Not even the locals in Warrnambool knew there was a global golf star in their midst.
Well, one did. But Matt Kelly wasn’t taken seriously when he told regulars at the Royal Hotel in Warrnambool in 2007 that Marc Leishman would be the highest-earning athlete to ever come out of the coastal Victorian town.
Matt Kelly, then in his early 20s, was working behind the bar of a local pub, pouring beers for $18 an hour after calling an end to his professional golf traineeship. His best mate Leishman had just finished third in his third career start on the then Nationwide Tour at the Jacob’s Creek Open when the American secondary tour co-sanctioned the event at Adelaide’s Kooyonga Golf Club.
But the regulars didn’t see this as enough evidence to support Kelly’s claim that Leishman would out-earn some of Warrnambool’s most decorated AFL footballers. Names like Jordan Lewis and Jonathan Brown, the former captain of the Brisbane Lions who was part of their three-peat premiership team.
“They laughed at me,” Kelly tells Australian Golf Digest. “They said, ‘You’re kidding yourself… There are Aussie rules footballers that have come out of here.’ But when he finished third in Adelaide, I knew he was good enough to win on that level and advance to the PGA Tour.”
Ties That Bind
How was Kelly so sure? They’d met as teenagers eight years earlier. The friendship grew quickly, and from a young age Kelly knew there was something special about the big lad with a silky short game.
“There would have been eight to 10 juniors at Warrnambool and Marc and I were among them,” Kelly recalls.
“He lived on one side of the course and I lived on the other, so we’d meet after school every day at 4pm to play or practise.”
“Marc would always joke that we should play the front nine because the first hole was near his house.
“We were just two country boys who got along really well. I was decent at golf, but he was exceptional at it. We both followed the Richmond Tigers. It was a natural friendship that just happened. It still is natural.”
Kelly’s assessment of his own game at the time as ‘decent’ is modest. Like Leishman, he won the club championship at Warrnambool when he was off a 1-handicap.
“That was because Marc was away with the Victorian side,” Kelly laughs. “I never won anything Marc played in.”
Although he did come close to beating Leishman… once.
“We travelled together for a local pennants comp to Stawell Golf Club and I played in the morning, and shot 64 or 65,” Kelly says. “I’m not sure if it was the course record, because it wasn’t the monthly medal or anything, but it didn’t matter because Marc came out and equalled it in the afternoon. That round was probably the peak of my playing career.”
Caddie For Life
One would think Matt Kelly and Leishman’s paths had been somewhat forged by their junior golf careers. Kelly would be the caddie, and Leishman the player. But the first time Kelly carried the clubs for Leishman was out of necessity when, as an amateur, he teed it up at the 2003 Australian Open at Moonah Links.
“I just caddied to help him out; I didn’t intend on starting a career as a caddie,” Kelly recalls. “I had started a traineeship and was playing pennants in Melbourne but I wasn’t really enjoying it.”
Five years later and Leishman had secured status on the Nationwide Tour. He got off to a good start in the two events that were co-sanctioned with the Australasian Tour, before finishing tied for ninth in the next event in California. It was then Leishman asked Kelly to venture to the US and take up the bag full-time.
“Athens, Georgia, was the first week I caddied for him in the US, and it’s been almost 11 years since then,” Kelly says.
Now based in Jacksonville, Florida, Kelly is happily married to wife Stephanie and the couple have a two-year-old daughter, Vivienne.
“I have a beautiful wife and daughter and it won’t be that long until I’m a US citizen,” he says. “I can’t believe this is my life; it’s crazy how it’s turned out.”
But Kelly’s career as a caddie was almost over before it began. At the Xerox Classic in Rochester, New York, in that first year on the Nationwide, Kelly had to break the news to Leishman that he couldn’t financially continue in the job.
“For a caddie, he was really looking after me financially but I still had maxed out two credit cards to cover expenses,” Kelly recalls. “As a friend, I didn’t want him to offer to cover my debts and have that financial pressure on his game, so I said I’d see out the next couple of events and go home to Australia.”
Seemingly inspired to help out his mate, Leishman finished equal runner-up in his next start at the Utah Championship and two events later won the WNB Golf Classic by 11 shots – tieing the Nationwide Tour record for largest winning margin. A month later, Leishman tied for seventh at the Nationwide Tour Championship and, courtesy of finishing inside the top-25 on the moneylist, achieved his dream of making it to the US PGA Tour.
