With not a lot of golf going on in the cold, dark month of January here in the Northeast, this has always been a good opportunity to take a look back at members of the United States team that captured the Walker Cup in 2009.
I was working as a sportswriter for the Delaware County Daily Times at the time and the Walker Cup was staged at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course, which just so happens to sit inside the Ardmore section of Haverford Township in Delaware County.
Of course, I knew that since I had grown up a few blocks from the eighth tee at the East Course and had been a looper there for 12 years as a teen and into young adulthood. Even caught a bag in the 1981 U.S. Open, carrying for Jay Cudd, an assistant pro at Scioto Country Club.
Cudd failed to survive the 36-hole cut and, for years, I thought that second round of the ’81 Open would be my swan song as a caddy. I was wrong about that and sometime in March will be the ninth anniversary of my first loop at Stonewall, twice donning a USGA bib again in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship in 2016 and in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship in 2023.
I decided to keep this blog going – it had started as a supplement to the golf stuff I did manage to jam into the pages of the Daily Times – and this time of the year always allowed me to take a trip down memory lane to that Walker Cup at Merion, an assignment I still consider one of the highlights of a 38-year journalism career.
Mostly I’ve concentrated on the guys who turned pro in the years after that Walker Cup, including the unquestioned leader of that U.S. team at age 20, one Rickie Fowler, and Brian Harman, the first player from that Walker Cup to be crowned a major champion when he won The Open Championship two summers ago at Royal Liverpool.
But this winter, I will start with the guy who, with the exception of a brief stab at professional golf, has remained an amateur, Nathan Smith, the 1994 PIAA champion as a sophomore at Brookville in the Pittsburgh area.
And in September, at another of America’s iconic golf courses, the Alister MacKenzie-Robert Hunter masterpiece that is the Cypress Point Club on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula, Smith’s Walker Cup journey will come full circle when he leads the United States team as the captain in the 50th Walker Cup Match.
Everett Munez, who writes The Amateur Game for Global Golf Post, profiled the 46-year-old Smith in his column earlier this month and I’m echoing him in seeing this as a “full-circle” moment for Smith. Munez filled in a couple of blanks for me in Smith’s career and saved me from going down a deep rabbit hole on Smith.
I’ve mentioned before in doing this annual look back at the 2009 Walker Cup Match that Smith was something of a surprise pick for that team. The USGA always seemed to find a spot for a top mid-amateur player on the U.S. roster, but it had been six years since Smith had captured the U.S. Mid-Amateur title as a mid-am “rookie” in 2003 at Wilmington Country Club.
Smith had won the West Penn Amateur and Pennsylvania Amateur crowns in the summer of 2009. Maybe there was a little lobbying from the captain of that U.S. team, George “Buddy” Marucci, a Merion member who had grown up in the same neighborhood as I did, the seventh fairway at the East Course quite literally in his backyard.
Regardless, Smith was chosen as part of the team and went 2-1 in a 16.5-9.5 victory for the U.S. at Merion.
Smith’s victory in the 2003 U.S. Mid-Am earned him an invitation to the Masters the following spring and, in Munez’s column in the Global Golf Post, Smith recalls playing in a practice round with another western Pennsylvania native, The King, Arnold Palmer, and then ending up being paired with Arnie in the first two rounds of the tournament.
It was Palmer’s last competitive appearance in the rite of spring at Augusta National that he had once owned for a stretch of seven years when he donned the Green jacket four times.
In was later that year that Smith would give professional golf a try. He didn’t make it out of Q-School and decided to apply to have his amateur status reinstated. Smith got a job in the insurance business and, whether he knew it or not, started following in the footsteps of fellow Pennsylvanians Jay Sigel, owner of the most Walker Cup wins by any U.S. player ever, and Marucci, his captain at Merion.
Maybe Marucci saw a little of himself and of his mentor Sigel in Smith. But there is little doubt that Smith’s appearance in that 2009 Walker Cup at Merion turned into the launching pad for one of the great runs in the relatively brief history of mid-am golf.
A few weeks following the Walker Cup at Merion, Smith captured his second U.S. Mid-Am crown on the South Carolina barrier island at Kiawah. He made it two straight U.S. Mid-Am crowns and matched Sigel’s record of three overall the following year when he won at the Atlantic Golf Club on Long Island.
In 2012, Smith made it a record fourth U.S. Mid-Am title when he won at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill.
In between his third and fourth U.S. Mid-Am wins, Smith played on the U.S. Walker Cup team for a second time in 2011, the U.S. falling at the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club under captain Jim Holtgrieve.
I suspect Holtgrieve lobbied hard to have Smith, now a battle-tested veteran at match-play golf, on the U.S. side in 2013 at the National Golf Links of America, the renowned C.B. Macdonald masterpiece on Long Island, and the U.S. avenged its loss at Royal Aberdeen by taking the Cup back in convincing fashion.
So, it seemed just a matter of time before the USGA called on Smith to captain a U.S. Walker Cup side.
Smith has turned into such a tremendous match-play player. He has won the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship six times. He teamed with Todd White, the South Carolina school teacher who captured the U.S. Senior Amateur title two summers ago, to claim the crown in the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Olympic Club in 2015.
