The more I’ve been staring at this week’s Open Championship tee times, the more one name sticks out:
Matthew.
In part that is because the trendiest pick at Royal Birkdale this week is the red-hot World No. 3 Matthew Fitzpatrick, who will tee it up in his home country playing arguably the best golf of his career.
But honestly it’s because there are a bunch of other English Matthews hanging around, too — and each has his own compelling reason to sneak up on the field.
Let’s kick things off with Matthew Baldwin, because that’s exactly what this Open has chosen to do. Plenty has been written about hometown hero Tommy Fleetwood returning to Southport, but he’s not the only one: Baldwin grew up in Southport too, a few years Fleetwood’s senior, and is a member at Royal Birkdale. He qualified into the event at Dundonald Links last month and will hit the opening tee shot on Thursday just after 6:30 a.m. — half six, if you ask the locals.
Baldwin told the DP World Tour that this week will be a dream come true in many ways; while he’s played three other Opens, including two in England’s northwest, the last two times the event came to Birkdale he attended as a fan.
“I thought realistically it would be my last chance to [qualify] he told the DPWT. “I wouldn’t say I put more pressure on myself than I normally would, but I knew the incentive was there, shall we say.”
Then there’s Matthew Jordan, who knows the feeling of playing an Open at his home course: the Hoylake native was the local legend at Royal Liverpool in 2023, where he hit the opening tee shot and finished the week a marvelous T10. Jordan followed that up with another T10 at Troon the following year, establishing himself as something of an Open specialist.
He told bunkered just how familiar Birkdale is — “it just feels like home” — and recounted how well he knew the area from playing golf as a junior. Let’s see how he fares this week, just a short train ride from home.
Matthew Southgate is from slightly further away; he grew up in Southend-on-Sea just east of London. But he has good memories from Birkdale; his T6 finish in 2017 is the high water mark for his major-championship career to this point. He made it into the Open field via Final Qualifying for a remarkable sixth time and told the Open the competition “seems to bring the best out of me.”
The bad news for Southgate backers is that he’s missed four of his last five cuts entering this week. The good news is that fifth tournament was an eight-shot win at the Swiss Challenge on the HotelPlanner Tour. His “best” is evidently quite a high level. (More good news: Southgate has enlisted ex-Fitzpatrick caddie Billy Foster for the week.)
Finally there’s Matthew Wallace, the most well-known and highest ranked of our four English mates. Wallace lives outside of London, near the Wentworth abodes of Justin Rose and Rory McIlroy, and while I’m not sure of any Birkdale good-vibe connection, Wallace has logged podium finishes on both the PGA and DP World Tours each of the last two years, suggesting the 36-year-old still has game that’ll travel.
If he can beat all the other Matthews, he might just win the whole damn thing.
*Let’s also send well wishes to Matthew McCarty, the American lefthander, and Mateo Pulcini, the Argentinian amateur. Though given Wednesday evening’s World Cup result, perhaps he and the Matthews should give each other a wide berth.
