Thursday At The 50th Walker Cup
Players getting to know the course, a Poulter ace, video looks at design features, Jim Langley's iconic logo, and one day closer to the match start at glorious Cypress Point.
The Walker Cup offers any number of refreshing reminders in contrast to the circus that is the Ryder Cup. The list is long, but this year’s Captains are establishing both the role of a good golf team leader while also making clear they will not meddle excessively with players.
Take GB&I’s Dean Robertson. He’s established a different approach coming into these matches, emphasizing a slow build while injecting some intriguing tactical ideas for the team’s practice. Yet when I asked if the Captain’s agreement establishes which members of team leadership can share information about clubs hit on par-3’s, a perennial issue in college golf and Ryder Cups, the soft-spoken Robertson gave an emphatic answer.
“There is zero chance you’ll see me doing that,” he said. Between his players and their caddies, Robertson suggested he sees very few instances when he’ll be getting involved in mid-match matters. It’s such a refreshing approach in a world of van drivers trying to get in camera shots and grim-looking vice captains relaying state secrets via “team” radios.
Ditto for Nathan Smith, the USA captain who projects a dreamy mix of organized, confident in his views, and even more determined to let his players play once he’s set a lineup.
“I think they're great players,” Smith said with Jackson Koivun and Ben James by his side in the first press conference of the week. “I think their learning curve is so quick. I think you just want to put them in situations to succeed, and I think you just kind of listen to them.”
Thursday’s practice under overcast skies gave way to a brilliant sunny afternoon and players did get a taste of the prevailing northwest winds as they played the ocean holes. Once again, the teams set up with a scripted plan to practice foursomes play before letting players explore the course as they saw fit. The USA team, which planned to play the modified “whiskey run” routing by cutting from the third to the 12th tee, saw one group playing a tense match watched by Fred Couples and volunteers arriving to pick up uniforms. A couple of other players broke off to drill down on a few course details.
Stewart Hagestad wanted to play deeper into the forest and played the 10th and 11th, while Michael LaSasso broke off from the group to hit the 13th tee where he wasn’t entirely sure of his line. Please don’t try this at home if you’re over the age of 22:
The GB&I squad played all 18 holes on Thursday in two groups, starting out with what The Quadrilateral is calling modified fivesomes foursomes. Essentially, the teams played alternate shot but also were free to hit other shots.
The most notable effort came from Luke Poulter, son of Ryder Cup hero Ian, who also hosted the team for a barbecue and match play story session on Wednesday night. After hitting the ball pretty terribly in Wednesday’s practice, Luke Poulter holed out at the first hole from 110 yards with a 56-degree wedge.
Two holes later at the par-3 third playing 155 yards, he hit a “soft 9” in the hole for his first true ace. (He told a fun story about another hole-in-one that he did not see because a tee shot deflected off of a tree.)
His ballstriking noticeably and visually crisper, Poulter thought he’d made a second ace at the iconic 15th. Hitting a 52-degree wedge from 127 yards, “I though I’d holed it, hit it a foot dead center short.”
The teams convened with the USGA rules team for an overview of various course markings, match play matters and other relevant pre-match info.
Of particular interest to those who’ve heard tales of players bombing drives down other fairways here in the annual Stanford-hosted college event: a Captain’s agreement was established some time ago asking players to only play down the fairways “out of respect to the design intent,” said Robertson.