One of the more intriguing matches of 2018 came in the
semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Upper Course in
Springfield, N.J. when two players clearly destined for stardom, Cole Hammer of
Houston and Akshay Bhatia of Wake Forest, N.C., hooked up with a spot in the
final on the line.
Bhatia, the precocious left-hander, got the lead on the
front nine and never let Hammer, who was going to join the Texas program at the
end of the summer, back in the match in a 4 and 2 victory. Bhatia fell in an
epic final with Michael Thorbjornsen of Wellesely, Mass. that wasn’t decided
until the 36th and final hole of the match when Thorbjornsen
prevailed, 1-up.
A couple of weeks later, Bhatia wowed the golf world with
his deft chip-in for eagle from the back of the 18th green at
Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. that gave him his second straight Boys
Junior PGA Championship.
A couple of weeks after Bhatia’s stunning victory at
Valhalla, Hammer was one of the stars at the U.S. Amateur at one of America’s
most iconic courses, the Pebble Beach Golf Links. He earned a share of the
qualifying medalist honors by adding a 4-under-par 68 at Spyglass Hills Golf
Course to the 2-under 69 he shot at Pebble Beach.
Hammer made it all the way to the semifinals before falling
to eventual champion Viktor Hovland, the Oklahoma State standout from Norway
who claimed a hard-fought 3 and 2 victory.
It wasn’t too surprising then, when the United States Golf
Association announced the 16 players who will get together next month under the
watchful eye of United States captain Nathaniel Crosby as potential candidates
for his team in next summer’s Walker Cup Match, that Hammer and Bhatia were
among those receiving invitations.
The 2019 Walker Cup Match will be hosted by Great Britain
& Ireland Sept. 7 and 8 at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England.
The U.S. team has a tough act to follow after the Stars & Stripes cruised
to an emphatic 19-7 victory in September of 2017 at Los Angeles Country Club.
It might have been one of more talented groups of U.S.
amateurs ever assembled for a Walker Cup Match. And it had the added motivation
of getting a victory for captain Spider Miller, whose U.S. team had been
spanked by a similar margin two years early at Royal Lytham and St. Anne’s Golf
Club.
Former Stanford standout Maverick McNealy, the lone holdover
from that whipping in England, former Texas star Doug Ghim and California’s
Collin Morikawa each went 4-0, the first time in the long history of the event
that three players went unbeaten in four matches.
The 56-year-old Crosby, winner of the 1981 U.S. Amateur at
The Olympic Club, was an inspired choice to captain the next two U.S. Walker
Cup sides. Not only was the son of Bing Crosby, an American singing and golfing
icon, a member of the 1983 winning U.S. side at Royal Liverpool, but he resides
in South Florida and is a member at Seminole Golf Club, which will host the
2021 Walker Cup Match the next time it is contested in the United States.
Crosby is not guaranteed to be the U.S. captain in 2021, but
it appears the USGA is following the same winning game plan it used a decade
ago when Haverford High graduate Buddy Marucci captained the U.S. in a victory
in 2007 at Royal County Down Golf Club in Northern Ireland and then came back
two years later to guide the U.S. to a win in 2009 on Marucci’s home course,
the historic East Course at Merion Golf Club.
There is no guarantee that the final 10-man U.S. roster will
come out of the 16 players who will gather for next month’s practice session.
Six of the players invited to the 2016 practice session made the roster for the
2017 Walker Cup Match.
The USGA has some guaranteed spots on the 2019 roster, one
of which goes to the U.S. Amateur champion, who will be crowned Aug. 18 at the
Donald Ross masterpiece, the Pinehurst Resort’s No. 2 Course.
The USGA is simply making official what has usually been
customary as the U.S. Amateur champion has nearly always earned a spot on the
team. Former Clemson standout Doc Redman was probably not on the radar for the
2017 U.S. team until his U.S. Amateur victory at Riviera Country Club that
summer.
The top three Americans in the World Amateur Golf Ranking
(WAGR) at some point in early August will get automatic invitations to join the
team. That trio on Thanksgiving weekend of 2018 are No. 1 Justin Suh of
Southern California, No. 2 Cal’s Morikawa and No. 4 Mississippi’s Braden
Thornberry, the NCAA individual champion in 2017.
All three have apparently let it be known that they will be
pursuing their professional aspirations by the end of next summer. Morikawa and
Thornberry were part of that powerful 2017 U.S. team. Suh, the reigning Pac-12
individual champion, was probably on the short list of players who just missed
being invited to join that 2017 team.
