Amateur golf’s transatlantic match is 104 years old. George Herbert Walker, the USGA president who put up the trophy in 1920, was grandfather to one American president and great grandfather to another. Of the 50 matches played since, the USA had won 40 and Great Britain and Ireland nine. This was the 51st, the first ever staged at Lahinch and only the third on the island of Ireland.
By lunchtime on Sunday it was over. That was the honest read of it. Great Britain and Ireland had gone into the morning foursomes a point up and come out of them three points down, beaten 4–0 in a session that took about three hours and felt like it took the whole week with it.
Ten singles matches remained. To win the Walker Cup outright GB&I needed seven of the ten points on offer. In 104 years of the match, no side had ever turned a three point deficit into a win on the final afternoon. Lahinch, on the Clare coast, in the kind of wind that reorganises your golf swing without asking, did not look like the place to start.
Four and a half hours later Josh Hill was standing in a greenside bunker on the eighteenth with the Walker Cup in his hands, and the arithmetic came down to whether he could get it out.
What the foursomes did, and did not, decide
Foursomes is the format that punishes a team rather than a player, and the American pairs were relentless with it on Sunday morning. Four matches, four wins, no let up. The scoreboard went from 6½ to 5½ in GB&I's favour to 9½ to 6½ against them.
What it did not do was change the order. The singles line up had already been set, and captain Dean Robertson had loaded the top of it. Stuart Grehan out early against Preston Stout. Jack Whaley in the third match. The idea, in a wind like that, is to get points on the board before the American anchors have anything to anchor.
It worked almost immediately. Grehan beat Stout 2&1, his second win over the same man in two days. Luke Poulter took out Ethan Fang 3&1. And in the third match, something closer to a demolition.
Eight and seven means the match finished on the eleventh green. It means Whaley was eight holes up with seven to play in a format where the average margin is closer to two. Nothing in the week had suggested it was coming.
The middle, where it was actually won
Comebacks get told through the clinching putt, but they are usually won three matches earlier by someone nobody mentions. Tyler Weaver beat Jay Leng Jr 4&3. Eliot Baker beat Stewart Hagestad, the most experienced American in the field, by a single hole. Niall Sheils Donegan halved with Kihei Akina, and Connor Graham halved with Miles Russell.
Add it up and with two matches still out on the course, GB&I had 6½ points from the afternoon. They needed seven. The USA had taken the bottom two, Ryder Cowan beating Ben Bolton 3&2 and Josiah Gilbert beating Sam Easterbrook 4&3, which meant every remaining route to the cup ran through the anchor match.
Josh Hill, and a bunker shot
Hill and Tyler Watts came to the eighteenth all square. Hill missed the green into a bunker. Watts had a putt to win the hole, halve the match, and leave the Walker Cup where it had been for the previous five stagings, which is to say in American hands.
Watts missed. Hill splashed out to a few feet. He holed it, and GB&I had the cup back for the first time since 2015.
The full Sunday singles card
| Match | Result | |
|---|---|---|
| Stuart Grehan | def. Preston Stout | 2&1 |
| Luke Poulter | def. Ethan Fang | 3&1 |
| Jack Whaley | def. William Jennings | 8&7 |
| Tyler Weaver | def. Jay Leng Jr | 4&3 |
| Niall Sheils Donegan | v Kihei Akina | Halved |
| Eliot Baker | def. Stewart Hagestad | 1 hole |
| Connor Graham | v Miles Russell | Halved |
| Josh Hill | def. Tyler Watts | 1 hole |
| Ryder Cowan | def. Ben Bolton | 3&2 |
| Josiah Gilbert | def. Sam Easterbrook | 4&3 |
| Singles session | GB&I 7, USA 3 | 13½ – 12½ |
Green = GB&I point · Red = USA point · halved matches share a half each
What both captains said
Robertson, asked to sum it up, went for pride, and did not get much further than that before the emotion of it caught up with him. Nathan Smith, the American captain, described it as a tale of two days and said of the GB&I side that they were a great team and a deep team, and that all you can do is tip your cap.
He is right about the depth. That is the part worth holding on to. The USA had the bigger names and the better world rankings and they won the session that was supposed to settle it. GB&I won because eight different players took at least a half out of the afternoon, and because the two who did not were in the last two matches on the course, which is the one place a captain can afford to lose.
First GB&I win since 2015. Tenth in the match's history. And the biggest comeback anyone has managed in it.