Never Let This End

We really ought to start with the deer. But first, a bit of scene setting.

The 18th fairway at Cypress Point Club doglegs right. Like so much of Alister MacKenzie’s coastal masterpiece, his final hole offers a few optical illusions designed to momentarily paralyze a golfer. The tee shot on this 345-yard par 4 appears to be simultaneously straightforward and positively exacting. A big hitter needs only to take a mid-iron to reach the desired approach number, and yet if one pushes the ball too far right or left, he will find himself trapped in an immaculate prison.

On either side of the hole are groves of Hesperocyparis macrocarpa, also known as Monterey cypress, a famous species of conifer that, as its name suggests, grows naturally only in this area (specifically in Point Lobos State Natural Reserve and in a small stretch of land between Cypress Point and Pescadero Point on California’s Monterey Peninsula). I’ve been told by more than one club member that the Monterey cypress speak to each other—that their elaborate root systems intertwine, allowing them to, among other things, share nutrients. The elder trees, wise in all the ways of the water cycle, help to nourish the younger shrubs. There is a natural, even spiritual, continuity here, if you’re into that sort of thing, which most people who get to walk the fairways often at Cypress happen to be.

The trees, for them, are about more than tangled wood. They represent tradition, legacy and preservation. Walking through the property, a golf industry insider pointed out to me that many of the most prominent trees are getting old enough that there are supports, camouflaged to look like grayed, grainy bark, helping to hold some of these giants up. The best courses all aim to defy time itself.

The entire point of the club seems to be that the old nourishes the new, down to the gnarled, wind-shaped branches of its titular foliage. A beautiful sentiment, really. And yet if you happen to launch your tee shot right on 18, I can promise, with complete certainty, that all you will feel is pain and danger. Here, out of position, what once was an ornate forest of gorgeous limbs and furry green canopies has become a lattice pattern from hell. These woods now offer tantalizing and yet obviously foolish windows for your approach shot to soar through before surely being Mutombo’d down into one of MacKenzie’s famous amoebic-fingered bunkers or some dense emerald rough.

This is all to say that the finishing hole at Cypress slaps. The 18th gets a bit of a bad rap, in large part because it has the geographic misfortune of coming after three of arguably the most famous and dramatic coastal holes in golf. But, standing in the fairway at the apex of the dogleg, Cypress’ closer offers its own cinema. Tall trees frame the greensite, giving it a subtle amphitheater feel; the clubhouse looms casually in the background, offering a gentle yet bittersweet reminder that one of the most memorable rounds of your life is coming to an end. But for our purposes now, the most germane fact of the 18th hole is just how high its green sits on the top of a hill, and how surprisingly steep the fairway that cambers up toward the pin really is. Should you come up short with a wedge to a front pin, you may find your ball begins to lurch backward before careening tragically back down the fairway. It is the kind of slope where objects that descend it tend to pick up a lethal momentum.

This is precisely what happened somewhere around 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2025, the first day of the Walker Cup. Until I no longer draw breath, I will remember this moment. Not with stunning clarity but as a series of flickering mental images—like a personal Zapruder film. I was walking toward the right side of the 18th fairway with maybe 60 other people in the gallery, just beginning our ascent to the green. It must be noted here that the very act of us doing this is one of many virtues that separates the Walker Cup from golf’s other prestigious events. Unlike, say, the Ryder Cup, where galleries are allowed to swell into the tens of thousands, then are roped off into vast holding pens where the only view of people actually playing golf might be if one looks up from the sea of humanity and finds a fortunate view of a television in a hospitality tent, galleries at the Walker Cup are kept purposely manageable. Limited badges, no towering hospitality venues. This allows the USGA to open up more walking areas on the course and creates a kind of class-free community feel where fans can amble up a fairway together.

We were gathered on this particular stretch of grass to watch the final pairing of the day. Jase Summy, an American amateur, was tied with Great Britain and Ireland’s Eliot Baker. Summy was on in two, Baker in three. A key point hung in the balance. It was the kind of evening a tournament director dreams about: An unusually sunny and warm afternoon was giving way to an early autumn golden hour, just enough slanting glow to allow the illustrious contours of the course’s ryegrass to approximate the texture of marzipan. I was, as my body lumbered up to the green, positively golf-drunk—some combination of “I’m not supposed to be here” and “never let this end.” On either side, I was surrounded by fellow diehards sporting polos and belts embroidered with bucket-list logos. I wasn’t really clocking faces, but I’d bet good money we were all smiling. How could we not be? We’d all somehow pulled off this great caper and were now walking with the best amateur golfers in the world on one of the sport’s greatest courses.

