AUGUSTA NATIONAL WOMEN'S AMATEUR

March 31, 2026

Farah O'Keefe

Quick Quotes

Q. Have things cooled off? You've been one of the hottest players in amateur golf this spring. How do you feel heading into another Augusta National Women's Amateur?

FARAH O'KEEFE: Yeah, I feel like my game is in a really good spot. I don't know, I'm continuing to kind of work on the same things that I've been working on. I had a call, I guess, yesterday afternoon with my mental coach, the person I've been working with, Brian Cain, who's been working with us and our golf team. So I called him last night and I felt like we had a really good conversation just about kind of goals and expectations for the week. I feel like I'm in a really good spot mentally.

I don't know, I'm just excited to be here. It's fun.

Q. Laura said you kind of set some different goals, round to round, outside of just winning. Do you have any in mind for tomorrow or the rest of the week?

FARAH O'KEEFE: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I've kind of gotten better at is acceptance when it's destined for things to not go your way out there. You get a bad bounce -- there's so much randomness in golf that you can't really account for. It's kind of just being able to accept whatever happens and know that I have the tools to face whatever comes my way and that I've put in all the work and I've put in all the practice, all the mental reps, so I'm ready to go.

It's going to be fun. I'm just excited. It's fun to put all of the hard work into practice and actually go try and see how it works against everybody else that's -- they're some of the greatest golfers in the world right now. It's just really cool. It's interesting. It's fun.

Q. You mentioned the mental aspect of golf, with Brian Cain sort of talking you through it last night --

FARAH O'KEEFE: Yeah, yesterday.

Q. How important is that when you're coming into a situation like right now, third time here at Augusta National, just the mental aspect, just knocking on the door a couple times? How important is that?

FARAH O'KEEFE: It's massive. I think that's really what's kind of helped me succeed a little bit more in the last semester. I've had some really close calls my last two years in college, so to be able to come out on top three times in the last semester has been kind of cool. I don't know, it feels like I'm on the right track and everything that I'm doing is working.

So really, my focus is to not change anything and just keep chopping wood, don't get too ahead of myself. I think that this game is like 90 percent mental, I would say. I think you have 10 percent of the physical stuff, which is basically just be able to hit it where you want to hit it, and these greens are a little bit firmer, so it's like, be able to stop the ball, and that's kind of it.

Then the rest is between the ears and the rest is -- comparison is the greatest thief of joy, so you're always trying to compete, not compare. So that's kind of been my focus, I guess, the last four or five months.

Q. What do you think you have learned from last year's attempt here at Augusta National that you can either build off of, that you have in the back of your mind or anything like that?

FARAH O'KEEFE: Yeah, I think last year I did a really good job in the first round. I shot 67 and I was -- I felt good about myself after the first round. Then round 2 my goal was to make the cut and to go play Augusta. So I kind of got into protect mode instead of keep chasing the leaders.

So I think this time around, I think I'm just going to go see how low I can go out there these two days here at Champions Retreat. I fell like it's definitely a different setup than it was the past couple years. I don't know if it's going to be more gettable, but it'll be interesting to see how low people go tomorrow.

Q. Why do you think this year could be the year for you?

FARAH O'KEEFE: I don't know. I'm trusting myself. I'm trusting my game. I feel like I have a lot of belief in what I've been working on, so I'm just going to go out there and see if my game stacks up against the best in the world, and if it happens to be my week, then it's my week.

Otherwise I'm going to learn from it and I'm going to walk away and I'm going to build some confidence and go to the next one, and we'll be back next year.

Q. What's different about the setup this year?

FARAH O'KEEFE: I don't know, I feel like last year was really soft. The greens were very soft. The fairways are pretty -- they just had a lot of rain last year, so it was softer. All the trees that got knocked out over the last year, I guess, and now the foliage is kind of growing back, like the canopy. You can tell in some spots where last year you could see through into the forest, now it's filled in.

I think that's kind of the biggest difference is there's still a couple tee shots that have changed, like 4, I guess, or 5 -- 4. That used to be -- last year it was all grass on the left side. Now there's a bunker there. So that kind of changes --

Q. Is that the one that used to have --

FARAH O'KEEFE: The big tree. Now that's a little bit of a different shot. 16, we were talking about that today. You used to try to cut driver around the corner to have any chance of not having 7-iron into the green. Last year all those trees were gone. So now it's almost like, well, we don't really need to take on that corner at all. We just blast it over the bunkers with like a 3-wood or something, and then you still had 9-iron or 8-iron in.

There's a couple of holes that are just a little bit different. But I do think the greens are a lot firmer than they were this time last year. I don't know if that answers your question.

Q. Augusta National is really kind of the gold standard for Women's Amateur golf. Can you speak to how collegiate golf has grown over the last couple years compared to when you were a freshman, and how close is it getting to what they're able to achieve here?

FARAH O'KEEFE: I think if you look at the fields, like, the actual names that are in those collegiate events, they're very reflective of everybody that's playing in this event. I'm trying to think of PV, like who I just played against at PV. You have the entire USC team, which three of them are here. I'm trying to think who else was there. UCLA, you have a couple UCLA players. I think there's one or two UCLA players here.

Every college event you go to, there's at least five or six people that are going to be playing in ANWA. I'm lucky that I have two other players on my own team, so I get to kind of compete with them in and out every week.

But yeah, I think every college event that you go to now, there's -- I don't know what they said. They said something last year. Darius said they had like 70 percent of the field in attendance. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more this year than it was last year. Everything is competitive. Everything is hard core. It's a battle every week out there on the college circuit.

Q. If you can think back to your start in the game, who is one person that if they could be here to see you play in the Augusta National Women's Amateur that maybe you would want here?

FARAH O'KEEFE: Probably my dad. He couldn't make it this week. He had some stuff with work. He's been here the last two years. He actually caddied for me the first year. I know he'll be watching on TV. He'll have it up on his phone or whatever. So I'm not worried about that.

But it would mean a lot if he was able to come out at least Saturday. That would be cool.