PEBBLE BEACH — The scorecard for the 50th Walker Cup lists Cypress Point Club at a meager 6,620 yards, but don’t let that fool you. The team that’s celebrating on Sunday evening won’t be victorious because it overpowered Alister Mackenzie’s famed course. Rather it’s the one that comes closest to solving the 18 enigmas that are Cypress Point’s greens.
It’s a lesson that the amateurs and captains competing for the United States and Great Britain & Ireland alike are coming to appreciate more fully as they continue to get acclimated with the course ahead of the start of two-day competition on Saturday.
“The greens are humming,” said Ben James, an All-American at Virginia and one of two players on Team USA who have experience playing in the Walker Cup. “I get that everybody says it’s short, but the greens being firm and fast, the rough is thick. It’s hard. Pars are going to win holes for sure.”
It’s a message that has been front and center for U.S. captain Nathan Smith as he has accompanied his team around the course.
“Every green it seems like there’s three or four quadrants where the pin might be,” Smith said. “It’s really unique like that. I don’t think you see that at a lot of other courses. We’re trying to prepare for that.”
Actually, it’s a way many people describe the green complexes at Augusta National as well, not coincidentally another Mackenzie design.
With the distances the players hit the ball, it’s not surprising to hear them talk about how they’re still trying to understand their lines off the tee; it was something Jackson Koivun, the No. 1 ranked amateur in the world, mentioned on Thursday during the Americans press conference. However, that’s because of the need to be in the best position to play the rest of the hole.
“There’s some greens that have a lot of pitch to them,” said Koivun, who played Cypress Point in a college tournament during his freshman year at Auburn. “You have to be really good with your wedges and just spin control and everything like that. It takes a mature golfer to play good out here.”
The same idea has dominated the thinking of GB&I captain Dean Robertson as he has prepared his squad to try to become just the third GB&I team to win on the road since the match’s inception in 1922.
“The key messages we’ve had has been strategy No. 1, approach play, short iron approach play and specific distances where you need to position the ball under hole high,” Robertson said. “These have been things that we’ve been working on for a good number of weeks.”
To wit, after arriving in the Monterey Peninsula last Friday, Robertson took his team out to Cypress Point the next day for a walk through of the course. The only club the players were allowed to take was their putter and a wedge.
“We spent a lot of time going around the 18 holes and learning the greens so that when we got back here yesterday morning we were able to understand more and learn more, and that’s really what we’ve been doing. We’ve just been taking it little by little.”
Players like U.S. Walker Cupper Tommy Morrison are learning that hitting to the right spots on the greens will be a key to victory at Cypress Point.
Chris Keane
Tournament officials say their aiming to have the greens running at 12 to 12.5 on the Stimpmeter, knowing that too much faster could make things an issue if the wind picks up on the weekend.
It’s not just the speed, but the firmness, Robertson says, that will pose the biggest problem.
“You must be under the hole around this golf course,” Robertson said, while also acknowledging that his team has more work to do. “We’re still learning it, to be honest with you.”
That said, time is slowing running out. Friday is the final day to figure things out before the two-day sprint of a competition begins. And it just might turn out that neither team will be able to say they’ve fully mastered the greens. But the one that comes closest will be smiling on Sunday.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
