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.

L.A.B. Golf, Golftec – and the World’s Worst Golf-tech Video

Recently I saw a post from the folks at Golftec that was intended to explain “lie angle balancing”, which is the latest hot new thing in putter design from the folks at L.A.B. Golf (home of the $600 – before options – putter.)

https://x.com/i/status/1956742227587224055

Here is a screenshot of the post in question. Last time I checked some 1,400-odd people had viewed it – and I hope that at least some of them thought to themselves, “What the absolute hell is this kid talking about?”

First let’s talk about the text of the post:

They wrote “Rather than balancing a putter around the shaft […] @labgolf putters balances their putter based on lie angle.”

Well, I’ve got news for you, folks – the lie angle is the angular relationship of the long axis of the shaftof the putter to the club head, so balancing the club around the shaft and balancing the club around the lie angle are the same thing – so right off the bat you can see that they are playing a little smoke-and-mirrors game with you.

Now let’s break down the problems with the video:

1) The term is “lie”–“angle” – two words, not “line-gle”, as the kid[1] in the clip pronounces it.

2) When he picks up a “standard putter”[2] he mentions “a potentially differing weight from the end of the club to the head of the toe”. What the hell does that mean? What I think it is that they are trying to get across here, however poorly expressed, is (the obvious[3] fact) that more of the mass of the club head lies to one side (the toe side) of the axis of the shaft than to the other (the heel side.) This imbalance causes the club to rotate about the shaft such that the toe of the club is lower than the shaft. This is called “toe hang”, and most putters have some amount of it.

3) He starts out with the “standard putter” balanced on a finger and held with the toe up, and says “when I let go of this club you’ll see it has the tendency to swing wide open[4].” Here he is using misdirection to emphasize this supposed undesirable aspect of the design of this non-LAB Golf putter. Pretty much putter ever made will swing down, dropping the toe, when held in this starting position. What is important is the angle of the face relative to horizontal when the putter is at rest.

4) He then takes what appears to be a left-handed[5] LAB Golf putter with a center shaft, balances it on a finger and (allegedly, because his other hand is not visible in the video) releases it, resulting in the face remaining vertical, saying, “so when I let go of this you’ll see how the face stays square.”

What he is calling “square” here is what anyone else would call 100% toe hang. No explanation is offered as to why this configuration is desirable, what benefits it has, or what stroke shape it is suited for (based on the conventional thinking that a large amount of toe hang is suited for a stroke with a large arc in the horizontal plane, 100% toe hang suits a massively arced stroke.)

And let’s talk about toe hang for a minute.

While one putter manufacturer touts a “toe-up” design that “significantly reduces the negative effects of torque, promoting a smoother and more consistent motion and allowing the putter head a greater opportunity to return to square at impact”, it is a generally accepted fact[6] that the greater the arc in your putting stroke (arc in the horizontal plane, to be clear…) the more toe hang your putter should have, ostensibly in order to facilitate the opening and closing of the face as the putter is swung back and then forward.

Since toe hang is caused by the center of mass being well out toward the toe, away from the shaft, in the horizontal plane as the putter is used, and the putter is being swung in the horizontal plane, what force is acting on the putter to make it rotate?

Gravity acts at 90º to the orientation of the moment arm between the location of the center of mass, and inertia – which can be treated as a force in a dynamic situation like this – would cause the toe to hang back as the putter is swung back, thus closing the face, and again, in the opposite direction as the putter is swung forward, opening the face. This is the opposite of the description I have read of the reasoning behind “big arc, more toe hang”, which is “toe hang facilitates the opening and closing of the putter face in the backstroke and follow-through”.

I have never agreed with the arcing-stroke school of putting because my engineer’s predilection for finding the simplest solution eschews the complexity of a motion that requires timing to ensure that the face of the putter is square to my intended line at impact. Is this “big arc, more toe hang” thing another one of those old wives’ tales of golf like “hit down to compress the ball” (don’t get me started on that one) which no one actually understands, and which doesn’t follow physical reality but which everyone nods their heads and agrees with because they don’t know any better?

I think so, yes.