That’s when I heard the screams.

The throng about 30 feet in front of me began scrambling. I saw a young man jumping away from something, hurtling awkwardly through the air, his feet flailing before they disappeared into a fairway bunker. This would be highly unusual in any scenario, but especially now, as this man was one of Team GB&I’s 12 golfers. And he wasn’t the only one. All around him, I noticed men and women in golf-casual attire doing things that were neither very golf nor very casual. They were, to a person, fleeing—hurling their bodies left and right. I watched the USGA’s walking scorekeeper, sign and all, disappear into the crowd like a building does when it’s imploding. The scatter was coming in waves, polos parting the Red Sea. Then I saw it: a California black-tailed or mule deer—a stumpy, sturdy female—positively hauling ass down the hill from the 18th green.

I have two clear mental images of the doe. In the first, it is suspended in the air, all of its hooves off the ground, utilizing the force of gravity like a boulder tailing Harrison Ford out of a temple. In the second, the deer is slamming into an Australian man to my right at top speed, throwing him several feet onto the pillowy center cut of the fairway. In front of him, dozens had just barely cleared out of the way, each patron escaping more narrowly than the last until, finally, there was no more time. The spectacle was over in an instant. The deer, clearly spooked, bounded off in a direction not teeming with spectators. A hush fell over the course as our group tried to come to terms with what we’d all witnessed. Very little at Cypress Point prepares you to confront such violent physics.

The man with the Australian accent was already up on his feet. He looked at me, quite clearly registering some kind of shock. He assured us that he was OK and began, arguably too quickly, to get up and make his way to the green. There were, after all, some consequential putts coming up. As we made our dazed walk toward the clubhouse, fellow spectators chatted up our freshly minted crash-test dummy. They were in agreement that he should try to parlay the form-tackling fawn into a coveted Cypress tee time. I gazed down and noticed the animal’s hooves had left a deep trail of divots cascading down the fairway.

It may seem absurd to spend so much time thinking about a truculent deer. But right then and there, from my perch on one of the greatest meetings of sea and linksland in the known universe, the deer was a perfect encapsulation of what I’d traveled to Monterey to witness.

Yes, I’d come for the golf—to watch the best amateur players in the world bring their swagger and fearsome ball speed to a place every golf sicko dreams about but few ever see with their own eyes. I was here to watch Jackson Koivun—a 20-year-old who is already beating up PGA Tour leaderboards—try to overpower MacKenzie’s ghost, and to see GB&I’s Niall Shiels Donegan (a name few had heard of just a month prior) continue his USGA summer heater. I was here to listen to the sensual thumps of long irons colliding with Pro V1s and firm turf. Amateurs with pro trajectories. I was here to insert myself into a legacy that spans 103 years, two continents and the annals of golf history. To witness golf’s present and future on a stretch of ground connecting us to the sport’s past. But, beyond all that, I was here to experience something even more. My hope when I bought the plane ticket was to leave reality and pass into a liminal state. Not quite dying and going to golf heaven, but maybe being knocked unconscious and getting an opportunity to move for a few moments toward the light.

And so that moment—the deer, the absurdity and improbability of my presence in this scene and in this place—was perfectly fitting. It is outrageous, possibly some kind of glitch in a cosmic simulation, and yet to witness it is to be forever changed. So here is my plea to you, dear reader and Broken Tee Society member: Get yourself to a Walker Cup by any means necessary. It does not matter which continent you choose or whether you follow or really even care about the amateur game. Forget the Ryder Cup and its commercialization, boorish crowds and extravagant ticket pricing. (And, if we’re being honest, forget most majors, too—that action is best suited for TV.) If you’re the type who dreams of compressed irons and nippy wedges, or can wax poetic about top-100 course design, or can pick Old Tom Morris out of a lineup, you owe it to yourself to find a way to experience what I can only describe as pure, uncut golf.

