Welcome to this week’s Golf Insider, everyone!
On Sunday, June 14, Team USA won back the Curtis Cup with a dominating performance in the singles session against Team Great Britain and Ireland (GB&I). In those Sunday singles, the U.S. snagged six of the eight available points en route to reclaiming the trophy on home soil.
The Curtis Cup is a biennial team golf tournament that showcases the best amateur players in women’s golf from the U.S. and GB&I. They compete in a match play tournament consisting of five sessions across three days. This year’s tournament at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles comes two years after GB&I took the 43rd Curtis Cup at Sunningdale Golf Club in England.
But the 44th edition of the Cup, back in the U.S., went in the Americans’ favor, thanks to several star players. Going into the weekend of the Cup, the eight players on the American team had an average World Amateur Golf Ranking of 13.6. GB&I’s average ranking sat at 117. On paper, the Americans had the upper hand, and that advantage certainly transferred to the course.
Kiara Romero and Asterisk Talley
This pair came out of the gate firing. In Friday’s four-ball morning session, Romero and Talley dominated their match against Lily Hirst and Davina Xanh 4 and 2 to give the U.S. the first point of the cup. Along the way, both Romero and Talley hit dart after dart. After 11 holes, they were a combined 8-under-par and went 5 up in their match.
Now, we know this isn’t stroke play, but the four-ball format still requires each player to play and score their own ball. When they’re winning holes with birdie after birdie, you have to sit back and think what their names might look like on a stroke play leaderboard. It was some impressive golf.
Romero and Talley had their ups and downs, though, losing their Friday foursomes match to Beth Coulter and Isla McDonald-O’Brien 3 and 2. They picked things back up with a win in the Saturday morning four-ball session, but they then lost the Saturday afternoon foursomes match.
In Sunday singles, Romero and Talley once again showed their individual prowess, winning their matches against McDonald-O’Brien and Xanh 1 up and 2 and 1, respectively. Each player was able to grind to the very last holes to eke out points for the American side.
The alternate shot format turned out not to click for Romero and Talley. They both showed out individually, but struggled complementing each others’ games in those more dependent formats. This is what makes the Curtis Cup so compelling; team golf is a completely different beast. Romero and Talley, I think, were still settling in as the weekend progressed. And Talley specifically has got time; she’s going to be a Curtis Cup staple in two years. She’s only 17 and will certainly add to her already bright amateur career in the coming years.
Farah O’Keefe, Curtis Cup clincher
It seems like we mention Farah O’Keefe’s name just about every other week here in Golf Insider. In Los Angeles, O’Keefe was yet again a standout.
The 2026 NCAA national champion sunk the par putt to clinch the final point the United States needed to win the Curtis Cup during Sunday singles. She also became the third American ever to go undefeated (5-0) during a single Curtis Cup. Not only did O’Keefe lift herself up on Sunday, but she lifted up each of her teammates that she played matches with earlier in the weekend. Jasmine Koo and Avery Weed had their part to play too.
“There were a couple times where maybe Avery and I or Jasmine and I got a little bit down. I just looked at them like, hey, let’s do this thing,” O’Keefe said in a post-tournament interview on June 14.
“I kind of had that same chat with myself after nine. I was like you’ve got to be a teammate to yourself. I turned my attitude around. I saw all the bad shots I was hitting, and I was like it’s okay. You’re supposed to be human. You’re supposed to make mistakes. I think just positivity and light heartedness, it overcomes everything.”
O’Keefe’s attitude anchors her game. Even if her game is going through ups and downs, her consistent mindset grounds her, reminds her what matters. And then the game starts trending upward again.
I mentioned it when running through her national championship win, but I still can’t get over how positive, how mature and how free Farah O’Keefe is. Nothing can hold her back. Nothing can get in her head. Nothing can keep a smile off her face.
This mentality is immensely powerful, because after the few months O’Keefe has had, it would have been easy for her to sit back. But that’s simply not who Farah O’Keefe is. She’s always in drive.
