LOS ANGELES — With rookie Farah O’Keefe leading the way, the Americans are positioned to snatch the Curtis Cup from Great Britain & Ireland on Sunday.
O’Keefe, who recently won the NCAA individual championship, is 4-0 and can become just the fourth player in Curtis Cup history to post a 5-0-0 record.
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In two sessions on Saturday with six points at stake at Bel-Air Country Club, the teams split the matches, and the U.S. leads 7-5 while being the obvious favorite with eight singles matches on Sunday. The Americans need only 3½ points to win back the Cup that they lost two years ago in England.
History is heavily on the side of the U.S.
GB&I has won only two times ever on American soil since the Curtis Cup was first played in 1932. The last U.S. team to lose at home was the 1986 squad that featured a 21-year-old Dottie Pepper. That was the first win by GB&I since the 1956 Curtis Cup, snapping a 30-year winless streak against the USA.
The Americans are that dominant. And so is O’Keefe.
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O’Keefe and Avery Weed were the lone American team to win an afternoon foursomes match, 4 and 3 over Beth Coulter and Isla McDonald-O’Brien.
Asterisk Talley
Asterisk Talley of the U.S. plays her tee shot on the eighth hole during fourball matches of the 2026 Curtis Cup.
Edward M. Pio Roda
“I told Avery, it’s not every day you get to represent your country in the Curtis Cup,” O’Keefe said. “Come on, we’re just out here to have a good time. Nothing’s going to ruin that vibe. Nothing’s going to ruin the mood. We have later tee times [on Sunday]. I’m going to go and try to get 12 hours of sleep and run it back.”
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GB&I certainly can’t sleep on O’Keefe, who will play her singles match against Charlotte Naughton. With a win, she would join Stacy Lewis (2008), Kristin Gillman (2018) and GB&I’s Bronte Law (2016) as the only players to go 5-0-0 in Curtis Cup matches.
The University of Texas star will need help from her teammates, of course.
Americans Asterisk Talley and Anna Davis lost to Naughton and Davina Xanh 3 and 2 in the afternoon. GB&I’s Patience Rhodes and Sophia Fullbrook defeated Kelly Xu and Kary Hollenbaugh 2 up.
The Americans suffered a rare loss in the Curtis Cup in 2024 with Meghan Stasi as captain, and she is at the helm again, encouraging her team not to let up.
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“We have a two-point lead, but they know they have to go out and get every point possible,” Stasi said. “I know every single person is going to go out there and try their hardest.”
On paper, the U.S. had an enormous advantage in singles. All eight Americans are ranked in the top 30 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. Kiara Romero and O’Keefe are first and third, respectively. Only one GB&I golfer is ranked in the top 30 (Rhodes at No. 20) and three are below 100. Only two GB&I players—Coulter and Rhodes—were on the team two years ago.
Possibly even more daunting for the visitors, the U.S. has won 15 of 16 singles matches in the last two times the Cup has been played in America.
In England two years ago, GB&I took a 7-5 lead into singles. The U.S. won the singles matches 4½-3½ but lost the Curtis Cup by one point. Three players were on that American team two years ago—Davis, Talley and Jasmine Koo—and they all won their singles matches.
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Noting the two-point lead GB&I carried into Sunday the last time and only ended up winning by one point, captain Catriona Matthew said, “You saw how close it got there. I think that win has definitely kind of buoyed us. We’ve got a bounce in our step now and it’s giving us a chance [Sunday].”
The U.S. extended its lead to 6-3 with two wins in Saturday morning’s fourball. O’Keefe and Koo won 1 up, while Romero and Talley prevailed 4 and 3.
O’Keefe, 21, has one more day to compete after a stretch in which she played the NCAA Championships, U.S. Women’s Open and now the Curtis Cup in three consecutive weeks. She made the cut at Riviera Country last week and also reached the weekend in April’s major Chevron Championship.
“It is a lot of golf,” said O’Keefe. “I’ve played a lot of golf in the last month and a half. It’s really kind of ridiculous, really since the SECs. This is what I love to do, and this is my passion. Even though my body is hurting and everything is feeling kind of old, I’m still enjoying it, and I think I’m running on a little bit of adrenaline.”
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