SUNNINGDALE, ENGLAND | What a cracking Curtis Cup it was as Great Britain & Ireland and the U.S. teams reduced the somewhat less-youthful officials and spectators to nervous wrecks during Sunday singles, which could scarcely have been closer. Eventually, GB&I won by 10½ points to the Americans’ 9½.
Both sides talked of the togetherness they had experienced over the three days. “I’ve never known the camaraderie to be as strong as it’s been here,” said Scotland’s Hannah Darling, who competed in her third Curtis Cup and lost only in singles this week, to Anna Davis. The Americans felt the same, with even the 15-year-old Asterisk Talley recognising that the bond among them had been very special.
GB&I headed into the singles holding a valuable 7-5 lead after the hard-fought series of foursomes and four-balls on Friday and Saturday. With the hosts’ top two players, England’s Lottie Woad and Darling, not faring well from the start of their singles, it was hardly surprising that the home crowd were in rather more of a state than its American equivalents.
The first three points the home team needed came from Ireland’s Sara Byrne, who defeated Catherine Park, 3 and 2; England’s Patience Rhodes, who won to the tune of 6 and 5 against Zoe Campos; and Scotland’s Lorna McClymont, as cheerful a player as you ever saw, who beat Megan Schofill, 3 and 2. McClymont reckoned that the putt with which she closed out the match at the 16th was all of 20 feet. And what a glorious feeling it must have been when she knew she was going to hole it: “In my mind, I could see it dropping.”
The Rhodes sisters, Patience and Mimi, who before the singles had no points at all other than Mimi’s four-balls win alongside Darling on Saturday afternoon, had the day of their lives. Patience, whose performance could not have done more to suggest why the chosen name was right for her, steered clear of one more loss with her runaway win against Campos. Meanwhile, Mimi collected the critical half point for which the whole of GB&I was waiting and watching. She was 1 up with one to play against Melanie Green, on whom the Americans had been depending, only to hit out of bounds at the last. But what did that matter when a half was all that was required?
When someone made the light-hearted suggestion to U.S. captain Meghan Stasi that Talley might learn what it is to get nervous one day, she was not so sure. “Not the way she’s going,” she said with a chuckle.
Byrne’s singles success completed an undefeated, and top-scoring, week for the Irishwoman following three halves and a win alongside Woad. The highlight was a dramatic finale to Friday’s four-balls, which ensured the match went into the weekend with the scores equal. She drained a 35-foot birdie putt at 16 and then chipped in for another birdie at 17 to complete a 2-and-1 victory for herself and Woad over Park and Campos.
Rachel Kuehn top-scored, and was undefeated, for the Americans with three points from four matches. However, Talley was the star of the show as she defeated Woad to bring her haul of points for the match to 2½ out of three. You doubt whether too many of the GB&I team would have been thrilled to come up against this nerve-free teen. Indeed, Pam Butler-Wheelhouse, the Sunningdale captain, said that it was when she kept on losing to 15-year-olds in club matches that she decided to call a halt to her match-playing days.
Woad, though, was thrilled to come up against the teen in the top match. Never in her golfing life has she shied away from any task, however difficult. But as Justin Rose had pointed out on Thursday, her massive result at the previous week’s AIG Women’s Open at St Andrews – she won the Smyth Salver awarded to the top amateur and finished in the top 10 among the professionals – had very likely taken the wind from her sails.
When someone made the light-hearted suggestion to U.S. captain Meghan Stasi that Talley might learn what it is to get nervous one day, she was not so sure. “Not the way she’s going,” she said with a chuckle. Stasi, like her GB&I opposite number Catriona Matthew, was a first-time captain, although the Scot had considerable pedigree as a double-winning Solheim Cup captain in 2019 and 2021.
Colin Montgomerie, who played in the Walker Cup in 1985 and again in 1987 – the ’87 version was also at Sunningdale, where he now lives – was startled by what he was seeing from both teams over the weekend. First, he paid tribute to Dean Robertson from Stirling University and the way his role as that university’s coach had kept his charges – they included McClymont – up there with all of the top golfing universities in the States.
“All of these places are turning out players who are more and more professional,” Montgomerie said. “They are competing with each other to be the No. 1 on their team, and they’re all very competitive.
“When it comes to their short games, they’ve all improved dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years. I watched Lottie Woad at St Andrews and again this week, and she has what I’d call ‘a proper putting stroke’ even if it didn’t keep up with its usual magic at Sunningdale. Usually, when she’s over the ball, you know it’s going to go in, and she knows.”
The Scot went on to say that when he had played in his Walker Cup at Sunningdale, it had been light years away from what he was seeing last week.
“Then, there was no name on your bag, but today, all the players have the grandest of bags. And, as I remember it, we only got a Mars bar at lunch, which we probably had to pay for. All these girls are treated like professionals, and they play like professionals. We were treated like amateurs, and we played like amateurs, though we were good at the time.”
There was so much to admire in the running of this 43rd Curtis Cup. The spectators, all 16,680 of them throughout the week, were so many as to eclipse even those at the 2016 version at Dún Laoghaire in Ireland. As a result, they could maybe have done with rather more than just the one person holding a scoreboard aloft with each game. They tended to get lost amid the hordes.
But it was not just that. When Woad, who hails from nearby Farnham, Surrey, caught up with a sister Surrey girl who had been the scoreboard-holder in her match, she wanted to know how she had enjoyed the experience.
“It was so heavy,” said the shattered girl, before handing it over to the world’s No. 1 amateur.
She held it up for no more than a second before dropping it to the ground.
RESULTS
Lewine Mair