Sunshine, fog, and another Walker Cup victory for the United States

Weather. Golf being an outdoor game, the weather is always a part of the story to some extent, and nowhere more so, I think, than on the Monterey Peninsula. The AT&T Pro-Am is famous (or infamous) for “Crosby weather”; it’s January/February spot on the calendar has, over the years, produced everything from calm, idyllic sunshiny days to fog, high winds, pelting rain, hail, and even – in 1962 – snow.

This weekend at the Cypress Point Walker Cup, however, the weather gods and the golf gods have made peace. Saturday morning’s rounds began under overcast skies, but they gave way to brilliant Steinbeck Country sunshine by lunch, and Sunday morning started out under brilliant azure skies which bid fair to stay that way all day. Though fog closed in as the event wound down, it was not a day in which one could complain about the weather.

Stewart Hagestad (USA) reacts to winning his match on the 15th hole during singles matches of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025. His win over the GB&I’s Eliot Baker clinched the Cup for the American Team. (Logan Whitton/USGA)

Morning Foursomes

Teeing off in crisp but sunny conditions, the American teams were up early in all but Match 4, in which Sussy and La Sasso tied the first hole with opponents Adam and Shiels-Donegan but never led, seeing themselves sink as far as 5-down by the 12th hole. A late surge in which they won three of the next five holes was too little, too late as the GB&I pair won, 2-up.

Going from the most lopsided match to the most closely contested, in Match #1 San Jose native Jackson Koivun and partner Tommy Morrison took a 1-up lead, briefly 2-up, for the first seven holes before falling back at holes 8 and 9, a two-hole stretch where more than one lead has fallen this week. Morrison was short and right on 8, leaving Koivun an horrific second shot off of a steep slope in sandy waste.

At Hole # 9, the temptingly drivable 279-yard par 4, Koivun repeated a mistake that cost more than one player dearly this weekend – trying the drive-the-green hero shot off the tee to make up for a dismal performance at the previous hole. This time he was the one who left his partner a chancy second shot, out of the powdery sand right of the hole. The resulting bogey to their opponents’ birdie flipped the score in the match, which remained blue until clutch putts by first Koivun, at 17, and then Morrison, at 18, closed out the match and added a point to the score for the home side.

The match with the highest hopes and most dismal finish for the home side was Match #2, which pitted the USA’s Ethan Fang & Preston Stout, who are teammates at Oklahoma State, against Brits Charlie Forster and Luke Poulter (son of perennial Euro Ryder Cup hero and relentless self-promoter Ian Poulter). The Cowboy duo dominated from the first hole, running their lead up to three by the fifth hole, and after a mild reversal when the British pair won two holes in a row, ran it up to 4-up by hole #10. The GB&I players then went on a run of their own, winning five of the next six holes to tie the match with three to play. A GB&I par at the infamous 16th hole to the American pair’s double-bogey put the visitors one up in the match, which is how the issue was resolved after the two teams matched pars on 17 and 18.

The prizes for most dominating performance and most dramatic finish of the morning session go to Match #3. Americans Mason Howell and Jacob Modleski took the lead right out of the gate, one-up, then two-up, and after briefly dropping back to a tie with opponents Eliot Baker and Stuart Grehan after the third hole, held on to no less than a two-up lead for the rest of the match. Howell, the 18-year-old who secured his spot on the team with his win in the U.S. Amateur at the Olympic Club a few weeks back, closed out this match in dramatic fashion with a highlight-reel worthy one-hop hole-out at #17 from 147 yards with a pitching wedge.

Afternoon Singles

The Americans went up early and dominated across the board in the afternoon singles matches, and as the sun faded into a thickening fog bank in the late afternoon and early evening, the GB&I squad showed their mettle, but in a losing effort.

For example: When the match between Connor Grahm of GB&I and Mason Howell of the USA got to 17 all tied up, Graham made a bold move. With the honor off the tee due to having won the 15th hole to tie the match, he pulled driver at 17 to go for the green. He overshot, but compelled to do the same, Howell drove hole-high but well into the left rough. For all the drama off the tee, the two ended up splitting the hole with pars, and did the same at 18 to each put up a half point for their team.

