3 Things to Know: 125th U.S. Women’s Amateur

Bandon Dunes Golf Resort will continue its legacy as a USGA amateur championship anchor site when it hosts the 125th U.S. Women’s Amateur this week on its Bandon Dunes Course. The original layout at the resort was designed by David McLay Kidd and officially opened for play in 1999.

The U.S. Women’s Amateur becomes the ninth different USGA event to be held at the resort, following the 2006 Curtis Cup, 2007 U.S. Mid-Amateur, 2011 U.S. Amateur and Women’s Amateur Public Links, the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball, the 2019 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, 2020 U.S. Amateur and 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur.

In the future, the resort will host a U.S. Girls’ Junior and a Walker Cup Match, bringing the total of unique USGA championships to 11, the most of any venue.

The Bandon Dunes Course, one of five 18-hole layouts at the resort, was utilized for match play at the 2007 U.S. Mid-Amateur (Trip Kuehne), the 2020 U.S. Amateur (Tyler Strafaci) and 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur (Wenyi Ding). It certainly will test the 156 female players assembled this week, with one hopeful adding her name on the Robert Cox Trophy, arguably one of the most beautiful pieces of hardware in golf.

Here are 3 things to know on the eve of the championship:

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Few have a season like the one produced last summer by Rianne Malixi. The Filipina teen not only claimed the U.S. Girls’ Junior in record-setting fashion, shooting the equivalent of 14-under par over the 29 holes of the 8-and-7 victory over Asterisk Talley. It was the largest margin of victory in the championship’s history.

The two would meet again in a final a few weeks later at Southern Hills Country Club, in Tulsa, Okla., where again Malixi took down the talented California teen.

But 2025 has produced different results for the incoming Duke University freshman. A back injury forced Malixi to withdraw from both the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and Chevron Championship, the first women’s professional major of the season. She did return in time to play in the U.S. Women’s Open but missed the cut. She also missed the cut in the Amundi Evian Championship.

Now Malixi, who is No. 9 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking®/WAGR®, will look to regain her 2024 form at Bandon Dunes. She is hoping to become the first back-to-back winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur since Danielle Kang in 2010-11.

Windy City

While Bandon Dunes will never be mistaken for the country’s third-largest city, the true experience of the resort comes in the form of the breezes off the adjacent Pacific Ocean. It’s an aberration if the wind doesn’t blow at some time during the day.

That will be one of the biggest challenges for the field as links golf is played primarily through the ground game. The firm and fast playing conditions allow for a variety of shots, and the golfer who has the imagination to figure that out will likely be the one standing with the trophy on Aug. 10.

But it’s not just the wind at Bandon Dunes that makes things challenging. It’s the changing temperatures. All summer, most of these players have been competing in searing heat, especially those who were in the U.S. Girls’ Junior a couple of weeks ago in suburban Atlanta. Given its location, temperatures at Bandon Dunes will be at least 20-30 degrees cooler. For some, it will feel like they’ve gone from Death Valley to Nome, Alaska.

Cooler temperatures coupled with coastal breezes will make it doubly important to calculate yardages for both the player and her caddie.

Veteran’s Day?

It has been 47 years since someone older than 24 years of age has won the U.S. Women’s Amateur. Cathy Sherk, of Canada, was a spritely 28 when she hoisted the Robert Cox Trophy at Sunnybrook Golf Club outside of Philadelphia. In the last 71 years, nobody over the age of 30 has won; the late Barbara McIntire (1964) and JoAnne Gunderson Carner (1968) were each 29.

Considering there are only four players over the age of 30 in the field – and two are recent U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur champions (Sarah Gallagher and Shelly Stouffer) – the chances of breaking that streak in 2025 is slim.

But there is one mid-amateur who possibly could make a deep run. Emilia (Migliaccio) Doran, a former Wake Forest All-American and two-time USA Curtis Cup competitor, has the credentials to end the long championship drought for the over-25 set. Doran, who works as a Golf Channel on-air analyst, helped the Deamon Deacons win their first national title in 2023 as a “super” senior, thanks to getting an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike many of her peers, Doran chose not to pursue a career in professional golf after her eligibility expired at Wake. She’ll compete in her first U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur in October. Exempt into the Women’s Amateur from her last USA Curtis Cup Team in 2022, Doran hopes to put together a run at Bandon, where her previous experiences with links golf (2021 Curtis Cup in Wales) could be beneficial.

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.