5) Finally – to close out the video, the world’s worst spokesperson[7] says “LAB will fit you first to your “linegle” (sic) which will then determine how they get the shaft axis and the head balance within each other, hence the lack of twist.” This is gobbledygook that is worthy of a Republican legislator explaining why cutting your medical benefits and giving tax cuts to billionaires is really a good deal for YOU.

The bottom line is that this video does worse than promote misinformation; it gives no actual information at all, while purporting to present a wondrous new concept in the guise of an amazing revelation. It is a load of unrelated BUMF, nonsense statements strung together by someone who has no idea what he is talking about, and no concept of how to present information clearly.

Please – PLEASE – Golftec, do better. If you feel the need to promote putters that cost what we used to spend for a high-end driver, First – use a presenter who can at least sound like he knows what the hell is talking about; Second – illustrate and explain the physical differences between the putters that are being compared and present them each in the same way, visually; and finally – explain, or at least make an effort to explain, how the $600 putter achieves its radical physical characteristic, and why it will (supposedly) turn your basic 18-handicapper into Steve Stricker or Brad Faxon on the putting green.

And for goodness sake, send the kid in this video clip back to the stockroom to count sweaters.

[1] Don’t at me – at my age anyone under 40 is a kid…

[2] Do the folks at Edel Golf know that this kid used one of their putters like it was the “Before” photo in a weight-loss ad?

[3] Or it should be…

[4] The club face is not “wide open”, because “open” or “closed” is relative to swing path; it is, in this instance “toe down”.

[5] Important rule for experiments/demonstrations: Compare apples to apples. 

[6] I use the phrase “generally accepted fact” in the sense of “widely spread concept that may or may not actually reflect physical reality” – about which more later.

[7] Who is this kid, anyway? He doesn’t introduce himself, and offers no bona fides as to his qualifications (if any) to explain the complex dynamics of the putting stroke and how different configurations of putters affect it. He could be the stock-boy, or just some junior sweater-folder at the local golf superstore.

“The Playing Lesson”, by Michael Bamberger ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -1/2

A new book from Michael Bamberger is always an occasion to celebrate. The author of classic golf titles such as The Green Road Home, To The Linksland, This Golfing Life, and Men in Green has a unique outlook on the game of golf that is grounded in a depth of experience that you won’t find, I think, in any other writer in the modern game. There are a handful that approach it, including his fellow former-Sports Illustrated colleague and co-author of The Swinger, Alan Shipnuck, but Bamberger’s work has a certain feel, a laidback mellowness, if you will, that I haven’t found anywhere else in my 200-plus-volume collection of books on golf.

The Playing Lesson, the latest from esteemed golf writer Michael Bamberger, is the chronicle of a year embedded in the professional game, as a caddy, a tournament volunteer, and a pro-am participant.

I will admit that I was expecting something a bit different from this book, but that is more a failure of imagination on my part than a shortcoming in execution on the author’s part. The Playing Lesson was billed as the chronicle of a year’s immersion in the world of professional golf, and I was expecting more content relating to actual golf lessons – but Bamberger doesn’t do obvious. Sure, he got some swing tips, and putting lessons (more about that later) along the way, but the real learning experience involved him immersing himself in the myriad aspects of the world of professional golf for a year, learning about much more than just the actual playing of the game.

Not the Bamberger is a newbie to the world of pro golf, not by a long shot. His first book, The Green Road Home (1986), chronicles his start in golf at age 14 and his adventures caddying for an array of professional golfers while also starting his life as a writer. His second, To The Linksland (1992), about his adventures as a traveling caddy on the European Tour (with his very understanding wife in tow) is such a classic that a few years ago used copies were going for $100 or more; many a golfer’s dreams of striking it rich by selling a cherished first edition were trampled when it was re-issued in a 30th Anniversary edition in 2022.

In The Playing Lesson Bamberger takes to the road again, caddying, playing in pro-ams, volunteering at tournaments – essentially sampling the many sides of professional golf. It is somewhat reminiscent of the 1968 George Plimpton book Bogey Man, which chronicles the (mis)adventures of the author and editor of The Paris Review as he spends a mere month embedded with the PGA Tour, but Bamberger’s sojourn lasts longer and delves deeper into the many and varied aspects of professional golf.

