2021 Walker Cup[ – Syndication Server

Schupak: Four ways to make the Walker Cup better

The Walker Cup is already great, but it can be better.

I love the Walker Cup. Or, to be more accurate, I love most everything about it. Watching amateurs compete in a match play team format is golf at its purest and the Walker Cup is contested on courses superior to those that host the Ryder Cup or Solheim Cup. Well, just because something is great doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon. Look at New Coke. OK, bad example, there, but here’s how I’d make the Walker Cup even better.

The 48th playing of the biennial competition between a team of 10 U.S. male amateur golfers and 10 players from Great Britain and Ireland was staged in early May this year ostensibly due to weather reasons. Florida in the traditional fall date during Hurricane season could have been a (natural) disaster. But I’ve been saying this for a while: The dates need to be shifted permanently to May or early June at the latest.

GB&I may not like it because the golf season across the pond is just getting started, but the reality is that the September date is antiquated for these college-aged players, many of whom plan to turn pro and no longer want to wait and miss out on sponsor’s invites and the chance to earn enough money and qualify for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. The week after the NCAA Men’s Championship finishes (first week of June) is about as late as this competition should be contested. We want to see the best 10 players on each side, not just the best 10 that didn’t turn pro early.

Cole Hammer celebrates making a birdie putt on the 18 hole to win his Foursomes match at the 2021 Walker Cup at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida on Saturday, May 8, 2021. (Photo: Scott Halleran/USGA)

That brings me to my next change. Out of concern for COVID-19, both teams had two alternates available that traveled to the matches. That became important to the success of the matches when a different virus reared its ugly head and 18 of the 24 competitors dealt with a stomach virus. It forced both teams to use alternates for the first time in the 99-year history of the competition. It’s time to expand the roster to 12 members to a team. As Team USA alternate Mac Meissner said, “I worked my butt off to be on this team.”

But he didn’t do so to wear an ear piece all weekend and have a beach holiday. The Ryder Cup already has proved that 12 is the magic number.

Speaking of the much ballyhooed pro version of the Walker Cup, it’s time for the USGA to take a page out of the Ryder Cup playbook and expand the GB&I side to constitute all of Europe. Doing so rejuvenated the Ryder Cup from what was a stale competition into arguably the biggest deal in golf.

While GB&I put up a noble fight, losing 14-12, the U.S. now holds a 38-9-1 all-time record in the competition. It isn’t quite the Harlem Globetrotters dominance of the Washington Generals, but it is lopsided enough to resemble Alabama over the rest of the SEC. Four years from now when GB&I returns to the U.S. for the matches at Cypress Point, it is likely that none of the competitors will have been born since GB&I last won on U.S. soil (in 2001). We’ll never know how much of a difference Spain’s Jon Rahm and Norway’s Viktor Hovland would have made, but I’d love to find out from the next generation of continental Europe stars and put to bed the nickname of “the Walk-over Cup.”

And while we’re borrowing from the Ryder Cup, let’s add a third day of competition. This has been widely discussed before and I just don’t see what the downside to another day of competition should be. Two years of buildup for two days? We can do better than that. We’ve got the best players assembled, so let them settle who’s best on the course and enough with the practice rounds. Even U.S. team captain Nathaniel Crosby seemed to be on board with several of these suggestions.

“I’d love to see it go to 12 players, a couple alternates and three days,” he said. “The guys fight so hard to get here. It takes two years. But that’s my opinion, and I’m sure that there’s a dogfight back in some conference room that I’m not invited to on that.

“But this has been the thrill of a lifetime. When I say something out of bounds like that, it’s certainly not a reflection of the USGA’s opinion or the R&A’s opinion, and they’ve earned their right to continue the tradition as is. For me to say anything to have a subtle variation of the format would be out of bounds for me.”

Tradition be damned. If baseball’s National League can do away with pitchers batting after all these years, the Walker Cup can take the necessary steps to evolve and continue to be the pinnacle of amateur golf.

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Alternate Hour: Reserves Mac Meissner and Jake Bolton shine in morning foursomes at 48th Walker Cup

USA’s Mac Meissner and GB&I’s Jake Bolton both were called into active duty as illness sidelined players during the first Walker Cup session

JUNO BEACH, Fla. – When Mac Meissner drop-kicked his tee shot at the second hole of Seminole Golf Club into the water, it made him sick to his stomach.