“Why not? I’m always at 110%,” O’Keefe said before this year’s Sunday singles.
“I feel like I’ve played the most unreal amount of golf in the last couple of months, but it’s all worth it.”
Hats off to the Americans! This team was special.
See you next week, golf fans.
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
This week in women’s golf
LPGA News
WTGL welcomes Motor City Golf Club
Field announced for 2026 KPMG Women’s PGA Championship
Blythefield Country Club feels like home for past champions
How to watch the 2026 Meijer LPGA Classic for Simply Give
Field breakdown: 2026 Meijer LPGA Classic
Gina Kim, Yana Wilson team up to win 2026 Dow Championship
Team LOTTE’s bogey-free 65 earns runner-up finish at Dow Championship
LET News
Rookie Morgan trying to get better every week on the LET
Macnab heading into Dutch Ladies Open after confidence-boosting victory
LET back on the road with a trip to the Netherlands
PIF London Championship locks in milestone sixth edition at Centurion Club
Metraux excited to start next chapter after special week at Evian
Tan happy to see progress in her game
Alexander leads LET Order of Merit heading into busy summer
Epson Tour News
Things to know about the 2026 Great Lakes Championship at the Highlands
Field breakdown: 2026 Great Lakes Championship
Maize and blue vs. green and white: A battle of Michigan alumnae heads to the Highlands
Pure Michigan Cup update: Lauryn Nguyen leads after week one
Amateur News
Kary Hollenbaugh was lost. Her Curtis Cup breakthrough sealed the USA win
Farah O’Keefe’s leadership guides USA to Sunday Singles rout in Curtis Cup
Kelly Xu missed Stanford graduation to play in the Curtis Cup. She still had a ceremony
2025-26 Golfweek Women’s College Golf All-Americans
Five at The IX: Gina Kim and Yana Wilson talk 2026 Dow Championship, first wins on LPGA Tour
On Sunday, June 14, Gina Kim and Yana Wilson teamed up to win the 2026 Dow Championship. The duo, nicknamed “Weapons of Grass Destruction”, notched their first wins on the LPGA Tour in the process. Over the four rounds of best ball and alternate shot formats, they posted a total of 17-under-par to finish two strokes ahead of Hyo Joo Kim and Hye-Jin Choi. Kim and Wilson are the LPGA Tour’s first Rolex First-Time Winners of the 2026 season, and it’s the latest in a season the LPGA has gone without a first-time winner since Danielle Kang in 2017. Here are some quotes from Kim’s and Wilson’s post-win press conference on June 14 from Midland Country Club.
THE MODERATOR: All right, joining us after the Dow Championship are our winners, Yana Wilson and Gina Kim. Can you just start us off by telling us how it feels to be an LPGA Tour winner for the first time?
YANA WILSON: Yeah. It feels awesome. Yeah, just to do it alongside Gina, someone who I really trust and someone whose game is frickin’ awesome, it’s just awesome. I really have no words.
GINA KIM: I don’t think it still has sunk in yet. This is obviously something I’ve dreamt about ever since I was a little girl, and I would always practice like, oh, this is to win whatever tournament.
I don’t know, it still seems crazy. I think it’ll probably hit me later. I think it’s really fitting to do it at a place where I get to have a really good partner and have somebody that I trust, and I think it’s really nice that we both came up from Epson.
We got to play together in a lot of final group pairings down at Epson, so it’s just really nice to be able to see both of us achieve what we always wanted.
Q. Yeah, as you mentioned you both were on the Epson Tour last year. With this win you secured your LPGA status for two years and gotten into all of the majors for this year and for next year. Just what does that mean to you to suddenly just be in all these things that you had to grind to qualify for before?
WILSON: It’s such a relief honestly because I was really dreading doing the AIG Women’s Open qualifying. I’m just really happy. Like Gina said, it hasn’t really sunk in for me either. Yeah, it’s pretty surreal. Yeah, that’s all I have to say.