Even a quick mile-wide/inch-deep synopsis of the ground covered by this book would turn this review into a much longer read than it has any right to be; all I can say is, read it. Michael Bamberger’s prose is smooth and a delight to read, and he gets into so many corners of the game that every golfer will find something interesting, something they can relate to, or something they never knew, in this book. I particularly enjoyed the section on his late afternoon round on the back nine at Pacific Grove Golf Links, a quirky but not-to-be-missed municipal course just down the road from Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and Cypress Point. A golf trip to the Monterey Peninsula isn’t complete without a round at Pacific Grove.

As for myself, I would love to spend some time with Michael on a putting green and talk with him about that particularly infuriating aspect of the game. He carries a two-sided putter so that he can putt leftie because he often yips short putts right-handed, a concept that astounds me (and not in a good way.) My technical-side antennae went up at a couple of mentions he made of hooked or sliced putts, and putted balls rolling “end-over-end”; these are the sort of misconceptions that are unfortunately common among golfers, and even many golf instructors, and they’re aching to be laid to rest.

Questions of his dubious beliefs about putting aside – as can be said of pretty much everything he has published[1], The Playing Lesson belongs in every thinking golfer’s bookcase.

[1] I must confess that I didn’t care for his previous book to this one, The Ball in the Air. No knock on his writing; I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the three golfers who are the subject of the book.

NorCal well represented at 125th USGA U.S. Amateur Championship

If home field advantage carries any weight in a major golf event, the winner of this week’s USGA U.S. Amateur Championship, being played at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, August 11 – 17, may well come from the ranks of the fourteen Northern Californians in the field.

The local players hail from all around the Bay Area and the inland regions of the northern half of the state, from as far south as Salinas and as far north as Red Bluff. For one local player in the field the 2025 U.S. Amateur is an actual home game – Matthew Goode, of San Francisco, is not only a member of the Olympic Club, he is the current club champion. There is one more player with a connection to the Bay Area – World #1 Amateur Jackson Koivun, who was born and raised in San Jose, attended Laurel Springs High School in Ojai, California, but now, along with his parents, calls Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home since starting college at Auburn University.

Jackson Koivun plays his tee shot on the 16th hole during the first round of stroke play of the 2025 U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club (Ocean Course) in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Eakin Howard/USGA)

The NorCal field ranges in age from Aston Lim, of Union City, at 15, to recent college graduates Matthew Kress of Saratoga, and Baron Szeto, of Moraga, both 22 years of age.

Overall the ages of the players in the field range from Lim, at 15 to Arizona resident Greg Sanders, 61. The oldest winner in the 124-year history of the event is Jack Westland, 47, in 1952; the youngest is Byeong-hun (Ben) An, who played one year of college golf at Cal-Berkeley – 2010-2011; An took the title in 2009, at age 17. The average age of the players in the field this year is 23, so this championship is definitely the province of young, but experienced, players.

The tournament opens with two rounds of stroke play on the Lake and Ocean courses at the Olympic Club on Monday and Tuesday to trim the field from 312 hopefuls to the match play field of 64. The field will be further whittled down over four days of match play, Wednesday through Saturday, with the two finalists contesting for the championship in a 36-hole final on Sunday, August 17th.

Getting to the first tee box at the U.S. Amateur is an epic journey in itself. To even enter a qualifying event a player must have a handicap of 0.4 or better. This year 5,245 players submitted entries, most of whom teed it up at 47 local qualifying sites hoping to advance to final qualifying at one of 19 sites, and from there to the U.S. Amateur. Various achievements in amateur golf during the year leading up to this tournament will earn a player a direct entry to the event, and six of the 143 exempt entrants are from Northern California:

