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Saturday, September 7, 2019

Fitzpatrick, Scott help Great Britain & Ireland grab lead over U.S. after Day 1 of Walker Cup Match


   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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