Andy DevaneyThe first major selection story around the 51st Walker Cup team squads belongs to Great Britain & Ireland, and Dean Robertson has hardly been handed a collection of shrinking violets.
US Amateur champion Jack Whaley and Amateur champion Stuart Grehan headline a ten-player side for Lahinch on 5 and 6 September, where GB&I will try to regain a trophy they have not held since 2015.
There is experience, recent championship pedigree and just enough youth to keep the captain reaching occasionally for his birth certificate.
Six Walker Cup returnees give Robertson a proven core
Six of the ten played against the United States at Cypress Point in 2025.
Connor Graham is the old hand of the group, which is an unusual description for somebody still early in his career. Lahinch will be his third successive Walker Cup after he became the youngest player ever to appear in the match at St Andrews in 2023, aged 16.
Eliot Baker, Luke Poulter, Niall Sheils Donegan and Tyler Weaver also return from Cypress Point, alongside Grehan.
Four newcomers complete the side: Ben Bolton, Sam Easterbrook, Josh Hill and Whaley.
Robertson, captaining GB&I for a third time across his international assignments, knows this contest from both sides of the ropes. He played in the 1993 Walker Cup at Interlaken, defeating celebrated American amateur Jay Sigel in singles, and later won the 1999 Italian Open after turning professional.
Jack Whaley arrives with impeccable timing
Few Walker Cup debuts are preceded quite so neatly by winning the US Amateur.
Whaley defeated Jay Leng Jr 4&3 in the 36-hole final at Merion to become only the third Englishman to lift the Havemeyer Trophy, following Harold Hilton and Matt Fitzpatrick. He had needed a play-off merely to reach the match-play stage. Golf does enjoy making its champions fill in the paperwork first.
His victory brought exemptions into the 2027 US Open at Pebble Beach and The 155th Open at St Andrews, as well as a likely Masters invitation.
Grehan supplies another major amateur title. The 33-year-old won The Amateur Championship at Royal Liverpool in June and has useful history at the venue awaiting him: he won the South of Ireland Championship at Lahinch in 2015.
Seven England players form the bulk of the GB&I side
England supplies seven members of Robertson’s team: Baker, Bolton, Easterbrook, Hill, Poulter, Weaver and Whaley.
Baker won the individual title at the European Nations Cup at Sotogrande this year and finished runner-up in the Brabazon Trophy. Poulter won the NCAA Columbus Regional, while Weaver claimed the Valspar Collegiate Invitational in a play-off.
Bolton and Easterbrook have earned debuts through sustained form rather than one spectacular week, while Hill arrives after a strong final college season with Tennessee. Hill has been on the radar for some time: in 2019, aged 15, he became the youngest player to win a professional tournament carrying Official World Golf Ranking points when he took the Al Ain Open on the MENA Tour.
It is not a side selected on reputation alone.
Dean Robertson expects Lahinch to add another dimension
Robertson said, “It is a tremendous honour to captain Great Britain and Ireland again and I’m excited by the team we have selected for the match at Lahinch.
“We have a really exciting blend of players who have experienced the Walker Cup before and others who have earned their first opportunity through some excellent performances over the last year. We have players who have won important championships, performed at the highest level in amateur golf and demonstrated that they can deliver results in international match play.
“Playing at Lahinch will make this a particularly special Walker Cup. We know there will be fantastic support for the team in Ireland and our players will be determined to give those supporters plenty to get behind. We learned a great deal from Cypress Point and everyone involved is hugely motivated by the challenge ahead.”
Selection combined automatic places for the top five eligible players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking®, the Amateur champion and US Amateur champion, with Robertson choosing the remaining players to complete the ten.
An 11-year wait follows GB&I to County Clare
GB&I’s last Walker Cup victory came at Royal Lytham & St Annes in 2015, a thumping 16½-9½ success. Lahinch therefore presents something rather larger than another attractive date in the amateur calendar.
Robertson has six players who know the peculiar intensity of Walker Cup golf, four newcomers arriving on merit and two reigning champions of amateur golf’s grandest individual prizes.
The ingredients are there. The United States, inconveniently, will also bring golf clubs.
For GB&I, the arithmetic is wonderfully unforgiving: ten players, two days and an 11-year wait that will not become any lighter by carrying it.
