PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — One of the best weeks in amateur golf is here.
The 2025 Walker Cup begins Saturday at famed Cypress Point Club on the Monterey Peninsula. Team USA will face off against Great Britain & Ireland in the 50th edition of the biennial competition, which features two morning foursomes sessions and afternoon singles each day.
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The venue makes the golden anniversary of the event even more iconic. Cypress Point, ranked No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best list of Classic Courses in the U.S., also hosted the Walker Cup in 1981, and 44 years later, the event has returned and will be under the bright lights with 12 hours of coverage to come this weekend.
The teams this week feature some of the best players in the world, including eight of the top 10 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. These top golfers have played plenty of the best courses in the world, but to every one of them, Cypress Point is standing out.
Here’s what the competitors are saying about having the opportunity to compete in the 50th Walker Cup at Cypress Point and the course itself.
USA captain Nathan Smith
Team Captain Nathan Smith (USA) as seen on the first hole during a practice round ahead of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025.
“I think every hole presents a challenge. I think you just need to — there’s a lot of angles out here. There’s the speed of the greens. There’s spin control. There’s some fairways that slope.
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“I think Cypress Point is an incredible golf course. You’re going to have to have all the shots and play it a lot to truly understand how to play it.
“Every green it seems like there’s three or four quadrants where the pin might be. It’s really unique like that. I don’t think you see that at a lot of other courses. We’re trying to prepare for that.”
GB&I captain Dean Robertson
Team Captain Dean Robertson (GB&I) hands out course maps to teammates during a practice round of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.
“I’m exceptionally privileged to be captain of the GB&I team this year, and to be coming to Cypress Point is just incredible. I’ve never been here before as a player. Played in the Walker Cup in ’93 at Interlachen which was very special, but this week is going to be extra special.
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“The golf course is quite unique. It’s breathtaking. The green complexes are exceptionally difficult. It’s going to be extremely strategic. The course is changing all the time.
“We came here last Friday, walked the golf course on Saturday, and it’s firming up by the day. So the greens are getting a little bit quicker but more the firmness of the greens are going to pose the biggest problems, and you must be under the hole around this golf course.”
USA’s Jackson Koivun
Jackson Koivun (USA) plays his tee shot on the first hole during a practice round of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025.
“It’s one of the best golf courses I’ve ever played. I was fortunate enough to play here my freshman year of college, and just to come back, play in the Walker Cup here, the golf course is in great shape. You think so much around this place. It’s just truly one of the special points of golf.”
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GB&I’s Tyler Weaver
Tyler Weaver (GB&I) plays his tee shot on the 17th hole during a practice round of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.
“It’s so unique, like all the trees on the coast and everything, those few holes. There’s nothing really like it, to be honest, so I can’t really give a course off the top of my head.”
USA’s Ben James
Tyler Weaver (GB&I) plays his tee shot on the 17th hole during a practice round of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.
“It’s definitely my favorite walk in golf. Just the views and everything is amazing. It’s spectacular to be out here. The course was in amazing shape today. It’s cool how it changed from Sunday to today. Definitely firmer and faster, which is great. I think that’s how the course wants to be played. Today it looked really good.
“Again, just an amazing walk, and really breathtaking every time we get a chance to play here.”
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GB&I’s Cameron Adam
Cameron Adam (GB&I) plays a shot from the dunes on the 12th hole during a practice round of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025.
“The course has changed a lot in the past couple days, and that’s a great testament to the greens staff that they’ve got here. It’s really firmed up and sped up over the time. I think today it was quite nice, I got a few more holes in there to kind of understand what the first skip is doing because it does different things on different holes.
“But the course is incredible. I think my favorite hole might be 13, kind of that — the tee shot down there I think is one of the most underrated tee shots on the course, just that view out into the bay.
“There’s a lot of feast or famine out there. As much as a load of the slopes can help you, they’re the protection as well. They can bowl a ball into the pin, but if you get on the wrong side of it, you can’t hit it within 10 feet. What makes the course gettable is the protection, and that’s one of the beauties of the architecture out there. What’s there to help you also hurts you.”
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GB&I’s Luke Poulter
Luke Poulter (GB&I) plays his tee shot on the 15th hole during a practice round ahead of the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point Club in Pebble Beach, Calif. on Friday, Sept. 5, 2025.
“The slopes of the greens and the speed that they can get. I think they’re going to ramp them up a little bit throughout the week, and they just keep getting firmer and firmer.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Walker Cup 2025: What competitors are saying about famed Cypress Point