When fellow Pittsburgh amateur legend Sean Knapp captured the title in his first crack at the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2017 at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, Minn., he made it a point to credit Smith, with whom he had tangled countless times in match play, many of them losses, with teaching him how to succeed in golf’s most inscrutable format.
I did a post last month on the practice session for 16 players invited by the USGA’s International Team Selection Working Group to a practice session for this year’s U.S. team in the Walker Cup Match. The practice sessions were held at three clubs in golf-rich Seminole, Fla., McArthur Golf Club, Seminole Golf Club and The Bear’s Club.
One thing I failed to mention in that post is that the Walker Cup, usually a biennial competition, is going to be contested again next year to get the event on an even-year schedule. The 2026 Walker Cup Match will be held in Ireland at Lahinch Golf Club, a course about which I’ve heard nothing but good things, and the USGA has already settled on having Smith return for a second stint as captain.
If the top two players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), No. 1 Luke Clanton, a junior at Florida, and No. 2 Jackson Koivun, a sophomore at Auburn, can somehow manage to retain their amateur status until September, Smith might be headed to Cypress Point with as formidable a 1-2 punch as any Walker Cup captain has ever had.
Both guys made the cut at this weekend’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines on the PGA Tour. They both were in attendance in the practice session in Jupiter last month. I suspect both want to see out their college seasons.
Koivun and Auburn will be trying to repeat as the NCAA team champion. Clanton and the Seminoles lost to the Tigers in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match last spring at the La Costa Resort & Spa’s North Course in Carlsbad, Calif.
Pretty sure Smith was along for the ride as an observer when the U.S. rallied for a 14.5-11.5 victory over Great Britain & Ireland at the most classic venue of all, the Old Course at St. Andrews, in September of 2023 under captain Mike McCoy.
It will be all about the golf when the U.S. and GB&I get together again in September at Cypress Point for the Walker Cup Match. But a Walker Cup is so much more than just the golf. And Smith, who will turn 47 in the weeks before the Walker Cup Match at Cypress Point, gets it.
“You see the flag go up, the USA, the colors, there’s such a buildup to it that there’s really nothing it can compare to besides the Ryder Cup,” Smith told Global Golf Post’s Munez.
It is a feeling Smith first experienced at Merion in 2009 and he will feel it again 16 years later at Cypress Point. I suspect it never gets old.
Fowler delayed the start of his professional career until the end of the summer of 2009 to play for the United States in the Walker Cup Match for a second time.
He was the only holdover from the 2007 team, also captained by Marucci, that pulled out a dramatic victory at Royal County Down Golf Club in Ireland. I was always under the impression that Fowler had given his word to Marucci that Fowler would come back and play for Marucci, knowing how much it meant to Marucci to be captaining a U.S. Walker Cup team at Merion, his home course.
I don’t think that little bit of a late start has hurt the 36-year-old Fowler much. Fowler’s PGA Tour bio lists his career earnings in excess of $50 million. I’m quite certain he has made much, much more than that in off-the-course earnings. He remains one of golf’s most lovable figures.
Fowler could always play. He opened his 2025 season at The American Express earlier this month and in the second round, he put together a nifty 10-birdie, no-bogey, 10-under 62 at the Nicklaus Tournament Course in the California desert.
Fowler finished in a tie for 21st place in what used to be the Bob Hope Desert Classic (and it used to be 90 holes, but I digress) while shaking off the rust after not playing since last fall.
Fowler ended a four-year winless drought with a victory in the Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club in 2023, his sixth win on the PGA Tour.
Fowler was a little quiet in 2024, but he still made 17 cuts in 23 starts and earned more than $1.7 million.
I still think he might have a major in him. It’s now been more than 10 years since his memorable 2014 season when he finished in the top five in all four major championships. In March, it will be 10 years since Fowler’s epic win in The Players Championship at the Stadium Course, still his biggest victory.
Let’s put it this way, if Fowler found himself in contention down the stretch in a major championship, it’s not like it would unfamiliar territory. And a Fowler win in a major would be very, very popular.
I started my review of the 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team a year ago with Brian Harman finally earning the first major championship from the group with his dominating victory in the Open Championship in 2023 at Royal Liverpool.
The 38-year-old Georgia Bulldog has been a Bulldog throughout his career on the PGA Tour. His breakout victory in the Open Championship was only the third of his career, but he entered 2025 with more than $38 million in career earnings.
He played in both of the first two stops on the PGA Tour in Hawaii and then missed the cut in last weekend’s American Express.
His 2024 was typically consistent as Harman made 21 cuts in 23 starts, highlighted by a tie for second place in The Players Championship. Harman bankrolled a ho-hum $5.2 million and made the FedEx Cup Playoffs for a remarkable 13th straight season.
Harman was one of captain Jim Furyk’s six captain’s picks for the U.S. team that continued its domination of the Presidents Cup with a victory at The Royal Montreal Golf Club.
Every year there is another talented group of players trying to claw their way on to the PGA Tour. Harman got there more than a decade ago and has shown no signs that he plans to give up his spot in the big leagues of professional golf.
