Story and links: Rickie Fowler makes U.S. Walker Cup team
Congratulations to SCGA member Rickie Fowler for being named to the U.S. Walker Cup team (SCGA WALKER CUP WEB SITE), joining another SCGA player, Jamie Lovemark, on the 10-man team that will meet a team from Great Britain and Ireland in the 41st Walker Cup Sept. 8-9 at Royal County Down Golf Club in Newcastle, County Down, Ireland.
Fowler and Lovemark are the 27th and 28th SCGA members to play in the Walker Cup, a list that begins with George Von Elm and Charles Seaver and includes a "Who's Who" of Southern California golf (e.g., Johnny Dawson, Gene Littler, Dr. Frank Taylor, Craig Stadler, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods). Counting multiple appearances, SCGA members will have played 33 times when this year's matches conclude.
Fowler's selection brings to a conclusion a remarkable 14 months that began in 2006 when the Murrieta Valley High School then-junior scorched Santa Maria CC with a bogey-free, 8-under-par 64 to win the CIF-CGA California State High School Championship by four shots. Fowler birdied six of his first nine holes en route to his victory.
Last June, Fowler fired a, what seemed for him routine, 6-under-oar 66 at The SCGA Golf Course (six birdies and 12 pars) to win his second CIF-SCGA Southern California Regional (he had won his first in 2004 when he blistered the same course with a 10-under-par 62).
I happened to be on the scoring table last June when Fowler handed me his scorecard and announced that he wasn't going to defend his state high school title the following week. Instead, he was headed to Pennsylvania for the Sunnehanna Amateur. "This year's Walker Cup team is what I hope to have a chance of making," Rickie told me. "It's a possibility if I play well."
There were more than a few people who thought that was a pipe dream, but Rickie turned it into reality by winning two prestigious amateur events — the Sunnehanna Amateur and The Players Amateur — making the quarterfinals of match play at the Western Amateur and tieing for 11th at the Northeast Amateur. At the Sunnehanna, he was in the 60s for three of the four rounds. At the Players, his four rounds in the 60s included a 63 and 64 he finished at 24 under par for 72 holes over a Tom Fazio-designed course.
Although the entire selection process is shrouded in secrecy, the USGA International Selection Committee ended up with some very hard decisions to make. To an outsider, it appeared that there were multiple agendas in play, some at odds with each other.
For example, the committee seemed to give nearly equal weight to results from from many tournaments in both 2006 and 2007, although once again nearly all of those tournaments took place in the eastern half of the United States. This probably played into Fowler's hands since, in addition to his stellar summer in 2007, he was a quarterfinalist in last year's U.S. Amateur. The committee very much wanted a mid-amateur on the team (the 2005 team had none, which brought plenty of negative reaction) and Trip Kuehne was named for the third time this year.
One thing consistent with previous years was the U.S. Amateur. Only once since the year 2000 (Casey Wittenberg) has a U.S. Amateur runner-up been named to the Walker Cup team and that held true again this year, although Michael Thompson was named first alternate. Another wrinkle for the selection committee was that an American, Drew Weaver, won the British Amateur but he didn't finish well in anything else until the U.S. Amateur, when he made match play.
In the end, the committee appeared to base its final decisions on overall play in 2006 and 2007, but it cannot have been an easy choice. We on the Left Coast are delighted to have four representatives (Jonathan Moore is from Oregon and Kyle Stanley from Washington) and with two players from Texas (Kuehne and 2007 U.S. Amateur and Amateur Public Links champion Colt Knost are from Dallas), there are six from west of the Mississippi, are rare occurrence.
Now it's on to Northern Ireland, where the U.S. team faces a formidable history. Not since 1991 — ironically, at Portmarnock GC in Dublin — has the U.S. won or retained the Cup on foreign soil. That team, incidentally, included three SCGA members: Bob May, Phil Mickelson and Mitch Voges.
