The USGA championship season continues with the U.S. Women’s Amateur, which begins Tuesday at the Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tennessee.
Beginning with this year’s championship, stroke play will be contested on Tuesday and Wednesday with match play starting on Thursday, a day later than usual. The 36-hole final will still take place on Sunday.
World No. 1 Kiara Romero is not in the field, neither are Stanford teammates Paula Martin Sampedro and Andrea Revuelta, the Nos. 2 and 3 amateurs in the world.
Texas senior Farah O’Keefe, however, is competing and at No. 4 in the world, she’s the highest-ranked name in the 156-player field. She is joined by No. 7 Aphrodite Deng, last year’s U.S. Girls’ Junior winner (this year’s champ, Clairey Lin, is also competing); No. 8 Asterisk Talley, who finished runner-up at the U.S. Women’s Amateur two years ago; No. 9 Soomin Oh of South Korea; and No. 10 Rianne Malixi, the 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion.
So far this year, O’Keefe has won three of the six highest-rated individual tournaments, according to WAGR – Therese Hession Regional Challenge, Darius Rucker Intercollegiate and NCAA Championship. She also reached the semifinals of the Women’s British Amateur and was third at the Charles Schwab Women’s Collegiate.
In total, 12 of the top 20 amateurs in the world are playing.
Florida has the most representatives among colleges, with five, led by Paula Francisco, followed by Texas (four), USC (three) and Wake Forest (three). Reigning NCAA champion Stanford has only two active players in the field (Leigh Chien and Jude Lee).
Only three countries have more players in the field than Japan, which boasts three in the top 20.
The youngest competitor is Maggie Jiayi Ma, 14, while the oldest competitor is 64-year-old Sue Wooster.