KIM: I’m just glad I don’t have to do qualifying anymore. At least up until next year. I was in that playoff with Rose Zhang and I was like, Rose, one of these days it’s my dream to not have to do these dang qualifiers. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. Everything hurts. I would love to see a schedule where I didn’t have to fit qualifiers in.
So it’s just really nice. Like before this week I wasn’t sure if I was going to go to Evian. Like I knew exactly where I stood. AIG, that was even farther away.
So this week, I mean, not to sound dramatic, but it really changed the trajectory of my career.
Q. Looking ahead to the Meijer LPGA Classic next week, which you guys are driving to tonight, does this win—going into next week, because it still hasn’t sunk in for your two as you were saying, does that change your mindset, preparation, anything for next week?
WILSON: I think this win will give us a lot of confidence because obviously we played really well this week, but I don’t think it’ll change our preparation going into the week. I think we’re still going work just as hard as we did this week in the beginning.
You know, it’s a new week, so you got to stay hungry out here and just keep grinding. This win is obviously great, but got stay on that grind.
KIM: Yeah. Exactly what Yana said. Maybe I might wake up an hour or two later than usual. Besides that, it’s just the same routine: rinse, wash, repeat.
That’s what is so great about this job. Even after a nice win like this you get to go back on the grind and try to do it again.
Q. So is there any intimidation factor when you’re competing against the No. 1 player in the world, defending champions of this event, anything like that?
KIM: Personally, no. If there is one thing that I absolutely love about this game is that it doesn’t discriminate. You could be the No. 1 player in the world and you could also the last-ranked player in this field, and we all have an equal chance to win.
I think that self-belief that maybe something crazy might happen, I think it’s a really—it holds a lot of power. At least for me it does. I just came off three straight missed cuts and I was talking to my PT and I was like, I wonder when it’s going to be my time eventually.
And my PT said, it’s coming soon. I’ve had several people tell me that. I felt like my game was in a really good spot. Just didn’t all click together. So I have had a great team around me that believed in me. It was almost a question of why not me? So it was really fun to be in contention and to have those nerves.
WILSON: Yeah, I agree with Gina. I was in that same spot being a rookie on Tour and just like trying to find my way, I guess. Just because being 19, being younger than most of the field out here and not knowing as much, not knowing the courses as well because this is my first time playing all the courses, I think just like gaining that confidence throughout the season has been really important to me.
And kind of like Gina said, I was like I kind of knew that my time was going to come eventually so wasn’t really questioning it. Also just being like, yeah, when is my time? I knew my game was trending in a really good direction because I have been making cuts recently and I have been climbing up the leaderboards little by little.
Yeah, happy to get it done this week.
Q. This event is so different from a typical LPGA event. How can team golf help your normal game?
KIM: Personally, I think I was positively influenced by her short game in general. I personally don’t like practicing chipping. I really don’t. But I saw how much she grinded on her chipping. Next thing you know, I also found myself at the chipping green working on my chipping.
I think I spent maybe an hour and a half, two hours each day. Yeah, like Yana said, she’s a grinder; I love to grind as well. Just seeing that my partner is working hard, you can’t help but also work hard yourself.
I think just having that trust and personally seeing them in person doing the hard work behind the scenes, I think that’s where a lot of the trust and confidence comes from.
WILSON: Yeah, I would say for me, I kind of realized like this would help me game a lot when we played alternate shot because I was really trying not to put Gina in a bad spot, really trying not to miss the ball.
But it really made me think about how this could affect my game. My caddie, Eric, and I were talking about this earlier in the week. We were like—he was like, you should really do this more often, hit the middle the green and hit the fairway, right? Speed control. That was a big one.
So, yeah, but I think just reflecting on what we did and how I played during alternate shot, I feel like it was very boring and I feel like I could definitely use more of that in my game.
Rep The IX Sports at your next game!
Shop the logo collection or special “Women’s Sports are Front Page News” collection now on Shopify.
Soccer: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tennis: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Basketball: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Softball: Maren Angus-Coombs, @Maren-Angus, The IX Sports
Golf: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Hockey: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Gymnastics: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer
