Americans hope to get ugly in Northern Ireland
OK, let's see if I've got this straight: Saturday morning around 3:44 a.m. EST, Dustin Johnson, a three-time All-American at Coastal Carolina and Dutch Fork High alum, will be teeing it up in the opening round of the Walker Cup at Royal County Down Golf Club in Newcastle, Northern Ireland. Sixteen minutes later, Clemson sophomore Kyle Stanley will do the same, both of them heading out for foursomes matches (alternate shot to you and me) against a potent team representing Great Britain and Ireland.
The golf is a lot easier to figure out than the time difference (how does Daylight Savings Time impact the usual five-hour difference between here and Northern Ireland? Answer: it doesn't -- still five hours ahead over there). The U.S. and GB&I teams, with 10 players per team, will battle for a total of 24 points over two days in this amateur version of the Ryder Cup -- in fact, the Ryder Cup is the professional version of the Walker Cup, since the Walker Cup was founded a half-dozen years before its more well-known cousin. But I digress.
What fans of college (and junior) golf in South Carolina should be excited about is the fact that U.S. team captain Buddy Marucci chose to send out Johnson and Stanley in both the morning foursomes and afternoon singles matches. Only four others (U.S. Amateur champion Colt Knost, Wake Forest's Webb Simpson, Billy Horschel of Florida and Oklahoma State's Rickie Fowler -- the winner of Hilton Head's Players Amateur, by the way) were picked to play twice the first day. That tells you that Stanley (one of the final two players picked for the U.S. team) and Johnson, who'll turn pro after the Walker Cup, are seen as the U.S. team's studs -- and they should be.
Johnson earned his way onto the U.S. squad early; he won twice on the summer major-amateur circuit, capturing the Monroe Invitational and the Northeastern Amateur. Johnson easily could be out on the mini-tour circuits -- the NGA Hooters Tour would love to have the tall, lanky, big-hitting 23-year-old right now -- but long ago decided to make the Walker Cup a priority, the highlight of a tremendous amateur career that figures to turn into a lucrative pro career very soon.
Stanley, a 19-year-old who looks a couple of years younger, didn't win this summer (though he won twice in the summer of 2006), but his consistency in posting top-five finishes in the top amateur events marked him as a must-have Walker Cupper. If that didn't, then his runner-up finish in the NCAA Championship (to Southern Cal's Jamie Lovemark, another rising sophomore and an original Walker Cup choice) and Stanley's two-round run in the U.S. Amateur was enough to earn him a spot.
That didn't sit well, though, with Alabama's Michael Thompson, who finished runner-up at the U.S. Am to Knost and figured that, and a solid 2006-07, would get Marucci's attention. It did, but obviously not enough to trump Stanley's selection along with Fowler, who kicked butt all summer with a pair of wins before he even arrived on the Oklahoma State campus.
What does all this mean to South Carolina? Johnson is a home-grown product who overcame early youthful mistakes (including involvement in a break-in robbery when he was 14) and a poor academic record in high school, then blossomed into a pro-in-waiting at Coastal Carolina. Johnson led the Chanticleers to three NCAA Tournaments and was All-American his final three seasons. Coastal coach Allen Terrell said earlier this year that Johnson need only make a choice among all the agencies waiting to represent him and all the various PGA Tour sponsors ready to attach their product names to this skyrocketing talent.
Stanley hails from the Left Coast (Washington State) but spent much of his formative youth playing golf in-state, staying with family friends at Hilton Head and making his mark on the AJGA circuit. That was the connection that enabled Clemson coach Larry Penley to land this rail-thin, baby-faced killer on the course. Result: the Tigers, who missed the NCAA Finals for only the second time in 25 years, will begin this season ranked in the top 10 in all three major polls.
Clemson has a lineup that includes S.C. Amateur winner Luke Hopkins, Tanner Ervin, Ben Martin, Phillip Mollica -- all home-grown -- plus Stanley, New York's David May and Florida's Sam Saunders, whose pedigree (he's Arnold Palmer's grandson) will eventually kick in after a so-so freshman season last year. The Tigers should be very good again -- and they'll have to be to stay ahead of Coastal (which returns Zack Byrd and Lindsay Renolds) and resurgent South Carolina, which has George Bryan IV, Florian Fritsch (both among Golfweek's top 140 players returning from last year), seniors Warren Thomas and Mark Anderson and a potent group of young players: Patrick Rada, Baker Elmore, Patrick Cunning et al.
Did we mention that all the above besides the aforementioned Clemson imports, the Coastal crew and Fritsch (from Germany) are products of South Carolina junior golf? And Coastal will add a couple of young guns from the instate ranks this season, too.
Before this turns into a testimonial for the S.C. Junior Golf Association, let's return to Newcastle, where the Americans will attempt to do what no U.S. team has done since 1991: win on GB&I turf. The Americans lead this series by a bunch (32-7-1) but haven't exactly been "Ugly Americans" in their last four overseas adventures, unless by ugly you mean gracious losers. But this squad has a fascinating mix of experience (Trip Kuehne, the 35-year-old latter-day version of Bobby Jones: a perennial amateur) and youth: Fowler is 18, Stanley and Lovemark both 19, Horschel 20. All four figure to groom themselves the next 2-4 years in the college ranks before launching pro careers, trying to take down that doddering graybeard, almost 32-year-old Tiger Woods.
The GB&I crew has experience and talent, too, and more experience playing Irish links-style golf at Royal County Down. But Stanley, before he hopped his team trans-Atlantic flight late last week, came across as a player with no fears, no doubts and plenty of moxie -- not to mention a laser-like focus.
"Absolutely, we have a lot of talent on this team," he said. "You can put us up against anyone. On their home soil they have an advantage, I guess, but that's one we can overcome."
Stanley and his teammates also won't be distracted by the sights and sounds of the Emerald Isle's British enclave. Say what you will about stopping to smell the roses (I believe that was Walter Hagen's line), but these kids are into winning first. Stanley, for sure, is that.
"It's all business from my side," he said. "My dad's played (in Ireland), used to go with a bunch of buddies. He brought me back all his yardage books (though none, alas, from Royal County Down). I know a little bit about all the history there.
"But I'm going over there to try to do what I can to help my team win. That's what my focus is."
That sounds like a tough, hard-nosed approach. Forget all that "hands across the sea" good fellowship: these Americans want to bring home the Walker Cup. That means it's time to get a little "ugly" -- starting very early in the morning on Saturday.
BOB GILLESPIE