***

The Walker Cup unofficially started in 1921 at Royal Liverpool, when teams of American and British golfers faced off in an exhibition match the day before the British Amateur. It’s named after George Herbert Walker (yes, the grandfather of U.S. president No. 41 and great-grandfather of No. 43), who was the head of the USGA at the time of the tournament’s genesis. The match proved exciting enough that it was held annually for the first three years, then switched to every other year, with each team taking turns on home soil. The event is similar to a Ryder Cup but the format is compressed, taking place over just two days and featuring only foursomes and singles matches, no four-ball. The Walker Cup’s august history means that many of the sport’s biggest names have passed through it, from Jack and Tiger to Rory and Scottie. Given the event’s pedigree, there is a great deal of pomp and circumstance involved in a Walker Cup week. There are suits and ties and flag-raising ceremonies. There are speeches and anthems, and former presidents hitting practice putts on the 15th green alongside wide-eyed college kids. Condoleezza Rice glad-handing with Pau Gasol, and well-coiffed men sporting crisp vest-visor combos who’ve closed real-estate transactions that would make your knees buckle. A friend who works in golf who has attended multiple Walker Cups compared the whole thing to crashing an alumni weekend at a fancy old fraternity.

All of this is crucial to understanding the Walker Cup, and yet it is also somehow tangential. Unlike almost every other sporting event I’ve ever attended, you don’t need to live and die with the winning team to have a transcendent experience. For two full days, I walked the grounds, logging just north of 55,000 steps. I followed individual matches for a few holes as if my own kids were playing in them, then casually forgot about them when my attention was diverted elsewhere. I delighted in the close battles and in watching Stewart Hagestad—arguably now the most decorated U.S. amateur golfer since Bobby Jones (although I will also accept Carol Semple Thompson arguments)—snake a 20-foot birdie putt dead center on the 15th green to rout GB&I’s Baker, 4&3. I was more immersed in the outcome of individual golf shots than I had any right to be. And when Team USA clinched its winning point on Sunday afternoon, I barely noticed. At no point were any fans so overcome with drunken patriotism that they felt compelled to heckle any player’s family members.

It’s hack stuff to suggest, “Well, it’s about more than golf out there.” And yet I found that, even more so than stepping onto the grounds at the Masters, the cliché fit the moment. Like heading into Augusta, there is something ethereal about passing through the main gate and being confronted with images that usually reside on one of your screens. And you are free to amble almost anywhere you please. Follow the group after the opening tee shot of a match, and you will find yourself invited to join them down the first fairway to watch the approach shots at an alarmingly close proximity. Within moments, you will realize that the true source of this event’s power is the intimacy it affords spectators. On the ninth hole on Sunday, near the top of one of the course’s iconic dunes, I stood so close to a Koivun bunker shot that I found myself firmly in the splash zone when he slammed his club down in frustration over a poorly placed 60-degree wedge. It took minutes to get the grit out of my teeth. I was giddy. You can spend a full weekend leaning into player-caddie conversations: Every player is assigned one of the club’s stalwart loopers, which means that nosy fans can listen in as a bearded 45-year-old talks an overeager 18-year-old out of going for it in two to a tucked back-hole location closely guarded by deep MacKenzie bunkers.

Things happen that trick your brain into thinking that perhaps you are now a part of the tournament. On nine green, I found myself next to two gray-haired Cypress members. We were watching a foursomes match eye their birdie putts on what might just be the best drivable par 4 on the planet when one of the members turned to his counterpart, aghast. A visibly frustrated GB&I player had just shaken off his caddie’s read.

“He’ll be lucky to get out of here with his dignity if he’s not going to listen,” Member One offered with a smirk.

“We all have to eat a shit sandwich sometime,” Member Two replied.

The duo snickered. The kid hit his putt—a gruesome misread that came up 6 feet short.

Member Two, keenly aware of my eavesdropping, looked at me with a side-eye and gentle smile. “Looks like they’ll have to learn the hard way.”

What you quickly grasp in a Walker Cup gallery is that the golf IQ is tremendous, and you’ll be treated to overhearing things rarely uttered at mainstream tournaments. Here are a few phrases from my notebook:

“You see, the dune is really the central figure of the routing…”

“Back when they had the Crosby here in the ’60s…”

“Simply a delicious lag right there…”

“What I love about this hole is how when you approach it, the fairway bunkers look like absolute chaos. But when you get up to the green, take a look back down the fairway: It’s all grass. Classic MacKenzie!”

Walking up the fourth hole, a bunker-pocked par 4 that heads into the woods, I met Brian from Sacramento and Dave from the Bay Area. They’d been on property for roughly 20 minutes and were already wearing (conservatively) $300 of tournament merchandise. “I feel like I broke into the Louvre or something,” Dave said. We moseyed up the middle of the fairway in such a stupor that a marshal had to scream at us to get out of the way of incoming tee shots.

