PRESSBOOK MCB TC 2023

THE STORY OF BAKER’S RISE r He learned the game at his father’s nine-hole Himley Hall course and was taught by Sandy Lyle’s father, Alex. In 1985, he was the joint winner of the Brabazon Trophy, after a tie with Roger Roper, and represented GB&I in that year’s Walker Cup. He turned pro the following year. r Baker was a frequent contender on the European Tour from the late 1980s, with three wins and a highest Order of Merit finish of seventh in 1993. His one Ryder Cup appearance for Europe came in the losing 1993 team. He won three of his four matches. r Since turning 50, he has played on the Legends Tour, where he is a five-time winner after victories in the 2019 Senior Open Hauts de France and the 2023 Irish Legends, JCB Championship, Staysure PGA Seniors Championship and MCB Tour Championship Mauritius, where he also clinched the season-long MCB Road to Mauritius title.

Shropshire was a hotbed of talent at that time! For a long while my coach was Sandy’s dad, Alex. Then I played with Woosie and got to know him well. It’s funny, because I played a bit with Sandy and Woosie as an amateur. I thought you had to hit it like them to make a living as a pro; it was only later I realised I just happened to have grown up playing with two of the best ball-strikers in the world! So, when I got on tour, the fact the other guys didn’t strike it as well as Sandy and Woosie gave me a bit of confidence. I thought, “Oh, maybe I might have a chance at this.” I met Seve when I was 15, at the Daily Express National Boys at La Manga, during which he gave a clinic. There were 12 of us. He was the touring pro at La Manga so he gave a clinic to 12 young lads, which was just out of this world. You think you are getting somewhere in this game and then you see Seve and you think, “There’s a long way to go.” I had a couple of quieter years in 1989 and ’90 and played a bit better in ’91. David Gilford, Paul Broadhurst and Steven Richardson qualified for the Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island and they were guys I had grown up with. I thought if they could make the European team, so could I; you sort of drag each other along in that way. And I knew 1993 was at The Belfry, not a million miles from where I grew up, so I put everything into trying to make that team. I went to see a guy called Dennis Sheehy, a Leadbetter guy, and he got me playing really well. I had a nice couple of wins and I got in.

I missed out on the first session of the ’93 Ryder Cup but played in the afternoon. I was nervous as hell. I was lucky that I was playing with my mate Woosie, which was helpful, and it was fourballs, but it was just an out-of-body experience. It was really strange. You’re so nervous, you just want to get going. It took a few holes to settle down. He was nervous as hell too, even though he’d done it a load more times. We got going pretty well and you feel a damn sight better when you win your first point, as we did against Jim Gallagher Jnr and Lee Janzen. That win probably got me out on the Saturday morning as well. That time I was with Barry Lane, in foursomes, and we drew Ray Floyd and Payne Stewart. We were down early for breakfast, and Seve came into the room, got his Sugar Puffs and came over and sat down. I’m looking at Barry and you just knew he was going to say something. Sure enough, Seve said: “You guys have a very difficult match today. Ray Floyd is a very, very difficult opponent, very, very difficult. He’s very hard man. You have to watch him, he’ll do something. Maybe he will rip his glove off or jingle change in his pocket as you are putting. He’ll do something.” Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were 2-down playing the par-5 15th and the pin was on the third tier at the back. Payne put it just off the back of the edge of the green, only about 12 foot away. Barry put me about eight feet away. They missed, so I had this eight-footer to go back to 1-down. But then Ray Floyd picked up his ball and walked all over my line

‘Standing next to Seve, Faldo, Langer, Woosie and Sandy, you feel good. You feel really good because you know they’re the best players in the world’

Above: Baker’s journey through golf has taken him from being a four-year-old spectator in 1971, to becoming a Legends Tour Order of Merit winner in 2023.

I got into golf through my dad and my uncle, who were 12 and 16 handicappers. They played at the weekend and because my mum worked on a Saturday morning, I used to go along with them with a club and a ball and just stroll around. I was four or five years old; I suppose it was their way of playing golf and doing the babysitting, in a way. Fortunately for me, the assistant professional at my first club, Lilleshall Hall, lived around the corner, so in the holidays he would pick me up early and then return me back at the end of the day. I’d spend all day up at the golf course. And I obviously got good. I played all the amateur events and got into the Walker Cup side in 1985 at Pine Valley. That was a wonderful place and just a great experience. I wanted to be a professional from a really young age – it was the only thing I wanted to do – so I was certainly thinking about that when we played in that event. On the American team they had Scott Verplank, who had just won the Western Open as an amateur. There was Davis Love, Duffy Waldorf and Jay Sigel, who was the main man really. It’s funny, you go through your career and meet so many of them again at Ryder Cups and other big tournaments.

I turned pro the following year, 1986. In those days you could get as many invites as you wanted, so I played about nine or 10 tournaments and I had to get enough money to finish in the top 125, which I did by making the cut in the last event in Portugal. I finished 120th with about £4,300. I had my full card for the following year, and was named Rookie of the Year. Then I managed to win at Fulford in the Benson & Hedges in 1988. That was my breakthrough. There was always a good field for it. It was a golden era for European golf and there would always be two or three of the big names playing that week… Faldo, Olazabal and Lyle were in the top six that year. I actually beat Faldo in a play-off. He was just starting to win Majors and I was paired with him in the last round, so we were head to head all the way round. He birdied the last… but I eagled it, to take him to that play-off. We made pars at the 1st then played back down 18 again; he birdied again… and I eagled it again to win. It was exciting to play with those great players and they had some intimidation about them, but I played a little bit with Woosie and Sandy through my amateur career so I think that helped me in that way.

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TODAYS-GOLFER.COM ISSUE 449

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