Walker Cup legend McEvoy hopes Craig is skipper again at Hoylake
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
mindset, were the keys to victory.
“It’s very hard to win a Walker Cup,” explains McEvoy.
“We’re a country of 60m playing a country of 300m, so the odds are always against you, especially away from home.
“The course will be set up to favour the home side, so then it’s a case of mind over matter. The key is to change people’s expectations of what they can achieve.
“Look at any sport. Two-thirds of matches are won by the home team. Why? It’s all in the head.
“In 2001, we had a particularly strong team. We had a session where I presented each player with his cashmere Walker Cup sweater and I went through their record.
“Luke Donald was the No.1 amateur, Graeme McDowell was a star in college golf, there was the Amateur Champion, the Lytham Trophy winner. We had a team full of champions.
“I wanted the other players to know what a good side we had, and there was nothing to fear.
“The Walker Cup is funny because it’s a team game, but it’s an aggregate of individual ambitions.
“I was keen to stress to the players that the important thing was to win your point. Do it for yourself and your family, but focus on your point. And then we’ll count them up at the end and see who’s won.
“Winning a second successive match, and away from home, was the pinnacle for me.
“You don’t know for sure if the players will go on to have successful pro careers, but I’m not surprised about what most of them have achieved.
“My only surprise is that Paul Casey, from the 1999 team, and Luke Donald have not won Majors because they were that good.”