SOUTHPORT, England — England football fan Matthew Baldwin dozed off Wednesday night with the World Cup semifinal locked on low volume. He needed some shuteye. Which is why it was so impressive that, after waking up to see Harry Kane and the boys had taken a 1-0 lead over Argentina, Baldwin forced himself back to sleep. And perhaps even more impressive that when he awoke again at midnight, to see that England had lost in crushing fashion, that he could settle his nerves back into a slumber.
But again, he had to rest. One of the biggest tee shots of his life was just a few hours away, and the alarm was set for 3:30.
Golf fans have been conditioned to know that the 2026 Open Championship here at Royal Birkdale is decidedly a home game for Tommy Fleetwood. But it’s even more so for Baldwin, who has called Birkdale his home club for 23 years. He lives about five miles north of the club. Whenever he visits Birkdale, he has to cross Fleetwood Road.
It’s a fitting stop on the journey for each of these local lads. Like many golf stories, Baldwin and Fleetwood’s started on mostly parallel tracks. Baldwin is five years Fleetwood’s senior, just old enough for Tommy to look up to him, and just young enough that he and Tommy were teammates in the all-Lancashire boys comps.
“I was 13, I believe,” Fleetwood said Monday. “Matt was arguably the best player in England at the time, and he was my foursomes partner. Matt was somebody I looked up to a lot as a junior golfer, amateur golfer, very good golfer in the area. I’ve known him for a long time.”
By 2013, though, when Baldwin and Fleetwood were both playing mostly the same pro-golf schedule, on the DP World Tour, their roles had begun to reverse. If Baldwin made a handful of top 25s, Fleetwood made a handful of top 10s. The difference there is everything if the goal is a PGA Tour life. Baldwin’s game leveled off; Fleetwood’s took off.
By the time Birkdale hosted an Open in 2017, Fleetwood was a household name and his face was plastered on lampposts across town. Baldwin was here for all of it, shuffling around the course as a spectator.
“I remember being gutted that I wasn’t playing,” he recalled Thursday. “Same with 2008, to be honest. I was around.”
In the years since, the players’ paths have diverged even more. It can happen quickly. Baldwin has bopped on and off the DP World Tour. Fleetwood has bopped in and out of contention in the game’s biggest tournaments. Baldwin said he briefly took a gig as an Amazon deliveryman to make ends meet. Fleetwood’s hardest decisions have included choosing an apparel sponsor.
Getty Images
The closest Fleetwood has gotten to winning this tournament came in 2019, at Royal Portrush, where, playing in the final pairing Sunday, he finished solo second behind Shane Lowry. Search deep in the Getty Images archives from that week and you’ll find a photo of Fleetwood walking a practice round with final qualifier Matt Baldwin. That was the last time Baldwin qualified for The Open — up until a couple weeks ago, when he squeaked by to punch his ticket again.
That hasn’t exactly meant a perfect scenario. Baldwin is still trying to survive as a pro golfer. After qualifying for Birkdale, he raced back to Germany for a DPWT start, then entered a Challenge Tour event, also in Germany. He missed both cuts. He arrived back in Southport in time for a few practice rounds on a course he knows better than anyone else in the field and then laid down for that football-interrupted sleep.
The round of 72 that followed was a few more strokes than he’d hoped for, but when it was over he seemed to be thinking a lot more about everyone who packed the grandstand for his 6:45 a.m. tee shot.
The adjectives he used were perfect: Incredible. Terrifying. Overwhelming.
He also said this: “It’s something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