While the intimacy is remarkable, what really puts the Walker Cup in its own category is combining that with its devastating lineup of venues. Before Cypress, the event was hosted by the Old Course. Before that? National Golf Links, Royal Lytham, LACC, Hoylake and Seminole. In 2026—the event is breaking its biannual tradition in order to switch to an off year with the Ryder Cup—it heads to Lahinch in Ireland. After that, it’s another murderer’s row: Bandon Dunes, Prince’s, Oakmont and Chicago Golf Club. Late on Saturday, roaming around the 12th tee, I chatted with a man who, judging from his apparel and general stature, seemed to be a member at Merion, which hosted the 2009 Walker Cup. “What tends to happen here is that the tournament comes to your club and you fall deeply in love,” he told me. “And you become part of this lineage. And so now members from past clubs come out and travel. For many of my friends, it’s the only golf trip they still take. They won’t miss a Walker.”

That devotion carries over into the merch. Much like the Masters, there is a swag hierarchy at play. “Sick as hell,” I heard one youngster in an Old Barnwell hat say, pointing at an elderly man wearing a Walker Cup ’93 hat from Interlachen. Swimming through a sea of cashmere, you start to notice weird, hilarious things. At the 17th hole, not far from the green, one of the course’s few rope lines pinched off to a triangular point, offering just enough space for one man to stand at the very front of the gallery. On Saturday afternoon, I noticed, to my eternal delight, that the man standing at the exact apex of the group was none other than a besweatered Fred Ridley. Augusta National’s chairman, mingling with lottery badge winners.

A colleague relayed the story of a moment he’d witnessed on the 11th hole, during which a frustrated man in a hoodie was trying and failing to get an event volunteer to help his friends cross at an unmarked point in the fairway. After two failed attempts, the man in the hoodie found a sympathetic guard who agreed to let them sneak through clandestinely. The man in the hoodie thanked the volunteer profusely. “My name’s Jimmy Dunne,” the hoodie man said. In a show of gratitude, Dunne—a Cypress member, the president of Seminole and one of golf’s most well-connected power brokers—posed the gallery guard a question: “How’d you like to play the course on Monday?”

I realized that we had been afforded the chance to experience the grounds in ways that even the club’s regulars rarely do. A fellow media member confessed to me halfway through the tournament that even though he’d played the course a few years back, he didn’t understand it until that day. “God, it’s just so subtle,” he mused, standing behind Cypress’ famed 15th green, a short par 3 with the pin in the back middle. “There’s no way to convey any of this,” he said, explaining to me how the firmness of the green and the contouring took what should have been a straightforward pin-seeking shot into a butt-clenching, stay-away-from-the-flag play.

By Sunday, I was developing something of a parasocial relationship with a piece of land. Apparently, this is something that happens here. Behind the green on the eighth hole, the highest point on the property, I stood close to Sam Reeves, who at 91 is the unofficial custodian of Cypress Point. His house is just behind the hole, overlooking the mouthwatering stretch of the course that heads out to the sea. We watched as Shiels Donegan, short-sided in a perilously shallow bunker, aimed 180 degrees away from the hole and uncorked an impossible flop shot that trickled down an aggressive, winding slope and sidled up 3 inches from the cup. Reeves shook his head in disbelief. It’s hard to imagine there’s anyone who knows this green like he does, and yet the shot still moved him.

***

It’s about 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, and my herd of polos is trotting through the gently trampled rough of the fourth hole. A stranger to my right is clearly in the midst of one of the best days of his adult life. He’s speaking in hushed tones, like we’re in the Vatican and the Pope just walked by. “I never thought I’d see all this,” he says. That’s when the temporal reality kicks in. This is the first time the tournament has been at Cypress for 44 years. I do the math and realize I may very well not be ambulatory or even alive the next time it returns. I am on borrowed time. And so I break from the herd.

We are in the meat of the tournament—all of the singles matches are on the course. And yet I feel compelled to another destination, walking against the crowds on No. 4, crossing some dunes over to the 12th, over the sand and down the left side of the 13th fairway, where the elevated greensite sits against a backdrop of the Pacific. I climb up the hill to the 14th tee, where the green tongue of this gateway hole snakes toward an intimidating grove of gnarled trees. I bound down the fairway and realize that I am completely alone. Nearly 10,000 people are on this course, and none of them are here. Who, I wonder, besides a greenskeeper, gets to walk completely alone down the fairways at Cypress Point? I keep going, around the right side of 14 green, through the thick, round-ending rough, to the path that begins one of golf’s best walks. I cross 17-Mile Drive and meander down the sandy path, my feet crunching past thick groves of ice plants. The road before me crests uphill for the great ocean reveal. I feel moisture on my skin. The sea and sky shimmer the same incandescent indigo. On an outcropping of rocks ahead, a seal suns itself. Waves break. Gulls caw. I continue, my neurons overloaded and my sensory compass demagnetized—until I see the array of bent cypress branches that marks the 15th tee.

