Two years ago Matthew Baldwin was a driver for Amazon. Now he is in line to win £1.1 million. Last month, he hit a drive eight yards. Here, he is whacking it out of sight.
Whatever else the 38-year-old from Southport gets to take away from the West Course – and considering his journey, the BMW PGA Championship would represent a fairy tale – he already has carved himself a piece of history.
A 66 took Baldwin to 13-under, meaning he has equalled Paul McGinley’s 36-hole record in the DP World Tour’s flagship event. This scenario probably seemed on the unfeasible side of fanciful when he was back on the Challenge Tour in the winter of 2022 and dwindling finances forced him to take employment with the delivery giant. Especially when his company vehicle was heading towards a customer’s car.
“I pulled up to a block of flats, jumped out the van, got in the back and all of a sudden I’m moving and it’s like ‘oh no, forgot to put the handbrake on’,”” he said. “So I’ve ran around to the front and yanked the handbrake up, still wouldn’t stop, yanked it more and eventually it stopped an inch short of a blue Fiesta.
“There was a woman I was delivering a parcel to who watched the whole thing and she said, ’I couldn’t get my phone out quick enough to film it’. It’s more nervous than I’ve been on a golf course.”
Baldwin believes the perspective helped. “I’ve thought about quitting golf plenty of times,” he said. “I worked for Amazon because there was a mortgage and bills to be paid, but I learned a lot from that four months. I realised that there are other things that I could do in life, but also that I really wanted to play golf.”
Less than a year later, the grandson of rugby league great Ron Ryder won his maiden Tour title – the SDC Championship in South Africa. From £15 an hour to more than £200,000 for 72 holes. Baldwin hoped the struggles were behind him, but there has not been a single top 10 this year for the player ranked 363rd in the world. And an incident at the Belfry in the British Masters three weeks’ ago reminded him of the malevolent nature of his maddening profession.
“I was on the fourth tee and heard a crack at the top of my swing,” he said. “I tried to stop my swing, but the heel of the club caught the ball and it went between my legs. It travelled about eight yards and my caddie said ‘it was wise to lay up before the water’. There was silence from the crowd. I think they were all in shock.”
The surprise here is seeing this journeyman three clear of France’s Antoine Rozner, with Billy Horschel on eight-under and Tommy Fleetwood on seven-under. Baldwin knows Fleetwood from old. The world No 12 is also from Southport and when he was 13 and Baldwin was 18 they played for the same county team.
“Tommy was actually my foursomes partner for Lancashire,” Baldwin said. “I don’t think we ever lost together. Yeah, we played a lot of golf growing up, graduated the same year from Challenge Tour and have obviously played a little bit out here. Our paths have gone slightly different but hopefully I can catch him up.
“I’m incredibly proud of how I’ve played so far. I have a tendency to get in my own way either by looking forward orby looking back and dwelling on my mistakes. But with all I’ve been through I’m not doing that anymore.” Jeff Bezos should be just as proud.
