I shall attempt to make concise and salient points. It occurred to me that the Walker Cup mirrors my own forays into golf writing, albeit with one caveat (to be cited later.) Walker Cup golfers, at this stage, are amateur players. With the exception of Nathan Smith on the USA side, their immediate plan is to attempt a professional career at some juncture. In the case of Smith, his career is well established and his need to perform on the glamour stage is nil. He is an excellent weekend golfer, doubtless a member at a marvelous, Pittsburgh-area course, and a contestant along the Summer Circuit of amateur events that traverses the USA.

If any other members of either team should choose to remain outside professional golf throughout adulthood, they would join my team, that of the gentleman amateur. As I have indicated before, my backgrounds in writing and in golf qualify me to execute the tasks required to blog for this fine website. I do not travel from event to event on a weekly basis, although I do make an effort to get to events within a certain radius of my home. When the PGA was in Rochester, NY, I attended. Two Opens at Bethpage and one at Shinnecock were graced by my presence. This Walker Cup will hopefully be followed by one in 2013 at National Golf Links.

In the end, I feel most at home with the amateurs. In their eyes, one sees the anticipation of the future, not the hardened glare of the past and present. These eyes are readily available at national amateur events and national team amateur events. They are hopeful yet trained eyes, not stunned by the first glare of the bright lights of attention. There is much in me that desires the opportunity to work in journalism professionally. As I near the half-century mark, I will continue to make these journeys to major events, with the hope that I might somehow catch on. With the incredibly changing state of information reporting, however, the skill set is also much more diverse. In fact, I tweeted and facebooked while on the course yesterday, wrote one story and watched as staff members of a noted golf magazine plugged ear phones in to their laptops to edit video pieces. You need to have it all in order to compete.

Now comes the caveat. Might I consider my writing to be of Walker Cup quality? Who could be so bold? I expect that Tom from Albany will chime in at least once with a nay vote. All I can do is write and hope that perhaps, just perhaps, Captain Marucci will select me with one of his picks for the amateur writers’ team.

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