TERRE HAUTE —
Once the major tournaments are over with, what’s there to look forward to in the world of golf? Football is getting started, baseball is nearing the season’s end, but getting closer to the world series, so depending on who you like to follow, it could be getting more interesting. Professional golf, especially on television, tends to lose some of its charms in the fall because of the excitement of many other sports. However, some of the most exciting golf events are yet to come in the next couple of months; I’m talking about some of the team events: The Solheim Cup will be held September 23-25 at Killeen Castle, Ireland, and The President’s Cup will be held November 14-20 at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia. Another team event that is coming up is The Walker Cup, which will be broadcast by the BBC, so we might only be able to get the news after it happens here in the states.
The Walker Cup is the most historic of all of the team events this fall, and the first to get underway. The Walker Cup, which will be held September 10-11, pits a team from Great Britain and Ireland against a team from the United States. All members from both teams must be amateur male golfers.
The beginnings of the Walker Cup started in the wake of World War I to try to stimulate interest in golf on both sides of the Atlantic. It was spurred by two matches that had taken place in the United States and Canada in 1919 and 1920. At that time, winning the British or the U.S. Amateur events were considered golf’s highest pinnacle.
George Herbert Walker, the USGA president in 1920, was one of the men who participated in a meeting with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews as part of the USGA Executive Committee. Upon the committee’s return, the idea of international team matches were discussed. Walker liked the idea so much he offered to donate a trophy, so the press dubbed the matches “The Walker Cup.”
In the spring of 1921, William C. Fownes, the 1910 U.S. Amateur champion, rounded up a team that played a match at Hoylake, England, where the American team won 9-3 in an informal match the day before the British Amateur. The next year, the R&A announced that it would send a team to compete for the Walker Cup at the National Golf Links of American, in Southhampton, N.Y. Originally the competition was open to any country that cared to challenge, the USGA invited all countries to compete, but only Great Britain was able to accept. The American team won that inaugural event 8-4, with some well-known players on the team such as Charles (Chick) Evans Jr., Robert T. Jones and Francis Ouimet.
The Walker Cup was played on an annual basis for a few years, but after 1924 it was decided that due to financial strain on the traveling team, and fear that interest would wane if the event were held too frequently, that the event would be played in alternate years. The series was interrupted by World War II after the 1938 match at St. Andrews, Scotland, and didn’t resume until 1947, where St. Andrews was again selected as the meeting site.
This year’s Walker Cup team for the U.S. will consist of 1) Patrick Cantlay, 19, of Los Alamitos, Calif.; 2) Harris English, 22, of Thomasville, Ga.; 3) Russell Henley, 22, of Macon, Ga.; 4) Peter Uihlein, 21, from Orlando, Fla.; 5) Patrick Rodgers, 18, of Avon, Ind.; 6) Nathan Smith, 33, of Pittsburgh, Pa.; 7) Chris Williams, 20, from Moscow, Idaho; 8) Blayne Barber, 21, of Lake City, Fla.; 9) Kelly Kraft, 22, of Denton, Tex.; and 10) Jordan Spieth, 18, of Dallas, Tex. The captain of the U.S. team is Jim Holtgrieve, 63, of St. Louis, Mo., who was a playing member of the Walker Cup teams in 1979, 1981, and 1983 teams.
Rodgers led his Avon High School team to the state Championships at The Legends of Indiana in 2009, when he was runner-up as a sophomore. In 2010, he was the low medalist, and in 2011 he won the Fred A. Keesling Mental Attitude Award. He was a two-time HP Scholastic All-American. He is a freshman at Stanford University now.
On the GB & I side, the player to watch out for could be Tom Lewis, who made a sensation at this Year’s British Open Championship when he shared the lead with Thomas Bjorn after shooting a 65 in the first round, and going on the win the silver medal for low amateur.
The biennial event consists of 18 singles matches and eight foursomes (alternate-shot) matches, over two days. The U.S. leads the series 34-7-1. The true purpose of the Walker Cup Match has always been as a medium of international friendship and understanding between The R&A and the USGA. The Walker Cup will only be shown on the BBC Network so we won’t get it in America, but there are likely to be updates available online. It would be nice if we could witness some of the matches on TV this year.
Quote of the Day: “Naturally, it was my hope to win out. I simply tried my best to keep this cup from going to our friends across the water.” – Francis Ouimet, after the 1913 U.S. Open.
Jennifer Myers can be reached by e-mail at jfmyers@xsthe.net.
On & Off the Course
ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fall may be coming but golf season is far from over
- On & Off the Course
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Death Notice: Feb. 7, 2013
• Gary R. Wright
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Donna Lynn Strahla Bown
Donna Lynn Strahla Bown passed away early Friday morning, Jan. 25, 2013, with her children by her side.
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‘The Match’ pitting amateurs vs. pros recalled 62 years later
Quote of the Day: “I play golf with friends sometimes, but there are never friendly games.” — Ben Hogan.
Bubba Watson has had a busy fall. Not only did he play all the way to the final round of the FedEx Championships, and in the Ryder Cup, he also played in an event commemorating a very famous match played at Cypress Point in 1956, pitting two of the greatest golf pros at the time against two of the best amateurs.
Come to think of it, all four were some of the best golfers of all time. This year’s event was celebrating The First Tee’s exceeding $100 million in pledges to reach 10 million new young people. It wasn’t televised and kept very quiet; only 225 people were in the gallery.
