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‘Jobs not done’: Even after winning national championship, Farah O’Keefe has bigger goals

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CARLSBAD, Calif. — When Farah O’Keefe was 11 years old, she had her career goals written on a list she plastered on the wall. Among the items scratched on there varied from personal to those on the golf course.

One of those with the sticks? Win an individual national championship.

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“I haven’t thought about that,” O’Keefe said. “I get to scratch that off.”

O’Keefe, college golf’s top-ranked player, looked the part Monday and throughout her junior season at Texas. A stellar season culminated on Omni La Costa’s 18th green, when she watched her 20-foot birdie putt trickle into the cup, and she extended her hands into the clouds before letting out a thundering fist pump. O’Keefe won medalist honors at the 2026 NCAA Women’s Golf Championship, topping the best field in college golf by four shots to win a national title. The win was O’Keefe’s fourth of the season, all coming this spring, and with it she earned an exemption into the U.S. Women’s Open next week up the road at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.

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Best photos from the 2026 NCAA Women’s Golf Championship at Omni La Costa

A general view of signage on the course during the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships at Omni La Costa Resort & Spa on May 22, 2026 in Carlsbad, California.

(Luke Hales, Getty Images)

O’Keefe’s journey to the national title was anything but easy, but as she has become accustomed to, the ride was filled with plenty of smiles and laughs. One of those came on the 14th hole when she shanked her second shot. There was no panic. All O’Keefe did was turn to Texas assistant coach Braden Ash and laugh.

“She said to me, ‘golf is laughable, right?’ and that’s who Farrah O’Keefe truly is,” Ash said. “She can keep it light. Her first comment was ‘that’s the third time I’ve shanked it on live TV this year.’ She did it once with me when I was caddying for her at ANWA, and she did it at Darius, and now she’s done it here.

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“I’ve been with her all three times, so pretty good results when she shanks it.”

O’Keefe buried a lengthy bogey putt on the 14th to lose only one stroke, but it was her second straight bogey. It erased the consecutive birdies she had on Nos. 11-12, the first one coming after a 90-yard bunker shot that Ash called the greatest bunker shot he had ever seen. Even after the pair of bogeys, O’Keefe settled down with pars on 15 and 16, but the tournament was in her grasp. She wanted to take it.

On the 17th hole, she added a birdie to move back to 11 under overall, but the emotion finally came out on the 18th hole. O’Keefe admitted she was nervous throughout Monday’s round, but that never showed, even as she hit another hosel rocket in a pivotal moment.

“I got to, yeah, 13, and I peeked at the leaderboard, and I realized I think I was one shot ahead at that point,” O’Keefe said. “And then I got to 17, and really all I cared about was whether or not the team was doing well. I was like, so I looked at Braden, I was like, ‘Can you tell me the score? How’s the team?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, we’re good by seven shots.’

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“So that was kind of it. And then he said, ‘You have a two-shot lead off that.’ OK, cool. So I felt like that, that was kind of first time I was able to breathe. Actually, after I made birdie on 17, I smiled, because I was like, ‘man, I just did that, like I kind of get to coast in from here.’ I mean, it’s two six irons, and then a wedge, playing three par 3s.”

O’Keefe finished two shots in front of Stanford senior Megha Ganne and three in front of Duke freshman Rianne Malixi, the last two U.S. Women’s Amateur champions. Texas finished fourth in the team competition, where Stanford topped the leaderboard for the sixth straight year after stroke play.

It’s not the laughs or the life-long goals that have come to fruition that drive O’Keefe, it’s her team. She’s from Austin and never realized she would be good enough to play for her hometown team. Texas was the only school to offer her. The goal has always been a team national title, but O’Keefe talked about how much she has struggled at Omni La Costa, even complaining to men’s coach John Fields after the first year questioning the golf course as a championship test.

Then came maturation, which brought patience. She learned when not to push and where to take risk. That conservative approach paid off in an individual national title, but O’Keefe wants to quickly put that behind her.

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“It’s a feeling of like all of the hard work that I’ve put in kind of coming to fruition, O’Keefe said, “but I told my coach, we were driving up after 18, we drove up from the green to meet up here, and I just looked there, I said, ‘yeah, it’s great, and all, but the job’s not done.’

“I want to win a team national championship. It would mean the world to me to bring a natty home to Austin. I’m from Austin, so it would make like it’d be the highlight of my life. Jobs not done.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: NCAA Women’s Golf Championship 2026: Farah O’Keefe wins medalist

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