One of the great spectacles of recent memory in our game happened at Lahinch at the weekend.
After America swept the Sunday foursomes session of the 51st Walker Cup, Great Britain and Ireland had everything to do in the final singles session, facing a three-point deficit.
But in one of the most dramatic days of golf we’ve ever seen, Dean Robertson’s side won six of the 10 singles matches on Sunday afternoon to topple the visiting US side and win the famous amateur trophy for the first time since 2015.
After Connor Graham forced a half with young lefty Miles Russell, Josh Hill made a gutsy up-and-down on the final hole, a par 5, to win the decisive point against Tyler Watts. The tournament came down to the final putt on the final green.
Once again, as has become expected at the Walker Cup, it was a week of sportsmanship, incredible golf and excitement. While both teams want to taste victory, the event is also a significant stepping stone and learning curve for each player, regardless of the result.
The purity of the sport oozes from the Walker Cup, with not a penny to play for, just pride. It is the amateur version of the Ryder Cup, so to speak, except GB&I takes on America rather than Europe.
Let’s go through how the Ryder Cup could learn a thing or two from the quieter, more self-respecting Walker Cup…
General behaviour and dignity from all involved
When Hill calmly rolled in the putt that beat Watts and won the 2026 Walker Cup for GB&I, he briefly embraced his teammates and celebrated before turning back to his opponent to shake his hand.
There were cheers from the crowd, and passionate fist pumps from Hill’s teammates. It was passion and celebration at an acceptable and natural level. There were no theatrics or playing up to the crowd. There was no swarming of the green and disregard for the respect that forms the bedrock of the sport.
Unfortunately, the Ryder Cup cannot boast such decorum. The jumping up and down, the football-adjacent celebrations – all of these antics spill from the fans into the players, of both sides, I might add, and vice versa, in a confused melting pot of what could be seen as faux emotion.
The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York promised to be a raucous event of unruly behaviour, and unfortunately delivered beyond expectation. Last year’s edition further signified the event’s concerning drift from the core values of the game, which largely stem from rowdy and intense renewals in 1991 and 1999.
You might read this and think ‘fun police’. But in victory or defeat, all 20 Walker Cup players sure had fun on the west coast of Ireland last week, and they didn’t spend it rousing the crowd, swearing or just generally behaving in a way that directly contradicts what makes golf golf.
Crowd size and the viewing experience
I watched a lot of the Walker Cup on YouTube last weekend. One thing that struck me was that the crowd size was at an entirely sensible level, even with tickets sold out.
It was a healthy attendance of around 8,000 people a day. There seemed to be room for the crowd and players to breathe. Spectators were grabbing vantage points and surrounding greens, but unintrusively.
The containment of numbers produces a better viewing experience for all. You can walk down the fairways next to the players, within reason, and become engrossed in the matches. While there is no expectation for fans to have these privileges at the Ryder Cup, the viewing experience between these two events is like night and day.
At the Ryder Cup, there is a maximum of four matches on the golf course at any one time during the first two days. Up to 250,000 fans were reported during Ryder Cup week in 2025, four of which were practice days.
The concentration of people on each hole following each match is extraordinary. If you think you struggle to watch Rory McIlroy on a championship day of The Open, for example, you’d be shocked trying to watch him compete for Team Europe, especially at Adare Manor next year in front of his adoring Irish fans.
For the ticket price of the Ryder Cup, and considering the golf you might or might not watch, the value of attending Europe vs America is questionable at best. You won’t have that problem at the Walker Cup.
ALSO: I’d far rather be a spectator at the Walker Cup than the Ryder Cup
The format
While foursomes isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it is a superb match play format and infinitely more compelling than fourball better-ball. At the highest level, such as the Ryder Cup and the Walker Cup, strategy is key in foursomes.
Based on the qualities of each team member, it matters which hole they tee off from. Which players get on well? Which ones use the same brand of ball? Which players feed off each other? All of these variables must be considered in foursomes, where you and your partner are playing with the same ball.