Two members of the U.S. Walker Cup team in 2009 have taken their talents to LIV Golf.
In the case of 35-year-old Peter Uihlein, maybe the maverick LIV Golf is right up his alley. I came away from that Walker Cup thinking Uihlein had the most pure talent on that U.S. team, an assessment he validated, at least somewhat, by capturing the U.S. Amateur crown the following summer at Chambers Bay.
Uihlein has always taken the road less traveled as a professional, beginning his career on what then was known as the European Tour.
He did eventually make his way to the PGA Tour with mixed results. When LIV Golf was born, they didn’t call Uihlein, he called them. He likes to travel and see new places. He never seemed to respond all that well to the structure of the PGA Tour.
Uihlein is part of the RangeGoats team along with two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson, Ben Campbell and fellow Oklahoma State product Matthew Wolff. Maybe someday you’ll be able to see Uihlein on the PGA Tour again, but even if he’s allowed to come back, he might not.
Cameron Tringale had the unwanted label of the PGA Tour player with the most money won without a victory, so the 37-year-old bolted for LIV Golf.
Tringale is a member of Phil Mickelson’s HyFlyers team along with fellow Georgia Tech alum Andy Ogletree, the 2019 U.S. Amateur champion at the Pinehurst Resort, and Brendan Steele.
Looks like LIV Golf holds a match play Team Championship event in Dallas and Tringale went 5-0 for the HyFlyers in that tournament, proving he hasn’t forgotten how to succeed in match play.
There was a third Oklahoma State player on that 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team, in addition to Fowler and Uihlein, and Morgan Hoffmann, a Jersey guy, might have ultimately been the best of the three if tragedy hadn’t struck in his life.
At least, the diagnosis of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy when Hoffmann was at the height of his powers in 2016 should classify as tragic, but the 35-year-old just refuses to let it be.
There is no cure for the muscular dystrophy that first manifested itself when Hoffmann’s right pectoral muscle started to atrophy.
But Hoffmann has pursued every possible alternative medical/holistic remedy he can find. Give up? As they say in Jersey, fuhgeddaboutit.
Dan Rapaport of Golf Digest tracked down Hoffmann in a remote spot in Costa Rica, where Hoffmann was sampling a lifestyle he thought might mitigate his symptoms. It remains one of the most interesting pieces of journalism I’ve read about anything in the last five years. If you Google Hoffmann, you can still find Rapaport’s article. It’s worth a read.
Fast forward to last September. Hoffmann needs a strong finish in the Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation at the Vanderbilt Legends Club’s North Course in Franklin, Tenn. just to maintain conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour for 2025.
He birdies the last three holes to complete a spectacular 6-under 64 in the Korn Ferry Finals event that gives him a tie for third place, his first top-10 finish in a PGA Tour sanctioned event since February of 2017.
Hoffmann played as much as he could on the Korn Ferry in 2024 with little success. With his future in professional tournament golf in jeopardy, Hoffmann got a tie for 24th place in the Albertsons Boise Open, presented by Chevron, and then the tie for third at Vanderbilt to vault himself to 93rd on the Korn Ferry Points List.
He won’t get a lot of opportunities to play, so he’ll have to make the most of the chances he does get. I know who me, and a lot of other people, will be rooting for on the Korn Ferry in 2025.
Bud Cauley saw his promising professional career hit a major speed bump when he was involved in a terrible car accident after missing the cut at The Memorial in Dublin, Ohio in 2018.
The 34-year-old Alabama product probably can’t count how many operations he’s had since then to repair the damage done in that car accident and the after-effects of some of those procedures.
Finally as healthy as he’s been since before that fateful Friday at The Memorial, Cauley made 17 starts in 2024 on a Major Medical Exemption, survived the cut 10 times and banked $638,703.
Cauley had a solid tie for fifth place in the Sanderson Farms Championship at the Country Club of Jackson in Jackson, Miss. during the PGA Tour’s fall schedule. And he opened his 2025 campaign by finishing in a tie for 30th place at the Sony Open, the PGA Tour’s first full-field tournament of the year at Waialae Country Club in Hawaii.
Cauley has made nearly $10 million in his career on the PGA Tour. He’ll have some chances to add to that total this year.
Drew Weaver was the Virginia Tech standout who won the Royal & Ancient’s Amateur Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in 2007 just weeks after one of the most horrifying days any college campus has ever seen. Weaver was on the campus in Blacksburg the day in April of 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people in one of the worst mass killings in U.S. history.
The 37-year-old Weaver was the first American to capture the title in The Amateur Championship since Sigel accomplished the feat in 1979.
Weaver had some success on the Korn Ferry Tour, but never quite made it to the PGA Tour on any kind of consistent basis. It appears Weaver moved on his life when he accepted a position as a financial adviser for Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in 2022.
The final two members of that 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team were Adam Mitchell, a teammate of Harman’s at Georgia and Brendan Gielow, who starred collegiately at Wake Forest. Couldn’t really dig up anything on them after brief stints as professional golfers.
But I’m sure they’ll all be rooting for their 2009 U.S. Walker Cup teammate Nathan Smith when he captains the U.S. team in September at Cypress Point.
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