As the fog thickened it got more difficult to see the results of shots off the tee. Preston Stout of the USA, playing Luke Poulter, lost his tee shot at 16 in the fog; it was later determined to have dropped short and ended up in the water. He lost the hole but remained ahead by one going to 17. He then closed out his opponent 2 and 1 with a birdie to Poulter’s par

The last nail in the GB&I team’s coffin came courtesy of Stewart Hagestad, the experienced 34-year-old mid-am who flew under the radar for most of the afternoon while the TV coverage concentrated on the glamorous seaside holes that were being played ahead of him. After losing holes 13 and 14 to Baker, Hagestad sank a lengthy birdie putt at the par-3 15th, closing out his match against Eliot Baker 4 and 3 to put the USA up 13 to 8 for the tournament – enough, as the defending team, to retain the Cup.

The remaining matches were played out, as is traditional, with a final score of USA–17, GB&I–9 being posted for the record book.

It was a memorable weekend, and it was a privilege for all involved to play, spectate, and report on this classic event at Cypress Point. Who knows when the gates of this sacrosanct citadel of American golf will open its gates to the public again?

Saturday at the 50th Walker Cup – a perfect day?

Golf writers wax lyrical about the rocky, scenic coastline of the Del Monte Forest, but as the name implies, there is more to it than the rugged waterfront and the crashing surf. Pebble Beach Golf Links is about the ocean, though the less scenic inland holes have their place and their challenges (Is Pebble Beach As Good As They Say It is?), while Cypress Point is as much about the forest and the dunes as it is the coastline.

Jase Summy (USA) makes his par putt on the 18th hole to win his match as seen during singles matches of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (John Mummert/USGA)

Only four holes of the course run right along the ocean: 14, 15, 16, and 17 – and of those, on #14 you are putting out of sight of the water. The first hole parallels 14 fairway just a few yards farther from the beach, and #13 finishes there, but for a match play competition in which the issue may be settled by the 16th or even 15th hole, the inland holes wending their way through the forest and ancient dunes may be crucial to the outcome of a match.

That’s not to say that those closing holes on the ocean won’t be a factor. Two matches in today’s morning foursomes finished on #16 and the other two finished on #17 and #18. That being said, the status of a match after emerging from the forest will have a lot to do with the amount of pressure that falls on the trailing side/player when the match gets to those crucial closing holes.

Ask GB&I player Dominic Clemons, who with partner Cameron Adams was two down to Americans Michael LaSasso and Jase Summy at the 16th hole. Fresh off of cutting the Americans’ three-up lead through 14 by winning the 15th hole with a par, Clemons pushed a two-iron shot short and right off the tee at 16, his ball rebounding from the rocks and meeting a watery end in the chilly Pacific waters.

Was it over-confidence after racking up a crucial win late in the round, poor judgement to go with a hard-to-hit club that most players don’t even carry anymore, or just bad luck? It’s hard to say, but it was the last nail in the coffin for the only match that the GB&I team didn’t win this morning.

A good example of pressure, expectations, and the importance of when to push and when to play conservatively was the ninth hole, a 289-yard par-four playing (as many holes here do) from a well-elevated tee: 

•    Stewart Hagestad of the USA hit a laser-guided missile to tap-in distance while his opponent, Gavin Tiernan watched his tee ball hit the green right of the hole, loop slowly left and away from the hole and trickle off of the front back to the fairway. Tiernan chipped up but was left with a long putt, and (belatedly, in my opinion) conceded Hagestad’s tap-in. Hagestad, who had been in control of the match from the first hole, went on to win 7 and 5.

•      Ethan Fang of the USA went for the green at 9 but caught the rim of the left-hand bunker fronting the green, and had to watch his ball hop onto the putting surface and then trickle slowly off the front of the green and down onto the fairway. His opponent, Stuart Grehan, also played for the green, but went right, into another bunker. Fang made par, and after Grehan splashed out to makeable distance his par was conceded for a tie on the hole.

•       The final match on the course, Jase Summy of the USA and Eliot Baker of the GB&I, saw Summy making – lets be honest – a real hash of the hole. His tee shot found the sandy native area left of the big left-front bunker, then his second flopped about 10 feet to nestle once more into the fine, soft sand. Baker, who had played conservatively to the fairway, hit a pretty wedge shot to no more than six or seven feet and drained the birdie putt. Summy took a conceded five on the hole, and a match that he had been in command of through seven holes started slipping away from him.

Looking at the big picture, in the afternoon singles matches the USA squad had come out strong, leading at one point in six of eight matches and  looking like they might put six or even seven points on the board, but GB&I pushed back and made the USA fight for every hole and every eventual point. The afternoon session eventually went USA–5-1/2 GB&I–2-1/2 to put the USA one point ahead 6-1/2 – 5-1/2 going into Sunday. 

