Lahinch is home turf for GB&I, but welcome mat not rolled out for U.S. at Walker Cup

You may have noticed in the news the other day that some 70,000 pints of Guinness were pinched during a boozy heist on a storage depot.

That mighty figure is probably still lower than the number of jars of the black stuff that will disappear in the Lahinch hostelries this weekend should GB&I beat the USA and win the Walker Cup.

There are, of course, plenty of watering holes near this wonderful stretch of west coast of Ireland linksland.

"Zero," said Scottish teenager, Connor Graham, when asked how many he'd visited during the early part of the week.

"Sunday night," he added with a smile as he mulled over the prospect of a celebratory gargle in a golfing town that would certainly embrace a home win with considerable gusto.

There's a lot of golf to be played before any pint glasses can be clinked, of course.

Check out the best photos from the 2026 Walker Cup at Lahinch

At just 19 – he may yet be asked for ID given his boyish looks – Graham is almost a gnarled veteran of the Walker Cup, This, after all, will be his third appearance in the transatlantic tussle.

The Blairgowrie youngster, who is now on a golf scholarship in the US, has been on a losing side twice and he is determined to play his part in ending the USA's dominant run.

The visitors, with a team packed full of talent, have arrived on Irish soil looking for a sixth victory on the spin.

Once the Walker Cup starts, it's crash, bang, wallop. Two days of foursomes and singles can disappear in a flash after a seemingly interminable build-up.

The GB&I players have been on site since Monday – the US even earlier – and the boys on both sides are now all like coiled springs waiting to go, well, boing.

"It's a long buildup," admitted Graham with a sigh. "Putting your feet up in the afternoons is very important after you get your work done.

"I have the experience of knowing what's going on, how busy it's going to be and how important it's going to be to conserve energy going into the first day. It's a very high level of golf and you need to bring your A game."

The weather in the run-up to this weekend's showpiece has been typically robust and the winds on the penultimate practice day would've rent the Beaufort Scale asunder.

The nooks and crannies of the Lahinch links have been well explored over the past few days and, given the gusts, the GB&I captain, Dean Robertson, opted for a less is more approach.

"We only really had one hole of practice today and rested after that," said the Scot, who is in his second stint as skipper and is keen to avenge the 17-9 defeat GBI suffered in the last meeting between the sides at Cypress Point.

"The guys were able to do exactly what they wanted to do. A few of them went to some different holes.

"Today was always going to be a day where the players could really choose themselves as to what they required, whether it was a last-minute touch-up to any area or learning a few different parts of the golf course.

"The wind could be strong throughout the weekend, but it's perfectly playable. You have to adapt, you have to improvise, you have to be able to control the ball flight in these very difficult conditions.

"It's exceptionally tiring playing in these conditions, but we are good to go."

Lahinch may be home territory for GB&I this weekend, but it'll not exactly be rolling out the welcome mat.

"I think everything is difficult," added Graham of the terrific test it provides. "Trying to hit fairways, hitting greens; all parts of the game become a lot trickier when you're out there in that wind."

The stage is perfectly set and with a 16,000 sell-out crowd over two days, it should be a cracking spectacle. The lively conditions, meanwhile, are just what Robertson had hoped for.

"I requested that the golf course should play as naturally as it could be," added Robertson, who was a Walker Cup player himself back in 1993.

"You don't have to do anything to Lahinch. It's an absolute masterpiece. I think when you come to Lahinch, you're always going to expect it to be blowing.

"Getting here in July for the South of Ireland Championship was fantastic, and they had unusual winds blowing there that came from the north, which we haven't seen.

"But the wind is going to change on Saturday and it's going to come from the south, and that's not a wind that we have seen at any time during the South of Ireland or during the practice this week. That's going to bring new challenges.

"But in terms of the weather and the wind, am I happy about it? I'm very happy about it."