No visiting team has come out on top in a Walker Cup Match
since the first round of George “Buddy” Marucci’s two-term captaincy of the
U.S. team resulted in a victory over Great Britain & Ireland in 2007 at
Royal County Down.
That has as much to do with the rising talent level on the
GB&I side with Brits and Scots and Irishmen increasingly honing their
talents at American colleges as it does with any failings on the U.S. team.
Exhibits A & B in that regard came at the top of
GB&I captain Craig Watson’s lineup for Saturday afternoon’s singles matches
in the 47th Walker Cup Match at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in
Hoylake, England.
England’s Alex Fitzpatrick, coming off a freshman season
during which he helped Wake Forest reach the quarterfinals of the NCAA
Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark., and Scotland’s
Sandy Scott, a senior at Texas Tech, picked up a couple of hard-fought
victories to spark home-standing GB&I to a 5-3 advantage in the singles
matches and a 7-5 lead after 12 mostly hotly-contested matches.
Why the Walker Cup Match is not being televised live is one
of those mysteries of the universe, but it sort of sounds like the Royal &
Ancient, which controls the broadcast rights, didn’t think it was worth the
expense to put it on.
I’m old enough to remember when there were sporting events
you wish were on TV that just weren’t. And no, there was no such thing as
live-streaming back in those days. So, not having the option of watching these
matches on TV is, well, sort of quaint. Maybe they could try pay-per-view next
time.
With the U.S. pulling off a 2-2 draw in those pesky foursome
matches Saturday morning, never a strength for any U.S. team, the afternoon
singles teed off with a match between Fitzpatrick, No. 36 in the World Amateur Golf
Ranking (WAGR), and Texas sophomore Cole Hammer, No. 1 in the WAGR.
After a blistering stretch of golf that stretched from the
spring of 2018, when he teamed with fellow American Junior Golf Association
(AJGA) standout Garrett Barber to capture the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball
Championship at Jupiter Hills in Tequesta, Fla., to the spring of 2019 when he
led the Longhorns to the Final Match in the NCAA Championship at The Blessings,
Hammer had cooled off a little this summer.
Fitzpatrick made a birdie at the 18th hole to
close out a 2-up victory over Hammer, whom U.S. captain Nathaniel Crosby sat in
the morning foursome matches.
Scott then made six birdies to pull out a 1-up victory over
Georgia Tech senior Andy Ogletree, who was so impressive in winning the U.S.
Amateur at Pinehurst last month.
In between those two matches, Scotland’s Euan Walker, No. 13
in the WAGR, pulled out a 2-up victory over Steven Fisk, the runnerup in the
NCAA Championship’s individual chase as a senior at Georgia Southern last spring
and No. 10 in the WAGR.
Vanderbilt senior John Augenstein, the runnerup to Ogletree
in a tremendous U.S. Amateur final at Pinehurst and No. 14 in the WAGR, John
Pak, the Atlantic Coast Conference individual champion as a junior at Florida
State last spring and No. 19 in the WAGR, and Brandon Wu, who led Stanford to
the NCAA crown as a senior last spring and No. 8 in the WAGR, stopped the
bleeding for the Stars & Stripes with match wins.
Augenstein, whose considerable match-play prowess was on
full display at Pinehurst, claimed a 2 and 1 victory over Ireland’s Conor
Purcell, No. 25 in the WAGR.
Pak gutted out a 1-up victory over another Irishman, James
Sugrue, a popular winner of The Amateur Championship this summer at Portmarnock
outside of Dublin over his GB&I teammate Walker.
Wu delayed the start of his pro career because he wanted to
be part of this Walker Cup. He played the weekend after making the cut at the
U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and took the unusual step of crossing the pond to
successfully qualify for this summer’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
Wu was the most decisive winner of the day, claiming a 4 and
2 victory over Englishman Tom Sloman, who finished in a tie for second in
qualifying for match play in the U.S. Amateur last month and is No. 39 in the
WAGR.
But GB&I won the final two matches left on the course as
just-turned 17-year-old Conor Gough, the English phenom who is No. 3 in the
WAGR, edged Isaiah Salinda, a teammate of Wu’s on Stanford’s national
championship team and No. 20 in the WAGR, 2-up, and Ireland’s Caolan Rafferty, the
old man on the GB&I side at 26 and No. 37 in the WAGR, topped Alex Smalley,
who completed an outstanding college career at Duke last spring and is No. 21
in the WAGR, 2 and 1.
In a bit of inspired captaining, Crosby put the two U.S.
Amateur final combatants, Augenstein and Ogletree, together in the Walker Cup
Match opener Saturday morning against Fitzpatrick and Purcell, but Augenstein
and Ogletree suffered a 2 and 1 setback in the foursome match.
Pak and Salinda rattled off wins at the 11th, 12th
and 13th holes on their way to a 2 and 1 victory over a pair of
Scots, Scott and Walker.
I liked Crosby’s thought of making a foursome pair out of
his oldest player, Stewart Hagestad, the winner of the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur in
an epic final at Stonewall, and his youngest player, Akshay Bhatia, the
left-hander from Wake Forest, N.C. who plans to skip college and go directly to
the pro ranks. They hold impressive WAGR ratings of Nos. 7 and 5, respectively.
But the GB&I team of Harry Hall, who wrapped up a solid
college career at UNLV last spring, and Gough, the teen sensation, claimed a 2
and 1 decision.
Wu and Smalley – whenever you can put Stanford and Duke
together in anything, you just do it – managed to make it a draw in the
foursome matches with a 2 and 1 victory over Sloman and 20-year-old Englishman
Thomas Plumb.
The U.S. team that rolled to a 19-7 victory over GB&I at
Los Angeles Country Club two years ago might have been our strongest group
since I got to witness Rickie Fowler and Co. win the Walker Cup Match 10 years
ago in the second half of Marucci’s two-term captaincy on Marucci’s home course,
the famed East Course at Merion Golf Club.
GB&I will enter Sunday’s matches needing to claim 6.5
points to give the home side a Walker Cup victory. Crosby, for one, isn’t
conceding a thing just yet.
“You know, these guys have tremendous games,” Crosby told
the USGA website concerning his U.S. side. “They’ve won a lot of golf
tournaments to be here and if they just play their games (Sunday), we’ll see
where the chips fall.”
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