I encounter my first human in what feels like hours—a man named Bill Self (not the basketball coach). He lives down the road in Monterey. He’s been volunteering all week, standing here rain or shine at the 15th tee next to a cooler of water because he is, in his words, “a whore for golf.” No, really, Bill tells me. It’s his whole life now. He lives half the year in Scotland; he’s nabbed at least 75 of the top 100 courses. “It is my pleasure to sit here all day,” he says. I ask Bill if I can sit down, and he agrees. Five seconds later, a whale breaches a quarter mile out into the Pacific. “Something special about this spot,” Bill offers. Bill, a master of understatement. We exchange small talk about life, golf and doing stupid things, like sitting alone for hours on end to guard a cooler just to get closer to some of this dumb sport’s most exclusive real estate. “The game just gets in you, and you can’t really get it out,” Bill says. After a while, we simply sit in silence and watch an otter splash about in a little cove below. It strikes me that Bill and I have likely now spent more time in this spot than almost 100% of people in the entire world.Bill says this is a “gift.” Classic Bill.

By the time I reach the forested sanctuary of commingled trees that links 15 green to Cypress’ signature par-3 16th, time slows down completely. On the 16th tee, I sit on a bench next to Michael, the volunteer stationed here. The blazing sun is beginning to signal the late afternoon. Michael says what we’ve all been thinking this week: There may not be a single place in the world we’d rather be than right here. I remark that it all feels like it’s ending quickly. “You start to feel like you own the place, don’t you?” he says. He goes on to admit, “This is probably the last time I’ll ever set foot here.” We sit in silence, pondering that. The sport’s greatest gift is that there’s always another day, another shot. There is endless possibility—for redemption, for opportunity. Perhaps fate will carry one or both of us back here. Maybe this will be our final taste. But there’s always a shred of hope. Golf ensures that. We don’t say much more to each other, but we’re looking west, both likely plotting about how we’d attempt to carry the 200-plus-yard chasm between tee and green, as waves slap the rocks menacingly below.

At 4 p.m., the wind picks up, and the tournament finds me again out here on the cliffs. A marine layer blows in, and the view from 16 tee goes from postcard to TV static. After almost two full days of clear skies, Cypress Point reminds us that we serve at the pleasure of nature. The match, at this juncture, is not particularly close, and the U.S. is all but sure to win its fifth straight Cup. I walk down the 16th fairway, past the throng of men in Uncle Sam suits loudly but somehow respectfully chanting, “USA! USA!” From behind me, a cart whips past, driven by U.S. captain Nathan Smith. Three exultant U.S. players are hanging off it. Two of the kids are gyrating and wide-eyed, leaning out and looking like they’re going to smash mailboxes on some small-town street; the other is texting. The fog is thick now. Seals are barking loudly. The sea is crashing. I gaze to my right, and the 17th green peeks out of the damp—just before it, a centerline grove of particularly dramatic cypress trees is cutting through the mist, just as intended. We are golfing in a haunted house. It is superb.

An approach and two putts later, and the U.S. clinches it. More carts about, fast and furious. Koivun is leading a “USA!” chant. Visibility is exceedingly limited.

Then, I see it: Out of the fog, a beefy, black-tailed buck with a substantial rack darts down the fairway. He’s racing, looking for a way out. What I haven’t told you until now is that these deer are absolutely everywhere this week. Prancing on the greens and mucking about in the bunkers, to the dismay of the grounds crew. That’s because most of the time, Cypress Point doubles as a de facto sanctuary for the local wildlife. This is due to the relatively light daily play and a membership and maintenance staff who keep the flora maintained but want their fauna au naturel. The animals, oblivious to anything other than an errant tee ball, are not used to this many people hanging out on their land. It’s why, 24 hours earlier, one of them accidentally bulldozed a patron on 18. It’s a reminder of how special and aberrant this weekend is.

The buck finds his lane. I take out my camera phone and record him loping off, hanging a right on 16’s fairway, disappearing from view. It feels like a signal: Time’s up.

We begin to head toward the exit, climbing the 18th fairway one final time. The hoof marks from yesterday are gone, and for a moment I wonder if I hallucinated the whole thing. I make my way home, but this fog will never lift.