PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Stewart Hagestad is becoming synonymous with the Walker Cup.
The 34-year-old Mid-Amateur from Newport Beach, California, has represented the United States in the past five matches against Great Britain & Ireland. His foursomes record isn’t great, but when it comes to singles, “Stew” is almost unbeatable.
And on Sunday, when his team was looking for a closer at Cypress Point, Hagestad was there once again. In a perfect concoction of land, sea and fog, Hagestad swiped his broomstick putter at his golf ball and watched it trundle toward the back of the cup. It never left the center. The crowd exploded, vibrating the fog engulfing the Monterey Peninsula. It was over.
Hagestad’s birdie on the par-3 15th hole Sunday afternoon was the retaining point for the U.S. in the 2025 Walker Cup, helping the Americans win for the fifth straight match, topping GB&I 17 to 9, the largest margin of victory since 2017. Hagestad, who dominated his Saturday Singles match to the tune of a 7-and-6 victory, was in control from the start, dispatching Eliot Baker 4 and 3. The win moved him to 7-1 all-time in Walker Cup singles competition, and he remains undefeated at 5-0 as a player in the match.
“I think in singles, you can kind of like, get obsessed in your own space and focus on like what you’re doing,” Hagestad said. “Being an older guy you just have, maybe you value the team component of it so much more, and maybe it helps alleviate a little bit of the pressure from singles.”
U.S. captain Nathan Smith, a four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion and three-time Walker Cupper, had a big embrace with Hagestad when the two embraced on the 16th tee. Perhaps Smith is a look into Hagestad’s future as a shoo-in to be a Walker Cup captain, but with the next competition coming next year at Lahinch, his playing days in the competition seem far from over.
And Stew was far from the only dominant performance on Sunday, which started with Cypress Point, ranked No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best list of Classic Courses in the U.S., basking in sunshine before fog rolled in about 5 p.m. local time, making some holes almost invisible while cloaked in the marine layer.
When Hagestad and Baker stepped on the 15th green, the flag only 130 yards away was hardly visible. They looked at each other, shrugged and then both hit their shots. But when Baker missed his putt on a similar line to Hagestad, the latter didn’t miss his opportunity to finish, like he did in 2017 when he earned the clinching point at Los Angeles Country Club in his first Walker Cup.
“I think Stew and I, we’ve had a relationship, a great relationship for years,” Smith said. “I think with some of the things that he’s done with some Mid-Ams, playing in majors, I think that that’s brought us together a little bit. He’s asked me questions. I think we’ve bonded kind of through that.
“Then I totally love his game, respect his game, and really just couldn’t imagine being a captain on a Walker Cup team and him not being on my team. He played incredible this summer. He went after it. I think his level of play and what he’s done, winning so many Walker Cups, and his record just speaks for itself.”
Around the same time as Hagestad earned the retaining point, it was world No. 4 Preston Stout clinching the winning point, throwing a dart into No. 17 to knock off Luke Poulter, 2 and 1.
The U.S. led by one point going into Sunday Singles, and Smith sent out world No. 1 Jackson Koivun first, as he had in the previous three sessions. Then he sent out Tommy Morrison. Then U.S. Amateur champion Mason Howell and Stout. Then Ethan Fang and Hagestad and Ben James and Jase Summy.
Those eight players are all either ranked inside the top 10 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking, have Walker Cup experience or in Howell’s case, are proven match-play victors. And they proved it.
In the first eight matches, the U.S. garnered 7½ of the possible 8 points available. In singles overall, they won 8½ of the 10 points. As close as the match was when the day began, as the board lit up red the more groups that marched out onto the Alister Mackenzie-designed course, the more the outcome came into focus. As if there was any question in the first place.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a Walker Cup team bring it like they did this afternoon in singles,” Smith said.
Even as the celebrations started on course, matches were still being played in the thick fog. But word of the USA’s success traversed quickly, almost as if the fog was carrying it throughout the course. Players marched through the fog and to the holes where players done with their matches were waiting to celebrate and encourage. Even U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley tweeted congrats to the Walker Cup team, and Bryson DeChambeau was roaming the grounds Sunday and gave encouragement to the team Saturday night into Sunday morning.
But in a competition that has lacked much juice (the U.S. now leads the all-time series 40-9-1), the Americans made sure there was no drama at arguably the most dramatic course in the world. The only theatre down the stretch was where balls were going to land when they fell from the fog.
“We still firmly believed that we had it in us to win, but hats off to Nathan Smith and the U.S. team because they were outstanding this afternoon in the singles,” GB&I captain Dean Robertson said. “In fact, they were outstanding both days in the singles, and that really has been the difference. The U.S. team holed more putts that were important putts in important moments.”
There won’t be a two-year wait for the next Walker Cup, as the competition will be held next year before getting back on a two-year schedule to get away on the calendar from the Ryder Cup. It heads to Ireland at Lahinch in 2026.
