LAHINCH, Ireland – With Great Britain and Ireland licking their wounds after a decisive foursomes sweep Saturday morning at Lahinch, the world No. 1 and his American comrades couldn’t help but flex.
“We’re dream crushing right now,” said Preston Stout, sensing, like most everyone, that this 51st Walker Cup had shifted toward a familiar conclusion.
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The U.S. has owned this storied competition, winner of five straight and having lost only nine of the first 50 editions. And the Americans’ three-point advantage entering Sunday afternoon’s singles? No previous team had lost such a lead.
Too bad Great Britain and Ireland never stopped dreaming.
When England’s Josh Hill, the most unlikely hero of them all, rolled in a 2-footer on an 18th green engulfed by seemingly all of Ireland, the greatest Walker Cup comeback in history was complete.
“This has been the most special day I’ve ever had on the golf course,” said GB&I captain Dean Robertson, who a year earlier had been tasked with picking up his players after a demoralizing singles rout at the hands of the Americans at Cypress Point.
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This time, all they needed was Luke Poulter to plug in the auxiliary cable and press play. The first song, fittingly, was Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” one of the all-time rock anthems:
Backbeat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out.
I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, but you never really had a doubt.
“I was so deflated,” said Stuart Grehan, the lone Irishman on the 10-man roster. “But I have to say, the lads came in and once the tunes got going, I was like f— it.”
Added Hill: “That was it. We’re like we’re beating these American boys.”
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Wanting more energy out of the gates, especially with typical Irish weather forecasted, Robertson bumped Poulter and Scotland’s Niall Sheils Donegan into the top five singles slots. That was nearly the recipe for victory back in 2007 at Royal County Down, where GB&I was swept in the last foursomes session before almost rallying against one of the best teams ever. That day, GB&I had taken 4.5 out of the first possible five points before Jonathan Moore’s 4-iron had other plans.
Nineteen years later, Robertson’s boys took that script and ran with it.
It started with Grehan, the 33-year-old reinstated amateur who was in line to make the 2017 GB&I Walker Cup squad but broke his arm shortly before selection. He spent six years as a pro before debuting at last year’s Walker Cup. With Robertson shepherding him all 17 holes, Grehan overcame a multi-hole deficit to take down Stout for the second straight afternoon in the leadoff match.
“Stuart is 2 down, and I’m saying, ‘These guys will do it behind you. You need to bring the energy, Stuart, come on,'” Robertson said. “And he did. Literally, that was it.”
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Jack Whaley, the U.S. Amateur champion from England, delivered the first, mighty blow, toppling the 6-foot-6 William Jennings, 8 and 7, the largest singles win in GB&I history.
Poulter then dispatched Ethan Fang, and fellow Englishman Tyler Weaver, who hadn’t competed since April because of an oblique injury, doused Jay Leng’s hot summer that included a Western Amateur win and runner-up to Whaley at Merion.
In the fifth match, Donegan, 2 down through 10 holes, earned a gritty half-point. When he holed a 5-footer curler for birdie at the short par-4 13th, he unleashed a couple flexes of his own to put an exclamation point on GB&I’s turning point:
On Lahinch’s version of Amen Corner, Nos. 11-13, GB&I’s first five players won eight holes to the Americans’ zero.
Even then, the Americans looked poised to put their opponents to sleep for good. With Ryder Cowan and winless Josiah Gilbert earning points in each of the last two matches, that set the stage for the superstar teenagers Miles Russell and Tyler Watts. The broadcast was already beginning to lay out a potential U.S. victory.
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But Russell lost each of the final two holes to Connor Graham, who hammered two shots onto the back of the 18th green and two-putted for birdie to avoid handing Russell the winning point.
GB&I, of course, had to dodge one more – and then man with history squarely in his hands was the one thought most underserving of a spot.
A few months earlier, Hill had wrapped up an underwhelming college career at the University of Tennessee by topping his tee shot in a 4-for-2 team playoff and carding a double bogey that eliminated the Vols. He seemed destined for Q-School, only to impress Robertson at a training camp planned around the South of Ireland Amateur. Hill not only reached the quarterfinals at Lahinch, but he was the star of what was a de-facto combine at Lahinch – in nasty weather, too.
“That made up my mind,” said Robertson, who unlike the U.S., which has a committee select its team, decides his players himself. “Josh was on the team.”
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Hill’s inclusion was so surprising to outsiders, however, that even Tennessee supporters were texting head coach Brennan Webb asking if that was their Josh Hill who was named to the squad.
“I was in that playoff with him at nationals, and I felt terrible for him,” Donegan said. “But when I heard that he got picked, I thought, he’s going to have a moment this week. All the people saying it should be someone else, it couldn’t have worked out better.”
The worst-ranked player on either side at No. 93 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, Hill never led the second-ranked Watts, an incoming Vol, by better than 1 up. They arrived at the last tied, and after Watts hit his third shot to 18 feet, Hill stepped into the front-right greenside bunker and prepared to hit the most important 30-yard shot of his life.
“I knew it was all down to me, but I didn’t know if I needed a half point or a full point,” Hill said. “So, I got up there, and Dean came up to me by the bunker, and I asked him, ‘Do I need a half point or a full point?’ He said a full point, so I was like, all right, let’s step up and hit a golf shot, and I hit a golf shot.”
For as embarrassing as Hill’s top at nationals was, his Cup-clinching up-and-down will be replayed for decades.
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And all those doubts? Permanently erased.
“That only just drove me to prove my worth this week,” Hill said. “Hopefully, I proved my worth this week.”
As Hill was mobbed by his teammates and the roars of the sold-out crowd echoed around them, a light rain returned as Robertson looked skyward.
“I thought about him often this week,” said Robertson, referencing his late father, David, an electrician and scratch golfer who died in late June, just after the British Amateur, at 81 years old.
“Everything that this event stands for – values, integrity, sportsmanship – that was everything that he stood for,” Robertson added, “and I really tried to bring that to the team.”
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Before the matches started, Robertson, known for his detail and planning, brought not only British Paralympic biathlete Scott Meenagh into the team room but also Robertson’s family, including his mother, Irene. Both were equally galvanizing, just in different ways.
“We could all tell he was very emotional about it,” Donegan said. “It helped us realize that this is so much bigger than golf.”
Ní neart go cur le chéile.
That’s Irish for “there is no strength without unity.”
And together, Great Britain and Ireland, for the first time in ages, delivered the ultimate flex. Statistically more improbable than the Miracle at Medinah – where Poulter’s dad, Ian, was one of the Ryder Cup heroes that day – this one would forever be coined the Legend of Lahinch.
The legends themselves then went out singing, led, of course, by their surprise savior Hill:
Because maybe.
You’re gonna be the one that saves me.
And after all.
You’re my wonderwall.
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