The final match of the day went all the way to 18 with an overall tie in the balance. Eliot Baker fought back hard from an unfortunate excursion through the left rough, but lost the hole and the match when his 10-foot par putt slipped past the hole on the low side and lipped around the back side to stop on the lip behind the hole. Jase Summy, who had a scary birdie putt from well above the hole (never a good position on this steep little green), missed the birdie but rolled in the par with authority, winning the hole and the match to put the USA up by a full point going into Sunday’s sessions.

Overall, an eventful day of excellent golf, in the kind of weather that the local Chambers of Commerce dream about, on a dream golf course. One hardly dares for as good a day on Sunday, but these two teams, at this venue, in the most beautiful place you can imagine, might just pull it off.

Friday at the 2025 Walker Cup

I’m too old, and dare I say it, experienced, to be too over-awed by just any golf tournament or a golf course – but the Walker Cup is a different animal. Even with a pair each of U.S. Opens and U.S. Women’s Opens, ten AT&T pro-Ams, and a double-handful of lower-tier USGA events and the miscellaneous permutations of what used to be the Fry’s Open under my belt, I feel a different vibe at this tournament.

Even the practice green at Cypress Point Golf Club looked inviting today.

The Walker Cup is a special event, a throwback, of sorts, to the roots of golf, pitting amateur teams from opposite sides of the Atlantic in head-to-head match play – what many people feel is the purest form of competitive golf – and just to take it up a notch, it’s being played on a course of almost mythical mien: Cypress Point.

Cypress Point. The name is whispered in reverential tones among golf fans. The course is an Alister Mackenzie masterpiece tucked into a corner of arguably the most scenic 7-1/2 square miles of coastal land in the United States, the Monterey Peninsula’s Del Monte Forest. Its neighbors are Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, Poppy Hills, The Links at Spanish Bay, and Monterey Peninsula Country Club – all save MPCC accessible to the public (though, with the exception of Poppy Hills, the home course of the Northern California Golf Association, at premium prices), but Cypress is private, and exclusive to a legendary degree.

The membership list at Cypress Point Golf Club is reputed to hover at around 150 names, and the cost, well, don’t ask, because they won’t tell you (and as the saying goes: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.) Cypress has hosted this very tournament once before, in 1981, and the general public used to get a glimpse of this hallowed ground each year during the telecast of the Bing Crosby Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

From 1947 to 1990 Cypress was in the rota of three courses over which the Crosby was played, but the club pulled out in 1991 over a disagreement with the PGA Tour concerning its membership policies. Since then it has been a seldom-seen wonderland of rocky shores, rolling dunescapes, and windswept forests of cypress (naturally) and Monterey pines. A few holes on the course are well-known to the general golfing public, most notably the 16th, a 230-yard par-3 with a daunting carry across rocks and the crashing Pacific surf – but beyond the odd photo in a golf publication or humble-brag social media post, the course has been a mystery to the general public for 35 years.

Until now.

And not only is the course open to the public for this event, but as is standard operating procedure at all USGA amateur championships, spectators are free to walk the fairways (behind the players); only the putting greens are roped off. This level of access affords spectators an amazing opportunity to experience the course at a level that, say, a PGA Tour event does not, and gain a much greater understanding of the challenges that a course presents.

And despite its lack of length, at a mere 6,620 yards, Cypress definitely presents a challenge. Even with a limited amount of time at my disposal to walk the course today – I only got as far as the par-3 seventh before doubling back past 12 and 13 to the media center adjacent to the first fairway – I got a taste of the elevation changes, and the shapes and cants of the fairways and greens, and the genius of this Mackenzie design is evident in every square foot of every hole.

The mystique of this legendary course overrode ticket prices ($100 for the Friday practice round, $200 each for Saturday and Sunday); for Friday, the prospect of a 1:00 p.m. course closure (to prepare for the 3:00 p.m. opening ceremonies) was hardly a deterrent – the parking lot adjacent to the Pebble Beach practice facility, about a mile and a half away, was a good three-quarters full when I arrived at 10:30 a.m. Though not crowded by any means, plenty of spectators were in evidence around the course (most carrying clear plastic bags loaded with Walker Cup-branded items from the merchandise tent), and the anticipation in the air was palpable.

Practice today was short. No full rounds were played; the players and coaches merely testing and refining their feel for the venue, with its variety of holes strung between coast and forest, staying loose and reserving their strength for the weekend. Typical Monterey Bay summer weather was on display, overcast and cool in the morning with the sun breaking out briefly after lunch before a light overcast started to build back in. The light wind was onshore, from the northwest, and if this pattern holds it will be a perfect weekend for golf, at what is possibly the perfect venue.

I can hardly wait.