GB&I complete comeback for the ages to win Walker Cup

Stuart Grehan sparked a remarkable final session fightback before Josh Hill held his nerve on the last green to secure GB&I's first Walker Cup win since 2015

Team Great Britain & Ireland celebrate with the Walker Cup. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

Great Britain & Ireland staged a comeback for the ages to defeat the United States and win the Walker Cup for the first time since 2015. World no. 93 Josh Hill won a titanic clash 13.5 to 12.5 with a decisive final putt of the weekend.

The USA had won the previous five editions, including last year at Cypress Point when GB&I had capitulated in the final Sunday singles session to lose 17-9. This time though, the Americans looked to have taken a firm grip on the contest after  winning Sunday morning’s foursomes session 4-0 to move into a 9.5-6.5 lead ahead of the concluding 10 singles matches. 

The historic US dominance in one-on-one match play duels looked to have made the final session a formality, their team boasting nine of the top 12 in the men’s world amateur golf rankings (WAGR) and GB&I’s rank averaging 40.1. Yet that was counting without a passionate sell-out home crowd of 8,000, some unsettling, squalling rain and the determination of GB&I captain Dean Robertson not to give up the dream.

“Chances are going present themselves and we need to be ready to take them,” Robertson had said after the US had made a clean sweep of the morning foursomes. “We need to get some momentum out early. We need to get the crowd behind us.

“And then if we do that, the pressure is going to build and then there is a good… still got a chance. So we are going to be positive in the afternoon.” 

Fittingly, Stuart Grehan, the lone Irishman on the GB&I team set his team’s train in motion, dragging himself off the canvas to defeat world number one Preston Stout for the second day in a row to claim a 2&1 win in the opening match.

Robertson had radically altered his order of play following the foursomes, stacking his top order to regain some momentum, and it paid dividends with Luke Poulter, Jack Whaley and Tyler Weaver, the world number three, following Grehan’s example by putting points on the board.

Wins for England’s Eliot Baker and Hill’s completed what had seemed an unlikely 7-3 session victory with two half points from Scots duo Niall Sheils Donegan and Connor Graham being equally valuable in securing the GB&I victory, a first on Irish soil at the third attempt.

In the first match of the afternoon, Grehan had been slow out of the blocks, bogeying the opening hole in horrible fashion with a duffed pitch followed by a shank, and going 2 down after four. Yet the smile gradually returned to the Irishman’s face as began to take advantage of the American’s slip-ups, getting the contest back to All Square by the sixth.

For the second day in succession this pair, now facing off for a fourth consecutive session, were beginning to produce some excellent golf in worsening conditions. Both men birdied the eighth before Stout regained the lead by winning the ninth with a second birdie in a row. Back to all square with an American bogey five at the 10th and then another superb duel at the 12th, with Stout taking birdie, only for Grehan to produce the shot of the day with a brilliant iron approach from 200 yards out to give himself a tap-in eagle and take a 1 Up lead for the first time in the match.

That became 2 Up at the next hole and 3 Up after 14 and though Stout rallied to pull back a hole by winning the par-three 15th, Grehan two-putted the 17th for a 2&1 victory.

As the Irishman’s confidence grew throughout the contest, so did the belief in the home crowd as the red that had dominated the morning leaderboard was replaced by the blue of GB&I.

US Amateur champion Jack Whaley of England completed an 8&7 rout of American world number four William Jennings to deliver the first home point of the day to begin GB&I’s chase for the seven points needed to regain the trophy. Grehan’s win was the next point on the board, quickly followed by Luke Poulter’s 3&1 success over Ethan Fang, emulating the European Ryder Cup heroics of his father, the watching Ian Poulter. That levelled the scoreboard at 9.5 apiece and GB&I edged in front soon after as the team’s top-ranked player Tyler Weaver, England’s world number three, saw off Jay Leng Jr 4&3.

Wins in all four of those top matches in the draw regained the points lost in the morning’s foursomes clean sweep by the USA but there was still work to be done for GB&I in the bottom six contests. They could not have been more evenly balanced, the USA up in two, the home side up in two with two matches All Square with GB&I now a point ahead and needing three more points from the available six as the squalling rain returned to Lahinch.

It made for the tense conclusion that such matchplay team events produce, each individual contest with the potential to go either way and the projected result changing frequently as each match seesawed.

Scotland’s Niall Sheils Donegan battled his way to halve his match with Kihei Akina yet the other matches saw the GB&I wheels begin to come off again, the USA’s lower order coming in strong as their superiority in the world rankings began to tell.

Josiah Gilbert pushed the US closer to their objective with a 4&3 win over England’s Sam Easterbrook in the last match of the day to tie the overall score at 11-11, only for Englishman Eliot Baker to win his match at the 18th, 1Up, over US veteran Stewart Hagestad, only the 35-year-old veteran’s second singles defeat in 10 matches dating back through five appearances to 2017.

Ryder Cowan delivered another point for USA with his 3&2 win over England’s Ben Bolton to level again at 12-all leaving the remaining two games to decide the 2026 Walker Cup, GB&I still needing 1.5.

Scotland’s Connor Graham, 19, won his penultimate hole against Miles Russell in the battle of the teenagers with the 17-year-old American’s lead cut to 1 Up heading to the last to keep home hopes alive. A missed birdie putt on 18 from Graham, though, gave Russell a 15-foot putt to retain the trophy but the American missed and the Scot held his nerve to win the hole and square the match, a half-point each.

So it all rested on the final match on the course, England’s Josh Hill level with Tyler Watts at the 18th tee and needing to win the hole for an unlikely GB&I victory while the Americans needed just a half point to retain. Ranked 91 places below his opponent at 93rd in the world, Hill’s approach found a bunker on the front right of the green, while No.2 Watts sent his third shot from the fringe of the fairway safely onto the putting surface. 

Hill produced a wonderful long bunker shot to within three feet but Watts still had a chance from 20 feet to keep the trophy in American hands. He left it short, giving Hill a chance to win the 51st matches. The short putt dropped, the Lahinch crowd went ballistic and Great Britain & Ireland’s class of 2026 became the first team from these shores in 11 years to savour Walker Cup success.