Great Britain & Ireland extend lead through Day 1

After claiming three of the 4 accessible factors within the morning foursomes session at St. Andrews, Great Britain & Ireland stored the pedal to the metallic within the Saturday afternoon singles matches, taking 4.5 of the accessible eight factors to extend their benefit to a few factors heading into Sunday’s closing day of play on the 2023 Walker Cup.

The rating through Day 1: 7.5 to three.5 to GB&I. The problem for the Americans: hefty.

Team USA’s prospects regarded brighter at the start of the 8-match singles session, with American Caleb Surratt claiming a stress-free 3&2 victory over Barclay Brown. But Surratt and Walker Cup veteran Stewart Hagestad (4&3) have been the one U.S. gamers to assert big-margin victories. Top-ranked newbie Gordon Sargent delivered a 1-up win, and Preston Summerhays earned a half-point in his tied match in opposition to Matthew McClean.

The most lopsided match of the day got here within the final one out, which featured newly-crowned U.S. Amateur champ Nick Dunlap in opposition to John Gough. With birdies on three of the primary 5 holes, Gough was 5-up through 5, and clinched the match for GB&I 6&5 on the thirteenth gap.

Now, Team USA will probably be compelled to mount an epic cost on Sunday, the place there will probably be 14 factors up for grabs; 4 within the morning crew foursomes matches, and 10 factors in afternoon singles. Team USA wants to succeed in 13 factors to retain the Cup, whereas GB&I have to attain 13.5 factors to re-claim it.

Despite the seemingly lengthy odds of success, on the finish of play on Saturday, U.S. captain Mike McCoy remained optimistic.

“It wasn’t the day we were looking for, but saw a lot of good golf,” he stated. “The afternoon form of began the way in which we have been hoping, and we simply didn’t shut a few of these matches we have been — we had a pair 1-up, 2-up leads, and we simply — they form of slipped away, and we didn’t flip any of the all squares.

“But we’ll regroup, and we’ll have a plan for tomorrow, and we’ll be ready to go.”

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She can out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily answerable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular tasks, similar to GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview collection, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video kind on GOLF.com.