” morning light, no one in front, no one behind, only Dan Gale’s caddie, Ryan Papenhuyzen, for company.
We don’t keep score so much as whack and find, whack and find, taking a punt on the occasional tee-shot, given the mysterious nature of some short par-4s. We agree that we must return to play again. Not only because we’ll know where to hit it, but because Glenelg is mint.
Rogers’ golf game is not bad, either. His swing is tight and functional, without too many moving parts. The ball whistles out hard and high, time and again. His long-irons and hybrids off the tee travel 200m and change. He turned 50 in February and clearly hasn’t stopped exercising; physically he would not be far off his playing weight.
Rogers first came to love golf while playing with his dad, the great Steve Rogers, the late Cronulla Sharks Hall of Famer and champion, and, plenty would argue, should-be-Immortal.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, when Steve was slaying them for the Sharks, “he had to work, too,” Mathew explains.
“On top of footy, same for all those old boys, they had jobs. And I didn’t get to see my dad much. So, I got into golf to hang out with him. And, mate, it was amazing. You know, you got to spend four hours a day on a Saturday with the old man.
"I picked up a club when I was about seven or eight and have loved it ever since.”
Since then, on top of beating up on Michael Bolton and taking his wine basket, Rogers has played golf in South Africa, Ireland and England.
On tour with the Wallabies, he and fellow “dual” Wendell Sailor would take on Matthew Burke and George Gregan in high-sledging hit-outs. At The Grange in February for LIV Adelaide, Rogers played with Damien Fleming, James Tedesco and Paul Casey, who swapped out after nine holes for Bryson DeChambeau.
And you wonder (with apologies to the mild-mannered and very nice Mr Casey), but how was it playing with as combustible a character as Bison the Mad Scientist?
“He was great,” Rogers says. “After a couple holes, he loosened up and we had that athletic sort of thing; there was a bit of camaraderie. He was very complimentary if you hit a good shot and his caddie was a good fella.”
On the golf touring front, Rogers loves Barnbougle for getting away with his mates, NSW for just being so very good, and Peninsula Kingswood for 36 magnificent holes and brilliant infrastructure.
Rogers’ home track is Southport on the Gold Coast, and one day, in the Wednesday stableford competition, he saw Elvis Smylie shoot the greatest round Southport had ever seen.
“He’s a great young man and player, Elvis; he would’ve been off plus-seven or something,” Rogers says. “And we’ve had a lot of fun on the course.
"This Wednesday, though, he says, ‘I gotta go to China in a week’s time, so I’m gonna play this like a competitive round, and I’m not gonna get into the banter so much.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, no worries, mate.’
“With four holes to play, he said to me, ‘If I birdie three of the next four, we’re gonna have 59.’ I said, ‘Can I film you?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, yeah – it’ll put a bit of pressure on.’
"And, sure enough, he went birdie, birdie, par, and had about a 12-foot downhill slider to break 60.”
Gloriously, all at Southport knew it. Via the magic of the MyScore app, the club's greater membership was following the birdie blitz. And the word had got around: Elvis is on a heater.
And, as Rogers and Smylie walked up 18, the green was surrounded by members, most of them juniors.
“All the young juniors, they love him there; he’s so good with them,” Rogers says. “And they were all out around the 18th hole waiting for him to come up.
"So, he’s got this 12-footer, downhill, and everyone’s quiet … and then he holed it! And all the kids and the older members, they all went up as one. Huge roar. It was great. Unreal. What a thing to witness.”
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