It was in the spring of 2018 when Houston teen Cole Hammer began his inexorable rise to No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR).
When Hammer teamed with one of his junior buddies, Garrett Barber, to capture the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Jupiter Hills in Tequesta, Fla. in May, it was just a preview of things to come.
Hammer would reach the semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol Golf Club’s Upper Course in Springfield, N.J. that summer before falling to another teen phenom, Akshay Bhatia of Wake Forest, N.C., in a 4 and 2 decision that featured some high-level golf.
Hammer headed for the Chicago area, where he was the co-medalist in qualifying before capturing the Western Amateur, defeating Alabama standout Davis Riley, 1-up, in the final at Sunset Ridge Country Club in Northfield, Ill.
Hammer’s roll continued on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula as he was the co-medalist in qualifying for match play in the U.S. Amateur, finishing it off with a masterful four-birdie, no-bogey 4-under 68 at Spyglass Hill. He would again reach the semifinals at iconic Pebble Beach before falling to eventual champion Viktor Hovland of Norway, 3 and 2. That would be the same Viktor Hovland who just claimed his second career PGA Tour victory Sunday in the Mayakoba Golf Classic in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.
Hammer, just a freshman, would become the centerpiece of a young Texas team that would reach the semifinals of the 2019 NCAA Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. where the Longhorns hooked up with defending champion Oklahoma State and Hovland.
Texas might have been young, but the Longhorns relished the chance to deny their Big 12 rival a second straight NCAA crown. Hammer found himself matched with Matthew Wolff, who, a day earlier, had claimed the NCAA individual title by five shots.
No problem. Hammer birdied six of the first nine holes and steamrolled Wolff, another of the PGA Tour’s rising stars these days, 4 and 3, leading the Longhorns to a stunning 3-2 upset. They would fall, 3-2, in the Final Match to a veteran Stanford team, Hammer suffering a 4 and 3 setback at the hands of Isaiah Salinda.
Hammer hit the wall a little after that, as might be expected after a breathtaking rise to the top of the amateur game. He failed to make it to match play in the U.S. Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort, one of the first casualties in a bulky 27-for-3 playoff.
By the time Hammer arrived at Royal Liverpool in Merseyside, England for the Walker Cup Match, he was No. 1 in the WAGR. He lost two matches, but helped fuel a remarkable rally in the Sunday singles by the U.S. side with a 6 and 5 dismantling of Great Britain & Ireland veteran Conor Purcell.
The Red, White & Blue won eight of 10 singles matches that day to pull out a 15.5-10.5 victory.
Hammer and 15 other top American amateurs will be in Florida next week to audition for the 2021 Walker Cup Match, which will be held at the iconic Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla. in May, the first time the Cup will be contested in the U.S. in the spring.
The practice session will be held at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club and Lodge and at Lake Nona Country Club in Orlando, Fla. Bay Hill will be the site a week later for the Palmer Cup, a U.S. vs. The World battle of college standouts. The Palmer Cup was originally scheduled to be played at Lahinch Golf Club on the west coast of Ireland in July, but this being 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic complicating things worldwide, the Palmer Cup was rescheduled for Christmas week at Bay Hill.
Hammer will arrive at Bay Hill next week at No. 25 in the WAGR. The pandemic ripped a giant hole in the amateur schedule when the 2019-2020 NCAA Division I season was called off in the middle of March. There were still competitive opportunities, but Hammer was probably not his sharpest when he missed a playoff for the final three spots in the match-play bracket in the U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes by a shot in August.
What would normally have been a busy fall of college tournaments was again hampered by the pandemic, although the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference did manage to play a little. Texas played under the spotlight in the East Lake Cup, falling to Big 12 rival Oklahoma in the semifinals before cruising past Texas Tech in the third-place match.
I wouldn’t be surprised in the least to see Hammer use these last couple of weeks of an ill-fated 2020 as a launching pad toward one last run of amateur golf that will culminate in the Walker Cup Match at Seminole and a deep run by the Longhorns in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The USGA knew a spring Walker Cup would come in the midst of a busy college postseason, although I doubt any of the players will be complaining about too much golf, especially with the opportunity to tee it up at Seminole on an international stage. Pretty sure that weekend in May falls between the end of the conference championships and the six NCAA Regional championships.