One of the people in the gallery was Mark Frost, the author of a book titled “The Match,” which is about that match played 62 years ago that was re-enacted in modern terms last week. The pros in 1956 were Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and the amateurs were Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. It was supposed to have been a private affair, built around a wager by two millionaires, George Coleman and Eddie Lowery. -
ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf from the wrong side of the brain
Imagine this scenario: a woman, small in stature (possibly freckled), walks into a hospital emergency room and says, “I have an emergency, I need a doctor quickly!” The admitting nurse, ever trying to be helpful, asks what the emergency is.
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Farmers looking at widely varying yields
Combines will roll through fields this weekend, bringing in the harvest from a summer with nearly no rain.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf debut in London would have been nice
As the Olympics get underway in London this weekend, I was thinking it’s too bad that the Olympic committee decided too late to add golf as one of the sports for this event; instead it will be added to the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Getting to Hoosier country’s best golfing venue part of the fun
If you are looking for Indiana’s premier golfing destination, then you should look no further than French Lick.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Indiana's Pete Dye courses worth the drive
You’ve probably heard of the Robert Trent Jones Golf trail throughout Alabama, but you might not be aware that Indiana has its own “Pete Dye Golf Trail” comprised of seven courses.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fathers typically a big influence on golfing sons
Some events fall naturally into place around holidays. The Fourth of July always falls somewhere during Wimbledon, giving all of the Yanks in attendance something to be boisterous about, to the chagrin of their hosts; The Masters often, but not always, ends on Easter Sunday, which is fitting since golfers find it such a reverent occasion.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Memorial just one of many visions of Jack Nicklaus
When Jack Nicklaus was a young man, the golfer he most admired was Bob Jones.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: With some tricky rules, golf is not a walk in the park
Golf is not a casual sport, even though it has a term called “casual water.”
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On and off the course: Sycamores seeded sixth heading into MVC golf tourney
It wasn’t too long ago that Indiana State University didn’t even have a women’s golf team.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: A hard ticket to come by
This is the weekend of the Masters Tournament, the first of the four major tournaments.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Some things on golf course are worse than steep putts
It’s not often that anything gets more scary on a golf course than a steep downhill putt, but on some courses around the world, things a little more on the supernatural side might give you a bigger fright!
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The shot heard round the world
I don’t know if the Golf Channel will show a “Best Shots of 2011” highlight reel, much like ESPN does for baseball or football.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Red, White and Blue visits the Isle of Green
In 2006, the Ryder Cup was held in Ireland at The K Club in County Kildare.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Fall may be coming but golf season is far from over
Once the major tournaments are over with, what’s there to look forward to in the world of golf?
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Golf… simplified!
Golf is not a simple game. A golf course is made up of 18 holes, all different. There are par-3s, par-4s and par-5s; they all vary in length and elevation, and each has its own challenges. There can be water hazards, trees, sand bunkers, tall grass, hills, valleys — and then, if that’s not enough, there’s probably wind too.
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On and Off the Course: Northern Ireland builds on golf history
Northern Ireland is only about 5,452 square miles in area and has a population about the same as West Virginia, which is about 1,880,344.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Women’s Open at the Broadmoor
This is the weekend of the U.S. Women’s Open, and this year it’s being played at The Broadmoor, East Course, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: The Fort Golf Course: A Walk in the Park…
Indiana has some pretty spectacular state parks, but one of them gives you the ability to “spoil a good walk” by chasing a little white ball.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Father’s Day is a good day for golfers
Most people consider the time around Christmas to be the gift-buying season.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Playing with lead a difficult task
As exciting as last week’s Masters was, with six players being tied for the lead at one point on Sunday, it was very difficult watching Rory McIlroy fall apart to shoot an 80.
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ON AND OFF THE COURSE: Masters a rite of spring
This is Masters weekend, the grand kickoff to the golf season for a lot of golfers. Sure, there have been tournaments on TV, because the professionals have been playing in Hawaii, California, Texas, Dubai, and other areas not so affected by winter as we are here in the Midwest, but to me, watching The Masters is a rite of spring.
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ON THE OFF THE COURSE: Some history on the Ryder Cup
I fell asleep in way too many history classes to ever qualify as a history buff. However, since I have grown up a bit (not much), I enjoy learning about all kinds of history. I often have questions about how something began, or how something came to be.
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On and Off the Course: Purdue's Kampen Course a gem in Indiana's rough
About a month ago, Indiana was still heavily mired in heat and humidity, making outdoor activities such as golf less appealing than usual. At that time it felt like the repressive heat would never go away, it would never rain again, and all of the grass was just going to continue to wither and die. And the month prior to that we kept getting rained out of golf events!
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On and Off the Course: Successful golfers know ... focus is the key
I have a good friend who coached his daughter’s basketball team for a number of years, and told me that his theme with the girls was always “focus”, until it was ingrained in their brains. Now when they play high school ball, if they hear “focus” yelled from the stands, they know the source.
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On and Off the Course: Technology adds even more fun to the course
You’ve hit a drive into some brush in an area marked as a hazard, but you can’t find the ball to prove it is there. And no one actually witnessed it go in the hazard. You just think that’s where it probably is. What is the rule for this situation?
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On and Off the Course: Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic a worthwhile charity event
On Monday, I worked as a volunteer for the Anthony Gonzalez First Tee Classic, Golf Tournament and Auction at Eagle Creek Golf Course in Indianapolis. It was an absolutely beautiful day, with clear blue skies, just a few wispy clouds here and there and a high temperature of about 76 degrees.
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On and Off the Course: Trends show golf in decline
You don’t have to watch the news or read the paper to understand that America is struggling on the economic front. The evidence can be witnessed at the local golf course.
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