By Pete Kowalski
The 50th Walker Cup Comes to Cypress Point
The cauldron of competition for the 50th Walker Cup Match at Cypress Point Golf Club has all the ingredients.
The 10-man teams for this biennial international amateur golf contest, which blends an unparalleled course and its setting, and a history-laced international match based on the premise of integrity and camaraderie, need only stir it.
USA Captain Nathan Smith, a three-time Match participant, is savoring this serendipitous recipe.
“It is the greatest golf course in the world,” said Smith. “The design is off the charts, and it’s fun. It’s a perfect match play course. (Holes) 15, 16, and 17 are made for drama. It’s beautiful. There’s shot making.”
A four-time of the U.S. Mid-Amateur championships as well as the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, the 45-year-old from Pittsburgh, Pa. embraces his role and knows makes the hairs rise on the neck of players representing their country.
“To be the Walker Cup captain is the greatest honor of my life, which you can appreciate it even more when you play on three Walker Cups. To get it there is just….Wow,” Smith said of his role at Cypress Point.
Often called the Sistine Chapel of golf, Cypress Point, an enclave seen only in glimpses from 17-Mile Drive, is hosting the Walker Cup for the second time. In 1981, the USA squad with Corey Pavin, Hal Sutton and Jay Sigel defeated Great Britain and Ireland, 15-9.
Each of the two competition days (September 6 and 7) feature foursomes (alternate-shot) matches in the morning followed by singles matches in the afternoon. On September 6, there are eight singles matches, while all 10 players from each side compete in singles on September 7. Practice rounds and a stirring flag-raising ceremony open the competition on September 5.
The USA won in 2023 at the Old Course in St Andrews and holds a 39-9 lead in the series.
Club president George Still and Walker Cup chairman Peter Barker are spearheading the nearly decades-long plan in the spirit of stewardship. In 2025, the club is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its chartering under founder Samuel Morse and the influential amateur Marion Hollins.
“All of us feel the special obligation to share the beauty, history and tradition of Cypress Point, with friends, family and the world,” said Still.
According to the club’s agreement with the United States Golf Association, which conducts all aspects of the competition with The R&A, the course will remain unchanged.
The Alister MacKenzie design opened in 1928 just six years before George Herbert Walker, the USGA president in 1920 and scion of the presidential family, offered a plan for international team matches, which became the Walker Cup and now includes a battery of the best to play the game from Tiger Woods to Rory McIlroy.
“The selection of Cypress Point Club as Walker Cup host was emblematic of what George Herbert Walker intended when he envisioned the first Match,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s Chief Competitions Officer. “To have one of the country’s greatest courses as host site will not only produce memorable competition but will reinforce the stature of amateur golf in this country.”
There will be a limited ‘build’ as Cypress Point stressed keeping the competition non-commercial, partly to keep the spirit of the competition “pure” and partly because the space for the “footprint is tight and fragile with the dunes,” according to Barker. The club’s driving range will beused for the merchandise and hospitality areas. Television’s impact will be minimal as the only infrastructure set on the course and placed strategically to “protect the beauty” of Cypress Point.
The participants will prepare on Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Point Joe driving range and will be housed at the Inn at Spanish Bay. “We’ve worked closely with Pebble Beach and Monterey Peninsula,” Still said. “It is a community event for sure.”
Approximately 500 volunteers for all operations and services were selected in a draft conducted by the USGA.
Barker said about 3,800 ticket holders can be accommodated on the property for the three days of the competition.
Tickets will be sold only in advance through a random selection process. Practice round tickets are $100 and match day tickets are $200.
Weather is the club’s biggest concern. “But even if we get pea-soup fog that will underscore what golf is all about,” Barker said.
Jim Nantz, a Cypress Point member who is golf’s voice for CBS TV, optimistically wished away those worries.
“It's going to be the perfect setting,” he said. “September in Pebble Beach is summertime. You're bathing in sunshine; you're playing the most glorious piece of land that I believe God ever created and you're going to have this celebration of amateur golf. It's truly as pure as it gets when it comes to amateur golf. It's a melding together of a lot of things that stand for the goodness of the game.”