CARLSBAD – In the midst of a strong 2026 season, Farah O’Keefe could make it look effortless at times.
The Texas Longhorn carded a bogey-free third round and was one of only two players in the field to card red numbers all four rounds of the stroke play portion of the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships.
Overall, O’Keefe recorded 20 birdies over the four days en route to winning the individual title.
Though it was not always a peaceful walk at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa’s North Course for O’Keefe, who said the course “has been a bit of a struggle” previously.
O’Keefe bogeyed two of the par-5 holes in her fourth round. On the 14th, she hit one shot from the rough near a fence at the backside of someone’s yard, across the fairway and toward the creek, leading to a bogey.
In an interview with the Golf Channel after the round, O’Keefe said that the key through it all was to actively take stock of each moment she was feeling.
“One of my good friends actually was telling me a couple of weeks ago to make sure that I was doing grounding techniques and actually feeling where my feet were instead of just saying, ‘Be where your feet are,’” she said. “I think that really helped a lot down the stretch.
“I was doing a lot of almost like meditation — especially after 14. I just kind of laughed and I said, ‘Well, it’s a game of inches, you know, or millimeters.’ And I just took some deep breaths, made sure I was feeling actually how I was feeling instead of just trying to put a band-aid over it and ignore it and play on.”
In interviews after both her second and third rounds, O’Keefe mentioned patience and taking the competition one shot at a time.
“There were a couple moments where I thought about the score, but I kept reminding myself one shot at a time,” she said after round three. “I felt like I did a good job of monitoring my thoughts and hitting as many good shots as I could.”
In the year, O’Keefe has been hitting lots of those good shots — she was recognized with the Annika Award, presented to the top collegiate women’s golfer.
The win at La Costa represented her fourth of the season. She has not finished outside the top 10 in any college event this year and tied for the low amateur at the Chevron Championship, the first LPGA major of the season.
The win also earned her an exemption into next week’s U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.
O’Keefe has also been selected to represent Team USA in the Curtis Cup, which will be played at the Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles in June.
“It shows you how amazing this kid is and how hard she works, and she has had so many victories this spring,” Texas head coach Laura Ianello said of the NCAA individual title. “I think this week going into it with an open mind that she knew it was going to be hard and knew there would be challenging moments, but she [stuck] to her process and played great golf and made a lot of putts and got it done.”
Team competition
After the stroke play of the first four rounds, eight teams are seeded into a bracket to determine the team champion through match play.
The University of Texas has hosted the championship each year it has been at La Costa since the Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner remodel, due in part to an NCAA policy preventing schools, such as San Diego State, from playing the championship-hosting course at any other point should they want to host, according to reporting by Golf Digest.
However, in the first round of the team play, that quasi-home field advantage for the Longhorns was undone by a couple of Oceanside kids playing for Eastern Michigan University.
Twins Jasmine and Janae Leovao — both El Camino High School alums — both won their matches against their Texas opponents, en route to an upset first-round victory.
Jasmine sank the winning putt about 90 minutes after Janae beat O’Keefe five and four.
After the win, Jasmine told reporters the team motto was, “Just keep breaking hearts, just keep making history.”
“I’m so proud of this team, nobody thought we’d make it here but we kept believing [in] ourselves and that’s what we did,” she said. “I’m just so happy I made that putt and to keep going on.”
The Eagles’ run ended Tuesday against Stanford, which faced Southern California in Wednesday’s championship match.
The NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championships begin Friday at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa and run through June 3.
