2013 Walker Cup Photos And Wrap-Up
/When you see a week so perfectly align as the Walker Cup at National Golf Links did, it gives a new appreciation to all that goes into making a successful championship. Even with bible of golf architecture in the glorious setting that is Southampton in September, the National exceeded all hopes and dreams as a venue.
Tactically the GB&I team was overwhelmed by the nuances and precision demanded by National Golf Links. An unwillingness to ever use the ground game to approach greens (except on the Redan) cost both sides number shots. Perhaps because they had so many wedges in to greens or simply that modern players don't put the ball on the ground unless forced, but Team USA recovered better and missed approaches in better places. Perhaps it was their nine practice rounds over National or just meticulous preparation, but to see the course architecture separate the sides only further validated the genius of C.B. Macdonald's design.
From Ryan Herrington's reports on the final day, which calls the 17-9 "drubbing" the most lopsided since 1997 at Quaker Ridge, there was this from USA Captain Holtgrieve.
Suffice it to say, Holtgrieve's mood afterward was a far cry from two years earlier at Royal Aberdeen. "This is probably one of the smartest teams I've ever been around as far as managing a golf course," he said in heaping praise on his squad. "I've never seen anything like it."
A few photos, with more coverage to come. All of the galleries from this week are posted here.
**And now I'm awake and able to read, more great coverage from the Walker Cup.
Starting with Golfweek's entire package of stories by McCabe, Miceli, Williams, et. al with Tracy Wilcox's photos in a digital publication style format.
Ryan Lavner analyzes the role of the old guys in clinching the cup for the USA, including Nathan Smith who had strugged in singles play.
He was thinking about his own disappointing career record in this event: 2-4-1, including 0-2-1 in singles.
And he was thinking about the way his foursomes match ended Saturday, when he left a putt short on 18 that cost the Americans a point.
So, after pouring in a 15-foot birdie putt on the eighth green to build a 2-up lead in his singles match against GB&I’s Nathan Kimsey on Sunday, well, yeah, Smith got a little misty.
“You just want it so much,” he said later. “It’s almost overwhelming.”
The USGA also interviewed Smith just moments after his clinching win.
Michael Bamberger with this beautiful passage on The National Golf Links holding its own and then some:
What it was was throw-back cool, a bunch of teenagers and twentysomethings, and old Nathan Smith, playing in the wind, on firm turf twinged with brown, on a course that has barely changed since Bob Jones and Bernard Darwin and their tweedy friends played in the first Walker Cup in 1922. Their 2013 descendants, at times and in places, were flummoxed by the course’s odd challenges.
The 20 golfing gents assembled here hit some drivers when they should have been hitting 6-irons and vice-versa. They chipped with the wrong clubs to the wrong places. They didn’t read the wind correctly on some of their downhill putts. And this was with the benefit of savvy NGL caddies.
Alex Miceli on Max Homa's singles match hole-in-one at the par-3 sixth.