The scheduling has been seen in some corners as an experiment in that it would allow top college juniors and seniors to play in a spring Walker Cup as opposed to the traditional late-summer dates that essentially forces them to delay the start of their professional careers by the better part of a year.
Two of Hammer’s U.S. teammates at Royal Liverpool, Florida State senior John Pak, No. 7 in the WAGR, and veteran mid-amateur Stewart Hagestad, winner of the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Stonewall and No. 10 in the WAGR, will be part of the cast of characters assembled in Orlando next week.
They will be reunited with the captain of the winning 2019 team, Nathaniel Crosby, who, much like George “Buddy’ Marucci in 2009 at his home course at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course, will captain the U.S. Walker Cup team on his home course at Seminole.
Of the 16 top American amateurs invited by the USGA’s International Team Selection Committee in December of 2018 to audition for the 2019 Walker Cup Match, seven eventually made the cut.
Georgia Tech’s Andy Ogletree and Vanderbilt’s John Augenstein played their way onto the 2019 U.S. team by reaching the final of the U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst and played key roles in the comeback victory for the Americans.
Ogletree and Augenstein had retained their amateur status for much of 2020 in order to cash in on the exemptions they earned at Pinehurst to play in the Masters, which, of course, moved from April to November because of the pandemic. They were the only two amateurs to survive the 36-hole cut in that most unusual of Masters and Ogletree was five shots better than Augenstein to earn low-amateur honors. Both promptly turned pro in the last month.
One of Hammer’s Texas teammates and several of his Big 12 rivals will also be represented in the U.S. Walker Cup practice session next week.
Texas junior Pierceson Coody, one of the twin grandsons of 1971 Masters champion Charles Coody on the Longhorns’ roster out of Plano Texas, is No. 9 in the WAGR, the fourth-highest American on the list. Coody was also part of the Texas run to the Final Match of the 2019 NCAA Championship at The Blessings.
Two redshirt seniors on the Oklahoma roster, Garret Reband of York, S.C. and No. 12 in the WAGR, and Quade Cummins of Weatherford, Okla. and No. 16 in the WAGR, will also get a chance to audition for the U.S. team. Both were on a Sooners team that dropped a hard-fought 3-2 decision to Texas in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Championship at The Blessings.
Oklahoma State junior Austin Eckroat of Edmond, Okla. and No. 17 in the WAGR was overshadowed by Hovland and Wolff, but went 3-0 in match play in the Sooners’ run to the 2018 NCAA Championship at Karsten Creek Golf Club in Stillwater, Okla. and was a key member of the 2019 team that fell to Texas in the semifinals at The Blessings. Eckroat defeated Pierceson Coody to collect one of the Cowboys’ two points against the Longhorns.
Baylor’s Cooper Dossey, a fifth-year senior from Austin, Texas and No. 31 in the WAGR, gives the Big 12 another representative in the Orlando practice session.
At No. 3 in the WAGR, Georgia’s Davis Thompson of St. Simons Island, Ga. is the highest-ranked American on the list. He was near the top of the leaderboard with an opening-round 69 in this fall’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club, but failed to make the cut.
An SEC rival of Thompson’s, Florida sophomore Ricky Castillo, is right behind him in the WAGR at No. 4 and that lofty status earned Castillo an invite to Orlando. Castillo of Yorba Linda, Calif. was a decorated junior player before joining the Gators.
Also headed for Orlando are two players who met in a memorable semifinal in the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur at Baltusrol, Michael Thorbjornsen, the eventual winner from Wellesley, Mass., and Cameron Sisk of San Diego are rivals in the Pac-12 these days. The Pac-12 was one conference that shut down all its athletic programs for the fall semester, golf included, because of the pandemic.
Thorbjornsen, a sophomore at Stanford and No. 33 in the WAGR, needed 21 holes to get past Sisk, a junior at Arizona State and No. 27 in the WAGR, on his way to the U.S. Junior Amateur crown at Baltusrol. Both reached the quarterfinals of last summer’s U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes before falling.
