‘I’m the lead singer in a rock band. But I wanted to be a tour pro’

Matthew Murphy lets his mind wander again. 

“It’s pretty much all I think about. It just does something to you.”

The frontman of The Wombats, one of the UK’s leading indie rock bands,  has joined bunkered.co.uk on a call from his plush home in Los Angeles to discuss the connections between his two passions, music and golf. Oh, and the small matter of his new solo album, of course. 

At a time where professional golf has lost its way, engulfed by civil war and greed, this musician’s outlook on the essence of the game is quite the tonic.

“There is something quite religious about the sport,” he says. “It’s like a little soul massage. It brings the perfect balance of peace and competition. Everything you need to live a good life you have to face during 18 holes of golf. When I go through tough times I know I can go to the range or go play nine holes. It’s beautiful.”

‘Murph’, as his friends know him, has sold more than one million records worldwide and his platinum-certified band are cult heroes in his home city of Liverpool and well beyond. He joined his first band at 13 and has been on the road since 2007, when hits like Let’s Dance to Joy Division and Moving to New York from the debut Wombats album gained notoriety around the globe.

During a tumultuous ride, golf has always been the one constant.

“I’ve had a couple of severe depressive episodes and anxiety,” he says. “Golf has been really important. It’s more than just escapism. It helps me escape my feelings but it also gives me time to process them and deal with them.

“It’s meditation. Concentrating on getting this little white ball around means I can’t linger on all the negative thoughts.”

It all started back in Liverpool, when Murphy started playing with his school friend and his dad at an old municipal in Allerton, a suburb near the city centre. He was as ambitious as he was obsessed.

“I got hooked and I still am now,” he says. “I wanted to be a tour pro, but slowly I just realised how hard it is to shoot good scores all the time. I was always passionate about music but never as much as I was about golf. I was fuelled by a mad dream.”

As a teenager, Murphy was at the course from 8am until dark, playing three rounds a day when the light allowed. He recalls a time at Woolton Golf Club when he had a club competition win taken away from him.

“I forgot to write my handicap in the right segment of the scorecard and they disqualified me because of that,” he says, before noting an age-old problem in the grassroots game. “They don’t want juniors to win competitions. They want the old timers to get their name on the board, not some kid who had been a member for a couple years.”

A world away from those squabbles on a Merseyside parkland, Murphy now lives in the Hollywood hills with his wife, Akemi, and children, Dylan and Kai. Family life means time on the course is at a premium. He has kept his handicap at 2.2, though, having joined San Gabriel, one of the oldest country clubs in the area.

When travelling the world for gigs, Murphy used to make it his mission to get the clubs out and play. A tour Down Under once gave him the chance to play The Lakes, the historic Sydney venue that has hosted the Australian Open.

“I took my clubs for a couple of tours and all the crew hated me by the end of it,” he laughs. “There was just this big f***ing bag lying around all over the gear.”

So, what are those similarities between golf and music?

“The more I try to control the outcome, the worse it is,” Murphy explains. “The more you think ‘I’ve just got to par in’ and the tighter you get your steering the club, your rhythm is off and you start racking up numbers.

“In music, if I go into a day thinking I’m going to write the best song ever, it’s always going to be crap. You’ve got to put the jigsaw together as you go along.”

Time on the fairways even fuels Murphy’s lyrical inspiration. “There was a song on our second album called Tokyo,” he recalls. “I remember having most of the song written and the chorus came to me when I was playing golf.”

Like so many of us, Murphy is just thinking about his next round. “I try to rearrange life to go around and play golf more,” he says.

“Fifty per cent of my life is spent thinking about golf, 40 per cent family and kids, and ten per cent music. Or 50 per cent family and kids in case my wife reads this!”

And they say, “rock stars” just aren’t relatable. 

‘Life is a Killer’, the second album from Murph’s solo project Love Fame Tragedy, is out now. Better still, you can buy tickets for his upcoming gigs here.

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.