• Jackson Koivun (San Jose) – Qualified for 2025 U.S. Open; Top 20 points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of March 26; Top 100 points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of May 21
• Jaden Dumdumaya (Benicia) – Winner of 2025 Pacific Coast Amateur
• Jacob Goode (San Francisco) – Winner of 2025 California Amateur
• Matthew Kress (Saratoga) – Top 100 points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of June 25
• Zachery Pollo (Rocklin) – Qualified for 2025 U.S. Open; Top 100 points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of May 21
• Clark Van Gaalen (Turlock) – Top 100 points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of June 25

At the end of 18 holes of stroke play Jackson Koivun led the NorCal contingent, sitting T5 at 2-under. Koivun is the only local player who is currently under par for the tournament, but a handful look to be in with a chance to advance to match play if they carry on Tuesday as they began today. That group includes the youngest player in the field, Aston Lim; the 15-year-old shot a one-over-par 71 on the Lake Course today, as did Baron Szeto of Moraga; Avinash Iyer of San Ramon – a SJSU Men’s Golf team member; Sacramento’s Brady Siravo; and Clark Van Gaalen. Also currently within the Top 64 are Zachery Pollo of Rocklin and Jaden Dumdumaya, of Benicia.

Play resumes Tuesday morning at 7:00 a.m., with players switching from Lake to Ocean courses, or vice versa. Ties for 64th position at the end of stroke play on Tuesday will be decided by a playoff.

Book Review: “The Golf 100”, by Michael Arkrush ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Michael Arkrush is a sportswriter with more than a dozen books to his credit, but one who was unfamiliar to me before this title came to my attention. His previous books have focused largely on either boxing, basketball, or coaching. He does have four previous books concerning golf, but I have only read one: Getting Up and Down: My 60 Years in Golf – an autobiography of Ken Venturi that he cowrote with Venturi, and it wasn’t until I looked up his back list that I realized that he was associated with that title.

From the first page of The Golf 100 I realized that I had been missing out. Arkrush is a writer with a casual but effective voice who writes with a touch of bantering humor.

The Golf 100, by Michael Arkrush, is full to the brim with informative
biographical sketches about one hundred of the top golfers of all time.

He set himself quite a job – as the author himself acknowledges, ranking the Top 100 golfers of all time is not so much a tough task as an impossible one, and the content of this book is sure to elicit plenty of questions and disagreement over drinks at the 19th Hole of any golf course frequented by literarily or historically inclined golfers (1).

There’s no arguing, in my mind, with the Top 10 (though if he hadn’t ranked Ben Hogan within the Top 5 I might have found myself firing off a strongly worded letter…), or even the Top 20. The further down the list one goes the more room there is for argument, but in reality, the further down the list you go the less it matters – if you are prepared to argue about the relative placement of Leo Diegel and Harold Hilton in the list of the Top 100 Golfers of All Time you should probably look for a different hobby.

Many of the names found in the bottom fifty places of the list may be unfamiliar to all but very dedicated students of the game’s history – some of the names were vaguely known to me but I couldn’t have told you much about their accomplishments before reading this book. And therein lies the raison d’être of Mr Arkrush’s efforts – the value in this books lies less in the actual ranking of golfers than it does in identifying the lesser-known personalities on the list and giving a quick sketch of their careers and accomplishments.

Quick sketch is the operative word here. The author gets through the list of 100 names in a little over 350 pages. Most of the listings range in length from three to a little over four pages; Tiger Woods rates six and a bit, and Jack Nicklaus, eight pages. Frankly there’s sometimes not a lot to say about the golfers in the lower ranks, but there is value in what the author does include, for example: John McDermott, #100, the 1911 U.S. Open winner, suffered a breakdown a few years later and spent most of his life in mental institutions; or Larry Nelson, #89, a self-taught golfer who hadn’t even picked up a club before he turned 21, taking up the game after returning from a tour as an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam. Nelson won the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont, closing with two under-par rounds and clinching the win over Tom Watson with a 60-foot putt that must have looked a lot like the putt that recently clinched the 2025 U.S. Open for J.J. Spaun.

Argue as you might about their places on the list, every golfer in this book deserves mention, and each has an interesting story attached to their name.

