Imperishable Moment

Roger Wethered (right) presents the Walker Cup to GB&I team captain Michael Bonallack on May 27, 1971. Photo: Cowper/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Ed. Note: As the Walker Cup is played for the 48th time at Seminole Golf Club this weekend, we offer a remembrance – 50 years later – of the 1971 competition.

Read these words well and listen to them. They are heartfelt, the more so because they were written 40 years ago by Michael Bonallack, Britain’s greatest post-war amateur golfer, after he had played for and captained the Great Britain & Ireland team that won an unexpected victory over the US in the 1971 Walker Cup at St Andrews.

“For me, of course, winning at St Andrews was the last ambition. I had won all the championships; they no longer inspired me. But I wanted the Walker Cup because it had eluded us for so long and we had won it only once in all the years since it began in 1922. We all shared in it. I think we will be linked by it for the rest of our lives.”

It was GB&I’s first victory in the b...