Farah O’Keefe, a junior playing for her hometown Texas Longhorns, won the 2026 NCAA Division I Individual National Championship with a two-stroke victory over Stanford senior Megha Ganne.
O’Keefe was tied with USC standout Catherine Park coming into the final round of individual play, and didn’t have a great start with an early bogey on the par 5 second. She did recover well, with a pair of nice birdies before making the turn.
As happens with a player with O’Keefe’s play style, she did have some ups and downs, with a few more bogeys after some horrible breaks early on the back nine. The start to her second nine in Carlsbad went bogey, birdie, birdie, bogey, bogey. From there, she stabalized out, making a pair of pars and two birdies to end it.
O’Keefe, the No. 4 ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Rankings, is on a great run as of late with three wins in the spring and a good result at the Chevron Championship on the LPGA Tour, where she was in contention heading into the weekend. This should give her strong momentum heading into the Curtis Cup, where she is a part of the star-studded team from the United States.
In the team portion, the preliminary cut to 15 was once again cut to eight in preparation for the match play portion of the event, which will decide the team national champion.
Stanford, of course, dominated, finishing 13 strokes better than the second best team, USC. Stanford finished as a team at -22, while USC finished at -9. Every other team finished over par.
Joining Stanford and USC are Arkansas, Texas, Eastern Michigan, Oklahoma State, Duke and Pepperdine.
The first two rounds of match play will be played May 26 and will be broadcast on Golf Channel.
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