IF you could choose any venue to make your Walker Cup debut – excluding Augusta – any serious student of the game would pick Cypress Point, on the Monterrey peninsula just south of San Francisco, where the US Amateur was played at the city’s famous Olympic Club last week.
Regularly name-checked as one of the finest golf courses in the world, it boasts a stretch of dramatic holes on the back nine framed by northern California’s rolling Pacific coastline.
Great Britain and Ireland international Charlie Forster, who played three competitive rounds in San Francisco at the US Amateur last week, said: “The two courses we played on at the Olympic Club are among some of the best in America.
“And now I get to play the Walker Cup at Cypress Point, probably with their neighbours at Pebble Beach, the two most iconic courses in the USA, certainly when it comes to coastal locations.
“The back nine has some of the most spectacular views in golf anywhere in the world, and there are holes that are just classic risk-and-reward matchplay holes.
“A few of us who played in last year’s St Andrews Trophy had a look at Cypress Point back in October, with our captain Dean, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.
“We can’t wait to get there for real now the team has been picked and began our preparations for what is going to be the most exciting 48 hours of our golfing lives so far.
“We all want to play at the top – we have all spent years practising hard to get better for life-changing opportunities like this. I still have to pinch myself now and then.
“We are obviously in for another tough battle away from home, but we will be fighting for every point,” added Charlie, who won two US college tournaments between Christmas and Easter,
Charlie Forster (right) and Long Beach team-mate Alejandro de Castro Piera after their one-two victory in the Wyoming Cowboy Classic, in April. Picture LONG BEACH STATE ATHLETICS