A couple of other players who made a splash at Bandon Dunes, Pepperdine’s William Mouw, a sophomore from Chino, Calif. and No. 13 in the WAGR, and SMU’s Mac Meissner, a senior from San Antonio, Texas and No. 21 in the WAGR, were also invited to the U.S. Walker Cup practice session.
Mouw was having a wonderful freshman season and the Waves were No. 1 in the GolfStat rankings when the 2019-’20 college season was shut down by the pandemic. He also reached the quarterfinals in the U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes.
Meissner, who had helped the Mustangs grab the final spot in match play in the 2019 NCAA Championship at The Blessings, opened qualifying for match play in the U.S. Amateur with a spectacular 8-under 64 at the Dunes before finishing in a tie for seventh in qualifying. Meissner reach the second round of match play before falling.
Illinois State’s David Perkins, a senior from East Peoria, Ill. and No. 35 in the WAGR, earned a spot in the match-play bracket at Bandon Dunes before falling in the opening round. But his amateur credentials impressed somebody at the USGA enough to land him an invitation to next week’s Walker Cup practice session.
As the U.S. Amateur champion at Bandon Dunes, Tyler Strafaci earned an automatic spot on the 2021 U.S. Walker Cup team. I was under the impression in August that Strafaci of Davie, Fla. and No. 23 in the WAGR was going to return to Georgia Tech for the extra year the NCAA offered to make up for the unfinished 2019-’20 season.
It does not appear that Strafaci has returned to Georgia Tech, although he is still an amateur and will be at Bay Hill and Lake Nona next week.
Which brings us to the two other veterans of the 2019 victory at Royal Liverpool.
Pak of Scotch Plains, N.J. was the Atlantic Coast Conference individual champion as a sophomore with the Seminoles in 2019, beating Ogletree by a shot. He was the only amateur to make the cut in September’s rescheduled U.S. Open at Winged Foot, finishing in a tie for 51st place.
There are few more pressure-packed situations in amateur golf than playing a Walker Cup Match in the United Kingdom, especially with the locals sensing a victory for Great Britain & Ireland as they were after Day 1 in 2019. But Pak won all three times Crosby put him out there, including a 2 and 1 victory over Scotland’s Euan Walker in the Sunday singles.
Hagestad, so impressive in battling from 4-down with five holes to play to win the 2016 U.S. Mid-Am at Stonewall over Scott Harvey on the 37th hole of a memorable final, is vying to become a U.S. Walker Cup selection for the third straight cycle. I’m sure that kind of experience will be valued by captain Crosby.
Crosby teamed his veteran with the youngest U.S. player to ever tee it up in a Walker Cup Match in Bhatia. They lost a foursomes match, but Crosby kept them together and they won a Sunday foursomes match as the U.S. started to dig out from the 7-5 deficit it faced after Day 1. Hagestad rolled to a 5 and 3 victory over former UNLV standout Harry Hall to keep the U.S. momentum rolling in the Sunday singles.
Hagestad’s run to the quarterfinals in the U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes did nothing to hurt his chances, either. The guy is still playing at a very high level.
The U.S. leads the Walker Cup series, 37-9-1, but it is no longer the slam dunk it once was. The U.S. advantage is just 9-7 since 1979.
I’ve theorized that the introduction of match play into the NCAA Championship has led to an obvious improvement in that format among the college players who make up the bulk of the U.S. team. Not having that experience in 2020 might be a factor in May of next year.
Spring has always been the season of rebirth, especially in places forced to endure cold winters. But the spring of 2021 promises to be not just the end of a long, cold winter, but possibly the end of a pandemic that has affected our lives for what has to have been the longest year many of us have ever experienced.
Yes, you could play golf in 2020, but travel was difficult and many events, like the U.S. Junior Amateur and the U.S. Mid-Amateur weren’t played at all. There were no U.S. Open or U.S. Amateur qualifiers. A Walker Cup is always a reason to celebrate the game. This one, in May of 2021 at venerable Seminole, might be even a little more special.
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