By Everett Munez
LAKE FOREST, Ill. – Match play at the 124th Women’s Western Amateur at Onwentsia Club kicked off with a battle between Texas Longhorns on Thursday. Medalist Farah O’Keefe, of Austin, Texas, defeated Selina Liao, of Taiwan, 5 and 3 on her way to advancing to Friday’s quarterfinal round.
When the rising sophomores discovered they would be playing each other, they were excited.
“I was pumped,” O’Keefe said. “Our team is really close.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Liao said.
While the two are good friends, when they stepped onto the first tee, their competitive spirits took over.
“I’ve started to take on the mentality of trying to put my foot on [the opponent’s] throat early in the match,” O’Keefe said. “Even if we’re best friends, I’m still going to try to beat your brains out.”
O’Keefe took the lead after winning the second hole and didn’t look back. After five holes, she was up by three.
Liao attempted to mount a comeback on the eighth hole. After a wayward tee shot left her ball in the tall grass, she hit an impressive shot to less than five feet. She tapped in for birdie to pull within two.
O’Keefe came right back on the ninth hole, hitting a great pitch shot from the rough to three feet. Liao conceded the putt, and O’Keefe’s lead was back at three.
A few short putts were conceded during the match, but O’Keefe and Liao weren’t exactly being lenient with each other. On the 13th hole, O’Keefe lagged her first putt to less than three feet from the cup. Under different circumstances, it might have been tap-in distance. But Liao was running out of time to come back in the match.
O’Keefe “was asking me to give her the putt, and I said no,” Liao said.
The decision was met by a wry smile from O’Keefe.
The match ended on the 15th hole after Liao blasted her third shot from the greenside bunker over the green. With O’Keefe on the green in two, Liao conceded the match. Even with one Longhorn victorious and the other defeated, the two smiled and embraced on the green.
“It was weird playing [my teammate], but I enjoyed it,” Liao said.
O’Keefe said that even though she won the match, she won’t be parading her victory when they see each other next at the U.S. Women’s Amateur in August.
“I want the best for her,” O’Keefe said. “I don’t know if bragging rights are a big thing for our team.”
O’Keefe defeated Auburn’s Casey Weidenfeld, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, 3 and 2 on Thursday afternoon to secure her place in the quarterfinals. She’ll be joined by her Texas teammate Huai-Chien Hsu, of Taiwan, who a 22-hole match against Momo Sugiyama, of Australia, on Thursday afternoon.
Everett Munez is a sports media graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. You can follow him on X and LinkedIn.