Whenever I caught up last year with Dale Lynch, the former Melbourne-based golf teacher now teaching in America, one of my first questions was always: ‘How is Aaron doing?'

Lynch moved from Melbourne to America to extend his teaching and be closer to his pupils including Baddeley, Geoff Ogilvy and Mat Goggin. He was the one who had taught Aaron the golf swing as a teenager and, as a 19-year-old amateur, Baddeley staggered all except the few who knew how good he was by winning the 1999 Australian Open. 

Here was a kid who had a chance to be one of the few who had any chance of threatening Tiger Woods when he was at his best.

Baddeley successfully defended his Open Championship at Kingston Heath but within a year he had left Lynch and gone down the well-worn path to David Leadbetter's academy in Florida in order to get his game 'to another level'.

That experiment never really worked and only Baddeley's fantastic putting kept him on the US Tour. His ball-striking statistics were awful and that he never lost his card was testament to his talent, especially on the greens.

From Leadbetter he went, via a brief flirtation with Mac O'Grady, to the stack-and-tilt teachers who completely changed his swing. He played some good weeks, winning at Hilton Head and in Scottsdale and also threatening at Oakmont in the 2007 US Open, until an ugly final-round 80.

Lynch was always watching from afar what was going on and he was dismayed by what he saw. ''He could barely get the driver in the air at Oakmont,'' he said at the time.

And when he was asked by Baddeley how he thought he was swinging, Lynch said: ''It is only that you are so talented that you can get the ball in the air at all.''

It was far from inevitable but perhaps 18 months ago they reunited - after almost a decade apart - and Lynch has always been upbeat about the progress they were making.

Last week at Pebble Beach, Baddeley was good, tying for sixth and he came to Riviera this week with some justifiable confidence.

Riviera is a brilliant old golf course, built in the Golden Age of design in the 1920s by George Thomas. It is the closest thing in America to a Melbourne sandbelt course - except for its kikuyu fairways. But there are plenty of those fairways in Sydney and Baddeley had won on them at The Lakes in 2001.

Today, taking a one-shot lead into the final round, Aaron made a miserable double bogey at the difficult par four 12th hole but came back with a brilliant putt from just off the fringe of the green for a birde at the 13th.

His main challenger, Vijay Singh, made a threatening birdie at the short 16th but that was as close as any of the contenders got, including 51 year-old Fred Couples and Robert Allenby. In the end, Baddeley's 69 gave him a two-shot buffer over Singh.

Allenby was the most successful at hitting the small greens at Riviera but, as has often been the case, his putting isn't reliable enough at the end. He finished fourth, though, and that is a nice week of golf. Stuart Appelby was 12th at five under and John Senden and Ogilvy another shot behind at 280.

Baddeley, though, was the star this week. He has shown glimpses before but nothing has matched his play in that Royal Sydney Open is 1999. In many ways there was a lost decade as he searched for something better - something he never really found.

It looks like he is back close to where he was - swinging much more naturally - and with the deadly putter he has always commanded, the next decade may be fun to watch.