Now residing in Adelaide for the next step in his educational journey, Kyle Feltus is also keen to pursue his passion on the golf course.
Grange Golf Club, Adelaide. It’s early February and the course is heaving under the spell of LIV Golf, the country’s most high-profile and raucous tournament.
Streaky Bay teen Kyle Feltus is here. Not among the thronging crowd, but out on the chipping green, where he’s setting up a practice shot only a metre from Cam Smith, the great Aussie golfer of the generation.
An hour earlier, Kyle is sharing the driving range with Steve Smith, the legendary Australian cricketer, among other A-listers connected to golf in this country.
Kyle’s a long way from the dusty fairways of his home town on the West Coast, but these days he’s used to that.
As a reserve for this year’s Pro-Am event at LIV Golf, he’s also getting used to rubbing shoulders with the elite of his sport.
Kyle’s rise from a passionate and ambitious Streaky Bay junior to one of the state’s best golfers has been well celebrated.
So too have his academic achievements, which of recent times include awards at Teen Parliament, being Streaky’s Young Citizen of the Year, and finishing his schooling as dux, with an ATAR of 99.15.
When the 18-year-old moved to Adelaide earlier this year to undertake a double degree in geospatial information systems and surveying at Flinders University, you could have been forgiven for thinking his golfing aspirations had perhaps slipped by the wayside.
But that just means you don’t know Kyle all that well.
“They’re still the same as they’ve ever been,” says Kyle of his ambitions to play golf at the highest level.
“I still have a lot of passion for it, it’s my focus for the next couple of years, to try and improve every day, to still do the hard yards, to hit the ball as well as I can and go as far I can.
“In the background, I’ll be at uni working on becoming a surveyor as well, as a qualification to lean back on.”
While beginning his science-intensive double degree this autumn, Kyle is also hoping his application for the state high performance golf squad is successful.
He’ll also be teeing off each weekend for Glenelg in the South Australian Pennant – the state’s highest-level tournament – which Kyle describes as golf’s equivalent to SANFL footy.
Last year, he played a crucial hand in Glenelg’s Bonnar Cup victory in the pennant system.
Now, with regular access to training facilities for the first time in his career, Kyle sees no reason why his golf won’t continue to improve.
“The biggest thing since I’ve moved over here, I’ve hit a lot more balls and had a lot more putts, simply because there’s practice facilities,” he says.
“At home, for example – and people in Adelaide don’t really click that this is what you have to do – but if I want to hit 100 drives, I have to go and collect and try to find 100 of my balls.
“Whereas here, you go to the range, press a button, it gives you thirty or forty balls and off you go, without having to go picking them up all around the course.”
While his humble home club at Streaky may not have the cutting-edge facilities of the big smoke, Kyle knows that its rough edges shaped him into the player he is.
“A lot of Adelaide courses are nearly easier to play than home,” Kyle says.
“Adelaide courses are always in perfect condition, you struggle to get a bad lie, whereas at Streaky you often end up in a patch where grass hasn’t grown or you’re on a couple of rocks, it makes playing over here easier in the physical sense.”
Of the mental side, Kyle also knows that growing up with the unwavering support of his small Eyre Peninsula home town has contributed to the belief and fortitude he is known for on the course.
“Without the community it would have been a whole lot different, you always know that you’re not just playing for yourself, you’re representing your whole community,” he says.
“As a kid, you’re playing in these big tournaments, at big-name courses and clubs like Royal Adelaide and Glenelg and Grange – always having the Streaky community behind me, it made me handle pressure in a very different way.
“There’d be local newspaper articles and it would be up on Facebook, there’s a lot of pressure that comes from that, but over the years it has helped me build on performing under pressure, it’s made me a better golfer when it counts. The community really has just been amazing, if you come from Adelaide and one of these big clubs, that doesn’t happen.”
There is another type of EP-related pressure that has informed Kyle’s aptitude for the mental challenges that golf presents.
“When you’re coming from 700 kilometres away, driving eight hours to play golf, the hardest thing was you’d be playing, and you’re thinking in the back of your mind, if I don’t perform well, it’s a bloody long drive home,” he says.
“Coming from the country, you mature a lot quicker, it teaches you a lot more principles, to work harder, to play smarter, to forget about a bad shot.”
Kyle’s mature outlook doesn’t end with golf but extends into all walks of his life, especially at school, where last year he was co-captain at Streaky Bay.
“You’re at school for six to seven hours a day, my philosophy was always just don’t waste it – otherwise what else are you doing there?”
Kyle’s most recent move to the city is his second crack at relocating for educational purposes, following a short-lived attempt at boarding school in Adelaide.
“I tried to go away to school at the start of year 10, I wasn’t 100 per cent keen on it and got over here and didn’t like it one bit,” he says.
“That was a challenging time, I probably wasn’t ready for Adelaide full-time then, I’d been going back and forth playing golf, but the connection you feel to home and to the community, I found it hard to leave.”
Of course, boarding without a car licence presented an issue for the golf-mad teenager.
“I felt locked up in a way, there was just no freedom, that was probably the main thing, it was a stretch to get from school to the golf club,” he says.
“I didn’t mind the boarding part, but I just didn’t have the freedom like I did at home, I’d always been able to finish school and walk up and play golf whenever I wanted.”
He also missed the relaxed teaching style of small-town, country education.
“I found the teachers were a hell of a lot different than Streaky,” Kyle says.
“A lot of teachers at home go to footy or netball or golf on the weekends, you get to know them, but I just had no connection with the teachers in Adelaide. It was a big change.
“But I learnt a lot from that time, with all things that don’t work out, you learn from them and more opportunities come.”
Now armed with a car licence and a place to live at a family friend’s place in Happy Valley, plus a part-time job at School Sports SA, Kyle feels he is now ready for life in Adelaide and beyond.
“Who knows where I’ll be in four years’ time, but for now, I’m going to get as many opportunities under my belt and do as many things as I can, and enjoy different places and meet different people,” Kyle says.
“But whenever anyone asks me where my home club is… I’ll always say Streaky Bay.”