The top three Americans in the WAGR after those three are
Oklahoma State sophomore Matt Wolff (No. 5), Alabama senior Davis Riley (No. 9)
and Hammer (No. 11).
If you think Bhatia’s time is still to come, that he still
has college and several more years of amateur golf ahead of him, think again.
Bhatia, No. 28 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), has no intention to go
to college. He’s turning pro sooner, rather than later, although he’ll prolong
his amateur career for a chance to represent the United States at Royal
Liverpool
Wolff and Riley are both among the group invited to tee it
up in the Walker Cup practice session. They squared off in the NCAA
Championship’s Final Match last spring with Wolff claiming a 4 and 3 victory as
the Cowboys swept to a 5-0 victory on their home course at Karsten Creek Golf
Club. Riley also fell to Hammer in the final of the Western Amateur
Championship at Sunset Ridge Golf Club in Northfield, Ill.
As is often the case, a good way to impress the USGA is to
play well in the U.S. Amateur and four of the eight quarterfinalists last
summer at Pebble Beach are candidates for the U.S. Walker Cup team, including
Hammer, Riley, Vanderbilt senior Will Gordon, No. 34 in the WAGR, and
Stanford’s Isaiah Salinda, No. 31 in the WAGR.
Gordon fell to Salinda in the quarterfinals at Pebble Beach.
To get to the quarterfinals at Pebble Beach, Salinda pulled
off a hard-fought, 1-up win over the hero of Stonewall, 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur
champion Stewart Hagestad, who has played at a high level ever since his
dramatic comeback victory at the ‘Wall and is No. 15 in the WAGR, in the round
of 16.
Hagestad fired a brilliant 5-under 66 at Pebble Beach in the
second round of qualifying for the U.S. Amateur and made a nice run in match
play. That earned him an invitation to audition for captain Crosby. It also
made him the only veteran of the 2017 U.S. victory at Los Angeles Country Club,
a course he played growing up, to join the group being considered for the 2019
team.
Two other mid-ams, Matt Parziale, the golfing firefighter
from Brockton, Mass. who captured the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at the
Capital City Golf Club’s Crabapple Course in Atlanta, and Matt O’Connell, the
former North Carolina standout who won this year’s U.S. Mid-Am title at
Charlotte Country Club.
O’Connell, No. 24 in the WAGR, had been considering trying
to qualify for the European Tour, but apparently reconsidered since turning pro
would force him to pass up an exemption into the 2019 U.S. Open and a likely
invitation to the 2019 Masters. And the winner of the previous year’s U.S.
Mid-Am has made the U.S. Walker Cup the following year with regularity in
recent cycles.
Gordon’s Vanderbilt teammate, junior John Augenstein, No. 27
in the WAGR, will join him for the U.S. Walker Cup practice session.
Augenstein’s performance in match play in leading the Commodores to the
Southeastern Conference championship as a freshman two springs ago was fairly
epic.
Salinda’s Stanford teammate, senior Brandon Wu, No. 45 in
the WAGR, will join him among those playing in the Walker Cup practice session.
Auburn sophomore Brandon Mancheno, No. 48 in the WAGR, lost
in a playoff for the individual title in the NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek
and was unconscious during a Tigers’ spring that included an SEC team title and
a spot in the final four of match play at Karsten Creek. That run alone makes
him deserving of a look for the U.S. Walker Cup team.
Rounding out the 16 invited to audition for the 2019 U.S.
Walker Cup team are Texas A&M senior Chandler Phillips, No. 12 in the WAGR,
Clemson senior Bryson Nimmer, No. 36 in the WAGR, Duke senior Alex Smalley and
Georgia Tech junior Tyler Strafacci.
The 2017 cycle caught a group of collegians who were playing
great golf and, for the most part, were a year, or a little less, from embarking
on a pro career. But this crew of collegians is very strong. And, as I
mentioned in a post in the aftermath of that U.S. romp in Los Angeles, the
advent of match play in the NCAA Championship has made our collegians much more
experienced in the ways of that idiosyncratic version of the game than were
their predecessors.
Pure talent is pure talent. But dealing with a situation in
which your opponent drops a 30-foot par putt and you three-putt to lose a hole
that you had already mentally put in the win column is quite another.
Particularly when the 30-foot putt is punctuated by a roar from the GB&I’s
rabid following that can nearly be heard across the Atlantic Ocean. Just
sayin’.
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