Format of the Ryder Cup and the Walker Cup
| Ryder Cup – 12 Europeans vs 12 Americans | Walker Cup – 10 from GB&I vs 10 Americans |
| Day 1: One session of foursomes (4 matches) and one session of fourballs (4 matches) | Day 1: One session of foursomes (4 matches) and one session of singles (8 matches) |
| Day 2: One session of foursomes (4 matches) and one session of fourballs (4 matches) | Day 2: One session of foursomes (4 matches) and one session of singles (10 matches) |
| Day 3: 12 singles matches |
The Ryder Cup adopts fourball better-ball, which is fine, but foursomes is a far more intriguing format. Also, two sessions of singles in the Walker Cup is such an exciting element. Two players from each side miss out in the singles on day one, but every player competes in the final singles session. The Ryder Cup does give us plenty of foursomes, too, but the Walker Cup leans even more heavily into the format while also staging singles on both days. That combination is great.
Venues
The venue line-up in the next 26 years of the Walker Cup is astonishing. Bandon Dunes in Oregon is up next in 2028, then the former Open Championship host Prince’s on Kent’s southeast coast. That’s as far as it currently goes for confirmed GB&I home venues, but look at the full Walker Cup line-up through to 2052:
- 2028: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Bandon, Oregon)
- 2030: Prince’s Golf Club (Sandwich, England)
- 2032: Oakmont Country Club (Oakmont, Pennsylvania)
- 2036: Chicago Golf Club (Wheaton, Illinois)
- 2040: National Golf Links of America (Southampton, New York)
- 2044: Pine Valley Golf Club (Pine Valley, New Jersey)
- 2048: Cypress Point Club (Pebble Beach, California)
- 2052: Seminole Golf Club (Juno Beach, Florida)
Several of these are intimate venues that simply aren’t suited to the enormous crowds and infrastructure demanded by a modern Ryder Cup.
Last week, Lahinch was magnificent. It is one of the very best golf courses in GB&I, not to mention just Ireland. Viewers and spectators were treated to the Klondyke Hill on hole 4, and the famous Dell straight after – a glorious little blind par 3.
Walker Cup courses are mostly tight and difficult, and not conducive to birdie fests and hero shots that fill Ryder Cup highlight reels every two years. Ryder Cup venues are a little like purpose-built arenas. They can withstand heavy and constant footfall for seven days and towering infrastructure. The courses can be rather basic, and lacking in nuance compared with the list you see above.
We can at least understand the reasons why the Ryder Cup visits where it visits, and we should never expect to see it visit where the Walker Cup visits. But equally, it is difficult not to compare the venues that host this grand amateur golf event, and chuckle when compared with the likes of Valhalla, Le Golf National and Hazeltine.
Money, money, money
The players you saw proudly donning the GB&I and American colours last week were not playing for a penny. They were competing with one another to challenge themselves, learn and grow. And as I’ve mentioned, they showed just the right level of passion and excitement with it.
The 2025 Ryder Cup saw US players receive payment to play for the very first time. They received $500,000 each, with $300,000 of that going to a charity of their choice, and the other $200,000 to them as a stipend. US captain Keegan Bradley, Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele all said they’d donate their stipends to charity.
Even if it is all donated to charity, the discussion of ‘wages’ to play in the Ryder Cup feels dirty. As a whole, the event has become a financial behemoth. It has sponsors and company logos coming out of its ears. The merch is obviously overpriced, but not as overpriced as the tickets – it is a wonder it’s not yet called the Ryder Cup by Rolex.
The event is worth a hell of a lot of money to the PGA of America and the DP World Tour, who respectively organise it when it’s in the States and Europe. Therefore, every last penny that can be squeezed will be squeezed. The scale of what it has become is abundantly clear after just a few minutes on the ground.
Why and how that has happened is another column in itself, but there is barely a notion of commercialism with the Walker Cup. There were people stroking goats on the grounds of Lahinch last week – one of the great Irish links courses found in a remote, yet vibrant village in County Clare.
The lack of dollar signs in the minds of the organisers raises the level of charm and romance. There appears to be an entirely different ethos at the heart of each event, and a complete departure from remuneration only raises the level of the Walker Cup.
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