Riviera Maya, Mexico: Cameron Davis and Curtis Luck each shot three-under 68s and Australia tied the 72-hole scoring record in winning their fourth World Amateur Team Championship (WATC).
The Australians won by 19 strokes at the par-71, 6,771-yard Mayakoba El Camaleon Golf Club to claim the Eisenhower Trophy for the first time since 1996.
“It’s great for the game of golf back home,” said Australian captain Matt Cutler. “It started two years ago when the women won the Espirito Santo (Trophy). We got a taste of competing and winning internationally. They executed the plan perfectly this week. They had a determination to get it done.”
The Australians, who also won World Amateur Team titles in 1958 and 1966, posted a record score of 38-under-par 534, tying the total established by the USA in 2014. Their victory margin was the third-largest in championship history.
England won the silver medal at 553, behind a final-round of six-under 136. Austria and Ireland shared the bronze medal on 554.
The leading Asian nation was Korea in equal 13th on 563. They were followed by Thailand (16th=, 564), Singapore (23rd, 568), Japan (24th, 569), Chinese Taipei (27th=, 574), India (31st=, 579), China (41st=, 587) and Hong Kong (43rd, 588).
Australia’s Davis, the lone player in the field to shoot all four rounds in the 60s despite the hot and humid conditions, turned in the lowest individual score at 17-under 269. He birdied three consecutive holes on the inward nine and had six during the final round.
“This is by far the best I have played in such a big tournament,” said Davis, who finished second in both the Asia-Pacific Amateur and Australian Amateur last year. “It was an honour to be in this tournament in the first place and representing my country. To come away with a win is pretty special.”
Luck, the 2016 US Amateur champion, followed Friday’s sparkling nine-under 63 at the par-72, 6,888-yard Iberostar Playa Paraiso Golf Club with six birdies and three bogeys during his fourth round. He finished at 15-under overall after posting two non-counting scores in the opening two rounds, as only two of the three-man team scores are used toward the total each day.
“We came out with a pretty good strategy around both courses,” said Luck, who also captured this year’s Western Australian Open and is third in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. “We did a really good job in the practice rounds of setting out where the pins would be and fortunately we pretty much got them all right. We did things extremely professionally.”
The WATC is a biennial international amateur competition conducted by the International Golf Federation (IGF), which comprises 147 national governing bodies in 141 countries and 22 professional members.
The competition, which was being held for the 30th time, is rotated among three geographic zones: Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe-Africa.
The 2018 World Amateur Team Championship will be played at Carton House Golf Club in Maynooth, Ireland, approximately 30 miles from Dublin. In 2020, the event will move to Hong Kong.