RELUCTANT lookalike Matthew Chadwick is approached at least every other day by strangers asking if he's an elite British sportsman. At 35, he's the same age as the athlete, who recently made history, but initially had no idea who he was - and what's more, over a decade later is still not convinced by the resemblance at all. “Meet your twin! Meet your twin!” spectators shouted as they ushered Matthew towards one of his golfing heroes in 2018. But Rory McIlroy - who was preparing to tee off at Carnoustie - wasn’t interested. It was the British Open and his head was in the game. The Northern Irish champion became the sport’s sixth Grand Slam winner last weekend when he won the Masters in Augusta. Amateur golfer Matthew couldn't be happier for his doppelganger - though has mixed feelings about the comparison. During the second day of the Open in 2018, projected onto the big screens was a picture of him wearing a T-shirt saying: “I’m not Rory McIlroy.” It had been taken by golf TV personality and columnist Eamon Lynch and posted on X - then still called Twitter. He captioned the post: “A fan trying to avoid confusion at Carnoustie.” Matthew, an energy consultant from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had bought the T-shirt on a whim prior to travelling up to Scotland with his dad. A keen golfer since he was young, he’d been getting attention from fellow hobbyists in the sport for years at his local club, even before he knew who McIlroy was. He’d be asked almost daily if he was the pro and then people would gather to watch him tee off, as if expecting him to be just as good. “Because that was my first Open - that I’d been to with my dad, I thought just for a bit of a laugh I’d play on the fact people would definitely ask me,” Matthew told The Sun. “And so I thought I’d quickly get a T-shirt made up, I think it cost me £13, that was that, it basically just set the whole thing alight.” He only wore the shirt the first day of what was four days of play, but once it was online, it couldn’t be forgotten. Matthew, now 35, said: “I was sitting on the first box, and I just saw people looking at me in their peripherals. “I didn’t have the shirt on that day. They came up to me afterwards and said ‘you know you look nothing like you do on the internet’. I was thinking, what the hell does that mean?” He’d fuelled an odd fire, which has lasted until this day. It helps that Matthew still plays golf at least three times a week, not including practice rounds on the driving range. “People are very 50/50,” he said. “They’re either it definitely does look like him or it definitely doesn’t. I tell them I don’t care, it’s just my face. "But they want you to know either way. And some of them take it very seriously. Some people can be so verbal about it.” Referring back to the 2018 Open, he said: “People started asking me on that second day if I wanted to meet some of the pros or if I wanted to have photoshoots or play golf with them.” Press were also clambering for interviews. He agreed to one and remembers: “They were asking me questions and I think I was just talking about Justin Rose or something, how he was playing, it’s not what they wanted, and they eventually walked away confused.” The Lynch tweet meant suddenly Matthew was trending online and he said he “toyed with the idea” of becoming a lookalike professionally. “I spoke to my cousin, and said where should I go with this? Do you reckon we should set this up properly? “I went to a convention with lookalikes, there was all these other lookalikes and I just realised this is not for me. I just realised I don’t look enough like him to even warrant the fact, I don’t think anyway. “I guess that was just self doubt. People keep telling I do even to this day.” But despite never properly capitalising on it, he has had people contact him offering as much as £1,000 for him to join them on a round of golf. “They basically always come to me and say ‘we’ll pay you X amount’ and I’ve just debated it at the time. “I usually turn everything down,” he said. “People ask for my booking details and I tell them I don’t have any but I have agreed to some stuff.” One of the offers that sticks in his mind is being told he could have an honorary membership at a golf club, but only if he’d do a talk at its annual dinner. “I just thought I don’t have a Northern Irish accent anyway, and I just feel as though it would be received quite badly so I decided against it. What did they want me to talk about? “If you’re going to be a lookalike you’ve got to sound the part as well because the illusion falls off immediately.” He’s accepted that he can’t escape it either way. “Whenever I’m having a round of golf, it’s heads turning, people sitting behind me on the first tee. It’s been like that since Rory went pro.” Matthew’s had plenty of online trolling too and even deleted his social media accounts for a time. “There’s another guy who is a professional Rory McIlroy lookalike,” he said. “I started to think this is someone’s profession, he’s taking it seriously, I was just do it for a laugh.” At one time a company even made a replica of the T-shirt he wore at the Open, and used the Lynch photo of him to advertise it. “It’s not my photo, it’s just a photo of me,” he said. “They were selling it for $20 across the world, but I had nothing to do with that. It was exactly the same as the shirt I had made, which I’ve still got in a cupboard somewhere. “I have no idea how many they sold or why anyone would buy it.” Whilst working in a hotel several years ago, Matthew even met a man who claimed to be McIlroy’s dad Gerry. “He was like ‘you’re that guy’ and I was like yeah. He said ‘I’m his dad, we’ve spoken about it.’ “I thought fair enough, he probably knows what the crack is. I have no accreditation to figure out if that was him or not,” he added, laughing. Matthew lived in London for a few years before the Covid pandemic and said he would often get stopped on the street and asked for photos. Even in Cheltenham he reckons he’s stopped at least once every other day, usually on the golf course. Most people at my club don’t even know my first name. They just call me Rory.Matthew ChadwickRory McIlroy 'lookalike' “I wasn’t playing anywhere near as much golf in London, so it’s equalled out again now,” he said. “Most people at my club don’t even know my first name. They just call me Rory.” This time last year Netflix released the second season of golfing documentary series Full Swing. In the first episode, a clip of McIlroy is used where he's being asked about a lookalike, who Matthew is convinced was him. “It didn’t come across great for me,” he said. “I remember them talking directly to Rory about it and Rory does a sort of awkward ‘errm’. “He tries to move past it quite quickly. Maybe he’s talking about me or maybe the other one. “The overall impression was I was trying overly hard to be recognised as a Rory lookalike. When all I was doing was wearing a shirt to have a bit of a laugh, and it was years ago now.” Matthew also believes too that generally if he’s not wearing a cap, as McIlroy usually does on the course, “the illusion’s broken”. “I could never really see it for a long time but I’ve seen photo comparisons and think yeah maybe, okay. As soon as I wear that cap, for some reason, everyone just stops and stares. “It was only last week I was playing with a different team and people were asking for photos on the tee. “More people include me in teams, whether they like me or not, or just because I look like Rory, I don’t know." He has a similar build to the golfer, and stands a couple of inches taller at 6'1. “I’m not really bothered by it. I’m nothing special anyway, I’ve got a pretty standard enough life, I’m enjoying where I am. This is the one thing for me that I can’t keep away from. “People will even show me a photo of me and say you look nothing like this guy, and I’ll be like well that is me,” he said laughing.