I could quibble over the structure of many of the short biographical sketches that make up this book; Arkrush sometimes shows a disorienting tendency to work through events that occurred later in the subject’s career, then jump back to formative events from their early life. He also sometimes skims over details that beg for another sentence or two of explanation and then leaves the reader hanging – for example, he mentions that Bay Area golf star Juli Inkster borrowed clubs from Patti Sheehan to play, and win, the 1981 U.S. Women’s Amateur (her second of three in a row), but doesn’t mention why. A bit of research (maybe a phone call?) and a couple of lines added to that section could have added a neat little anecdote to the story.

So, this book isn’t perfect, but it is really, really good, standing up on its own and also as a gateway to further reading for the history-minded golfer whose interest is piqued by the short sketches it presents; the three-page bibliography is a good start on further exploration for the curious reader. Father’s Day may have come and gone already this year, but for the golfer with a late-in-the-year birthday, or as a Christmas gift, this book is a serious contender for the gift list.

1) Given the opportunity, I would like to have a talk with Arkrush about the non-inclusion of Bay Area pro George Archer, the 1969 Masters winner who struggled with a learning impairment that left him unable to read any but the simplest sentences; he could only write his own name.

Flashback: Aussie comes out on top in “Lee vs Lee” 2012 Girls’ Junior Championship final

In honor of Aussie Minjee Lee gritting out a tough win this weekend at the KMPG Women’s PGA Championship – joining fellow Australian women Jan Stephenson and Karrie Webb as a three-time major winner – I would like to revisit my story (for a former outlet) of her record-setting 2012 USGA U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship win at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City:

**********************************

Given the number of girls in the ranks of girls’ and women’s golf who are either Asian-born or of Asian ancestry, it was almost inevitable that this would happen – Lee facing Lee for the USGA’s U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship. It is a tribute to the truly international flavor of girls’ and women’s golf, however, that the two young ladies who faced off over 36 holes of match play golf today at Lake Merced Golf Club, though sharing Korean ancestry, hail from countries on different continents, in different hemispheres, on opposite sides of the largest body of water on the planet, and are from cities that are 9300 miles apart.

Minjee Lee, 16, of Perth, Australia, raises the Glenna Collett Vare Trophy after winning the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at Lake Merced Golf Club. She is the first Australian to take the title.
(Photo Credit: J. Mummert – USGA)

Alison Lee, 17, is a Southern California girl from Valencia, CA, in the Santa Clarita Valley; Minjee Lee is a 16-year-old Aussie from Perth, Western Australia. Despite the geographical distance between their home cities, on the golf course at the final of the Girls’ Junior Championship the competition between the two was as close as close can be.

Starting the morning round under a blue sky, rather than the usual marine-layer overcast that had greeted early rounds all week, Alison took a 1-up lead right out of the gate with a birdie 3 at the opening hole. They halved the next two holes, then Minjee squared it up with a par to Alison’s bogey at the fourth. Another string of three halved holes followed before Minjee went one up at the par-3 eighth hole.

Using a forward tee box, #8 was playing about 133 yards to a flag tucked back right and guarded by a bunker. Both girls went for the flag and were in good position in the back lobe of the green where the hole was cut, but Minjee was closer, and made her birdie putt to go 1-up.

Halving #9 with pars, they made the turn with Minjee 1-up, and stayed that way with a halved hole at #10. The young Aussie won another hole at #11, with a birdie to Alison’s bogey, then another string of three halved holes came and went before the next change in score, this time in Alison’s favor, when she parred the long par-3 fifteenth as Alison bogeyed. Halving the last three holes, they went to the lunch break with Minjee one up over Alison.

While the players, officials, and spectators broke for lunch, the grounds crew went out to make a few changes to the course setup for the afternoon round. No hole locations were changed, but the tee markers were moved to different locations on holes 2, 3, 8, and 12.

The second round opened with another string of halved holes, but the Alison made a clutch 25-foot putt on the 137-yard par-3 third to keep from going to 2-down.

