The Walker Cup Is Back And Where It All Started: Hoylake
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Royal Liverpool to be exact, continuing the R&A’s recent tendency to take an event that could go to more exotic locales to Open venues. (I will not complain in 2023 when the Old Course hosts again, assuming there are amateur golfers in 2023.)
But this is nearly 100 years since the first “unofficial” event that became the Walker Cup was played at Hoylake, so we’ll celebrate that near-anniversary when Chick Evans, Bobby Jones, Francis Ouimet and Captain William Fownes were part of a 10-man team that played against Tommy Armour, Cyril Tolley, Roger Wethered and friends.
Anyway…
Team USA arrives two years after routing Great Britain & Ireland in Los Angeles, with only Stewart Hagestad returning from that squad. And the GB&I squads have won four straight, as Declan McGlinley notes here.
You can meet Team USA here in slightly over-the-top fashion.
The Daily Mail’s Derek Lawrenson profiles USA captain Nathaniel Crosby, a former U.S. Amateur champion taking over for Spider Miller.
Matthew Jordan, a 2017 Walker Cupper and now professional golfer, gives a tour of his home clubhouse and the amazing memorabilia recalling past competitions.
Hoylake, a much-revised H.S. Colt effort, appears to be in fantastic shape…
In an apparent nod to the old British Pathe films, sights and sounds from the practice round (in color, minus the newsreel music:
Television coverage, sadly, is limited. Screen grabs from the official site of Sky and Golf Channel highlights shows:
