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.