The pair has never looked back.
The 2015 Open
There are three years in Leishman’s career so far that have truly defined him as a world-class golfer: his rookie year, his most tumultuous year and his breakout year.
In 2009, Leishman jumped out of the gates in his first US Tour season, becoming the first Australian to win the circuit’s Rookie of The Year award not long after playing with Tiger Woods in the final group at the BMW Championship.
And although he’d earn a maiden tour victory in 2012, his most dramatic season would come three years later. In March 2015, Leishman almost lost his wife Audrey when toxic shock syndrome triggered a near-fatal case of sepsis. He withdrew from the Masters, but golf wasn’t even on his radar.
“The way Marc was willing to walk away from the game in a heartbeat to be a full-time father sums him up as a bloke; there isn’t anything more important than his family,” Kelly says. “To hear your best mate crying on the phone… the whole situation was horrific for everyone. But great things came out of it; obviously, Audrey is healthy now and the [Begin Again] Foundation is doing really well.”
Three months later, Leishman came from the wilderness after the first two rounds at the British Open at St Andrews to shoot 64-66 on the weekend and book a spot in a four-hole playoff against Louis Oosthuizen and eventual winner Zach Johnson.
“I think about that British Open nearly every day,” Kelly says. “Marc had a chance to win and he did everything right down the stretch. It kind of feels like the one that got away, even though there wasn’t too much we could’ve done about it. I just wonder if there was anything different I could have done.
“But even to have a chance to win The Open at St Andrews only a few months after Audrey’s illness was an achievement in itself.”
Again, great things came out it.
“Marc, [his mind coach] Neale Smith and I were having dinner at the Old Course Hotel on the night before the playoff and I got a text from my wife,” Kelly recalls. “It was just a picture of a [positive] pregnancy test; I found out I was going to become a father. That was a highlight of the whole week. It was a crazy week, in all sorts of ways.”
A breakout season
If 2015 was the year Leishman announced himself to the world as a force in the golf world, 2017 was the year he rammed it down their throats. Widely regarded as the most underrated player on the US PGA Tour, the 34-year-old won the Arnold Palmer Invitational then the BMW Championship during the FedEx Cup Playoffs. There, he took a five-shot lead into the final round and finished as many shots in front.
Combined with seven top-10s and a sixth place overall in the FedEx Cup, Leishman amassed almost $US7 million in prizemoney for the season.
The adulation from the golf world for both Leishman and Kelly demonstrated their popularity as a team.
Even FedEx Cup champion Justin Thomas tweeted: “Big congrats to @marcleish and Matty Kelly! Very deserving boys,” after their BMW win in Chicago.
“Last year was amazing because we were in contention a lot and winning tournaments,” Kelly says. “But the most enjoyable part is helping your best mate live out his dream, that’s a pretty cool feeling. This is definitely a dream job.”
Marc Leishman Drive
One of the most important contributions a caddie can give his player is belief. And Matt Kelly had it in bucketloads before he knew it would be useful. It’s why they have lasted 10 years as a team in a results-driven sport.
“We’re definitely one of the longest-running partnerships on tour; I think Pat Perez and ‘H’ (caddie Mike Hartford) have been together 17 years,” Matt Kelly says. “Rickie [Fowler] and Joe [Skovron] have been together about the same time as Marc and me. Anything over 10 years is a great accomplishment in this business.”
To date, Leishman has earned $US21,475,769 on the US PGA Tour alone. That’s without counting money earned in the FedEx Cup, or his European Tour victory at the rich Nedbank Golf Challenge in South Africa late in 2015.
But Leishman has never forgotten his roots. In addition to his Begin Again Foundation – which gives financial assistance to families experiencing medical and life crises – Leishman often gives back to Warrnambool Golf Club.
“The golf club are Marc’s biggest fans; they don’t miss a round of his and it’s why they have framed a set of his golf clubs in the clubhouse,” Kelly says.
And it’s why those regulars, who once laughed at Matt Kelly’s suggestion Leishman would become Warrnambool’s highest-paid sports star, have to motor along Marc Leishman Drive towards the entrance of Warrnambool Golf Club when they feel like a game of golf.