Alison made up ground on her opponent at the par-4 fifth hole, making a clean approach from the right fringe and two-putting for par, while Minjee pulled her approach into a left-hand bunker, got out cleanly but missed the par putt

The match remained all square through the next two holes, then at #8, the par-3 where Minjee had made her move to go up in the match in the morning round, Alison made a move. Stretched to 168 yards for the day’s second 18 by the move to a different tee box, the hole played the reverse of the morning round – Alison birdied, Minjee made par, and now Alison was 1-up on the round

At the long par-5 ninth hole Alison got to the front fringe in two, while Minjee’s second shot, a low stinger, bounded and ran across the green and into the rough just off the back side. Alison’s chip to the back left flag ran 20 feet past, but she made the putt for her second birdie in a row, while Minjee chipped on and two-putted for par. Alison was now two up.

The first two holes of the final nine were halved in par, then Alison went to 3-up when Minjee’s tee shot at the 168-yard twelfth hole hit short and rolled down the hill below the green. The Aussie chipped on to about eight feet below the hole, then two-putted for a bogey four, while Alison made a clean two-putt for a par.

With a 3-up lead in hand Alison was feeling good as the match came to the 66th hole, the par-4 thirteenth. Both girls striped their drives to the bottom of the drop-off fronting the green – but here is where the match started to slip away from Alison.

After a good drive to the low approach area below the green, Alison chunked a 50° wedge into the right greenside bunker. She splashed out cleanly, but missed the fairly simple 4-foot downhill par putt she was left with. Minjee flew her approach shot to the green for a 20-foot uphill birdie putt. She left it short, but rolled in the par putt– and on the heels of Alison’s mini-meltdown, picked up a shot and was only two down.

Alison’s errors compounded at the par-4 fourteenth hole when she pushed her drive into a right-hand fairway bunker and pulled a fairway wood seeking to get out of the bunker and onto the green. She topped the ball, which ricocheted off of the low shoulder in front of the bunker, killing its momentum so that it rolled out no more than forty yards down the fairway. Her medium-iron approach ran well past the hole, and with two putts, she put up a five to Minjee’s four, and gave back a hole – she was now two up with four to play.

With two bad holes behind her, Alison was feeling the pressure, and must have sensed the match starting to slip away from her. She pulled her tee shot at the long par-3 fifteenth into one of the deep bunkers left of the green, then rocketed her sand shot 20 feet past the hole, two-putted for a bogey against Minjee’s routine on-in-one, two-putt par, and squared the match.

At the par-4 sixteenth, Alison’s drove about 220 yards to the right-center on the fairway, with Minjee in equally good position just a few yards behind. Flying her approach to a spot 25 feet above the front-left hole location, Alison missed a curling downhill putt for birdie, slid the par putt past by a hair and dunked her third putt for bogey. Minjee’s approach had left her with a more straightforward uphill 5-footer, and she two putted for an easy par to go 1-up, taking the lead in the match for the first time since the 21st hole.

The pair halved seventeen in a heartbreaker. Alison got on in two from the right side of the fairway, but her 8-foot downhill birdie putt hung on the lip of the hole, but wouldn’t drop – she made par. Minjee had left her approach from the right rough in the rough below and right of the front entrance to the green. With a little popped-up flop shot, she had four feet for par – made it, and went one up with one to play – dormie.

On the dramatic par-5 closing hole, both girls made good drives, then pulled their second shots into similarly tough situations on the left side of the fairway, below a pine tree that blocked the approach to the green. Alison ran a well-judged bump-and-run shot up to a position on the green few feet below the front-left flag; Minjee was in the rough and totally blocked by the tree from a direct line to the flag – she ran her approach low and right to a position on the apron below the green. She flopped it onto the green from there, leaving herself 4 feet for par.

From her spot on the collar of the green, Alison had one chance to ensure an extension of the match – make a 6-foot birdie putt. It wasn’t to be, however – the putt slid by the hole by a narrow margin, and after Minjee made her par putt, she was the victor at +1.

The win at Lake Merced makes Minjee Lee the first Australian girl to get her name on the Glenna Collett Vare Trophy; Alison Lee, who has now played in her last (of six) Girl’s Junior, will never see her name there. The Valley Girl from Valencia has one more year of high school golf ahead of her, then she will join the ever-strong UCLA women’s golf squad, where she will undoubtedly make a fine addition to the team.