{"id":689836,"date":"2026-07-13T19:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689836\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T19:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:35:09","slug":"matthew-baldwin-to-hit-opening-tee-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/689836\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Baldwin to hit opening tee shot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Birkdale member Matthew Baldwin will get The 154th Open under way on home soil after being given the honour of the historic opening tee shot.<\/p>\n<p>He follows in the footsteps of Padraig Harrington, Paul Lawrie, Matthew Jordan and Justin Leonard who have all signalled the start of the Championship in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>With friends and family watching on, Baldwin will be joined by Thomas Detry and James Nicholas in game one, teeing off at 6.35am.<\/p>\n<p>It will be a special moment for the 40-year-old, who claimed his place at The Open via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/qualification\/final-qualifying\/dundonald-links\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Final Qualifying at Dundonald Links<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a bit of a dream really,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/players\/matthew-baldwin\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baldwin said<\/a> after qualifying. &#8220;I get emotional just thinking about it. It will be incredible. I&#8217;ve played Opens at Hoylake and Lytham before, but to do it at my home club in front of my wife, my mum and my family will be amazing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For me it&#8217;s a dream come true.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This year will mark Baldwin\u2019s fourth Open appearance. On his debut at Royal Lytham &amp; St Annes in 2012 he produced his best Open result of T23, before going on to compete at Royal Liverpool in 2014 and Royal Portrush in 2019.<\/p>\n<p>Full tee times for Thursday and Friday are now live. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theopen.com\/teetimes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">You can view them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Royal Birkdale member Matthew Baldwin will get The 154th Open under way on home soil after being given&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-689836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}