“I thought I was going to go right back to where I was on Thursday night, just throwing up,” he said.

Meissner needed two IV bags that evening, one of several players at the 48^th Walker Cup stricken with a stomach virus. But the SMU senior, who was first alternate for the U.S. squad, rose to the occasion, teaming with Ricky Castillo for a 2-up victory in the third of four morning foursomes match over Jack Dyer and Matty Lamb of Great Britain & Ireland.

Meissner wasn’t the only alternate called into active duty. Jake Bolton partnered with Angus Flanagan for GB&I and nailed clutch shot after clutch shot on the home stretch to secure a point for his team, 1 up, over Stewart Hagestad and William Mouw in the final foursomes match of the morning.

It was something out of a bad script for a movie – an outbreak of food poisoning knocking several players for a loop. Imagine an astronaut training for two years to go to the moon and the night before blast off falling sick. Bolton, who had avoided the Walker Cup plague, got a phone call from his captain, Stuart Wilson, late last night telling him to be ready to go. He thought he was here simply coming from England to provide moral support, but was happy to put the pom-poms down and drained a 35-foot putt at the 17^th hole to win the hole and give his team a 1-up lead.

“We had to make it,” Bolton said.

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Rescuing par from a waste bunker left of the green was no easy feat. How good was it? “It will probably be the best up and down of the week,” he said.

Then, for good measure, at 18, he stuffed a 5-iron from 175 yards into a strong breeze to 8 feet that all but locked up victory. If that’s the last shot he ever hits at the Walker Cup, it was a heckuva walk-off. But Bolton smiled at the thought of possibly getting an encore on Sunday.

“If I’m needed, I’ll be there,” he said.

As for Meissner, he heard rumblings throughout the day on Friday that Team USA might require his services, after all. How sure was he that he would be in a ceremonial role this week, soaking in the atmosphere and the experience of playing practice rounds at famed Seminole? He told his father, a urologist, who was on call this weekend in San Antonio, not to come. But as he and his teammate dealt with a stomach virus, his chance of playing hinged on how Pierceson Coody, John Pak and Tyler Strafaci recovered from the illness that made its way through both locker rooms. Ultimately, U.S. team captain Nathaniel Crosby decided that asking his players under the weather to play 36 holes was too big of an ask. Crosby informed his team around 9 o’clock during a meeting.

“I was instantly nervous but so excited,” said Meissner, who said it was too late for his parents to attend. “I worked my butt off to be able to have a chance to play and for that dream to come true has been so cool.”

Meissner was such an afterthought to play at the beginning of the week that it didn’t seem to matter that he didn’t have the same pants as his other teammates. But he and Castillo at least had some familiarity with their games, playing together in the first practice round on Sunday at Seminole and in the practice session in Orlando at Bay Hill. Nevertheless, they got off to a rocky start when Castillo tugged his tee shot left on the first hole and into a dicey lie in a bunker.

“I was thinking if he gets it inside 30 yards of the green it would be an amazing shot and he got it on to the fringe,” Castillo said.

But then Meissner hit “the worst drive of my life,” at the second before calming down and finding his rhythm.

“We were rock solid after that. It was pretty sick,” Meissner said.

No pun intended.

Meissner was quick to credit Castillo for hitting the shot that turned the match in their favor, a spectacular explosion from a bunker at No. 8 that led to a win for Team USA. But Meissner hit an equally impressive bunker shot. At the par-5 14th, Castillo’s second shot from 185 yards landed on the front of the green but before any of the fans could even begin to clap, the ball backed up all the way into the front bunker. It was a classic example of what they call at Seminole “green visited.”

“You got this,” Castillo said.

“No, I don’t. This lie sucks,” Meissner said of their ball that had rolled into a rake mark.

Meissner splashed to three feet and Castillo cleaned up for birdie. When GB&I took three putts from 30 feet, the match was even and Team USA won the 15th with Meissner canning the short birdie putt. Castillo delivered the knock out punch with an approach to 6 feet at 18 that was conceded when GB&I made bogey.

For Meissner, his foursomes performance may be his only chance to compete in the Walker Cup, but if that’s the case he’s perfectly pleased knowing his record will forever be etched in the record book as 1-0-0.

“I’ve got the best record in Walker Cup history if this is only my match,” he cracked before turning serious. “I’ve been blessed.”