The queue to be Walker Cup captain hardly snakes round the block but Martin Slumbers, the chief executive of the Royal & Ancient, is confident they won’t have to dip into the professional ranks to find future skippers.
Craig Watson, the former Amateur champion, was recently unveiled as the Great Britain & Ireland captain for the 2017 match with the USA and even the East Renfrewshire veteran suggested that the R&A may have to start pondering the pros a few years down the line as the career amateur continues to become a thing of the past.
In the build up to last September’s contest at Lytham, Gary Wolstenholme, GB&I’s leading points scorer in the biennial bout, salivated at the notion of Colin Montgomerie or Padraig Harrington, two redoubtable campaigners with five Walker Cup appearances between them during their days in the unpaid ranks, leading a GB&I side. “The interest in the Walker Cup would be through the roof,” Wolstenholme suggested.
Of course, the transatlantic tussle, and all its amateur dramatics, remains a magical event in its own right and Slumbers is keen to preserve the status quo. “The way the game has evolved over the last 20 years, there's a smaller and smaller pool of amateurs who are eligible to be captain,” he said. “I think we would like to stay with an amateur captain in the Walker Cup, and we've talked to a couple of other players who are still amateurs about bringing them forward in terms of their ability and the skills to captain. I think we've got a pipeline. As long as we can stay with suitably skilled and qualified amateurs, that's the way we want to go. Pádraig and Colin would be very good leaders of men, but I don't think we need to go that far.”
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