Walker Cup legend McEvoy hopes
GREAT BRITAIN & IRELAND’S most-successful Walker Cup captain ever is urging the class of 2017 to pull together for absent captain Craig Watson.
Watson announced that he was stepping down from his duties for the match in Los Angeles next weekend because of a serious illness in his immediate family.
Chairman of Selectors, Andrew Ingram, has stepped in at short notice, but Peter McEvoy – the man who masterminded successive Walker Cup wins in 1999 and 2001, hopes Watson, from East Renfrewshire, will be in charge for the match at Hoylake in 2019.
“I’m very sorry for Craig,” says McEvoy. “He won’t have taken this decision lightly, but I admire his honesty in doing so.
“Andrew Ingram is very much the stand-in because this is Craig’s team. I just hope for his own sake that Craig will be captain again in two years’ time.
“But, in a perverse way, what’s happened could bind the team together. It could turn into a positive as the players might say to each other: ‘Let’s do it for Craig’.”
Victory in 2001 was just the second time GB&I were successful in America, and it has not been done since.
That shows the challenge facing the likes of Open Championship Silver Medal winner Alfie Plant, Amateur Champion Harry Ellis and Scottish duo Connor Syme and Robert MacIntyre.
McEvoy possessed a stellar team 16 years ago. Marc Warren holed the winning point in a side that also contained future Ryder Cup stars Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell.
Those individual talents, combined with a positive