Golf Channel’s Doran Advances; Co-Medalists Ousted in Round of 64 at Bandon Dunes

A Golf Channel personality advancing and both medalists being sent home in the opening round of match play highlighted Wednesday’s action at the 125th U.S. Women’s Amateur.

Say it ain’t so Emilia (Migliaccio) Doran.

Doran, the lone mid-amateur to qualify for match play at Bandon Dunes who is also working as an on-course reporter for the network broadcasting the championship, produced a dramatic 20-hole, Round-of-64 victory over Reagan Zibilski.

Meanwhile, the two co-medalists, Rianne Malixi and Asterisk Talley, who also happened to be last year’s finalists, were surprisingly eliminated. Defending champion and incoming Duke University freshman Malixi, 18, of the Philippines, fell to incoming Northwestern University freshman Arianna Lau, 18, of Hong Kong, China, 1 down. Talley, 16, of Chowchilla, Calif., was defeated by 19-year-old Ella Scaysbrook, of Australia, 6 and 4.

It's the first time since 2015 that multiple medalists failed to advance from the Round of 64.

Doran, 26, of Cary, N.C., is trying to end an even bigger drought. Canadian Cathy Sherk remains the last mid-am to hoist the Robert Cox Trophy, doing so in 1978, nine years before the USGA established the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship. But Sherk wasn’t wearing two hats that week at Sunnybrook Country Club outside of Philadelphia.

A few hours after Doran, a two-time USA Curtis Cup competitor and former All-American at Wake Forest University, where she helped the Demon Deacons to the 2022 NCAA title, dropped an 8-foot birdie putt on the 20th hole, she was donning a headset and holding a microphone to help describe the action of afternoon matches.

In the past week, Doran has flown from her home in Charlotte to Bandon for a practice round, then to Salt Lake City to cover last weekend’s Utah Championship, an event on the Korn Ferry Tour. Then it was back to Oregon on Sunday night. She was the last player to register on Monday morning prior to her opening round of stroke play.

“I'm high on adrenaline right now,” said Doran, who now faces Lau in Thursday’s first Round-of-32 match at 7:15 a.m. PDT.

Doran trailed Zibilski, a rising senior at the University of Arkansas, by a hole going into the par-5 18th. With Zibilski forced to lay up out of the fairway bunker after a poor drive, Doran went for the green with a 4-hybrid, the ball landing just short of the green in the fairway. Zibilski answered with a beautiful long approach to 15 feet. Doran perfectly executed her next shot to 4 feet, and when Zibilski missed her downhill putt, Doran converted and emphatically celebrated with her husband/caddie, Charlie Doran.

Two holes later, she stuffed her 8-iron tee shot to set up a winning birdie. 

“This morning I hit a 6-iron and I went long,” said Doran, who only has competed in two events this summer, the Donna Andrews Invitational (victory) and the North & South Women’s Amateur (missed cut). “The adrenaline kind of stayed the whole way until my final putt on the second [playoff] hole. I just kind of told myself,‘this is any old putt at MacGregor [Downs Country Club in Cary, N.C.],’ my home course. Like this is just another eight-footer at MacGregor. Just try and simulate that as much as I could.”

Lau spent the first three hours of her morning grinding just to get into the match-play draw. Part of the 15-for-6 playoff for the final spots, she played six holes on Bandon Dunes’ inward nine before outlasting 2025 U.S. Women’s Open qualifier and 2024 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball champion Sarah Lim for the last spot. Lau holed a 4-foot birdie putt on No. 18 after Lim three-putted for par, missing a 6-footer for birdie that likely would have extended the playoff.

Then she took a 3-up lead after five holes over Malixi, who in 2024 became just the second player in history to win the U.S. Girls’ Junior and U.S. Women’s Amateur in the same year. Malixi battled back and tied the match on the 17th green when Lau missed a 4-footer for par.

With both players in the fairway on the 508-yard closing hole, Malixi hit a perfect 3-wood to 10 feet. Lau answered with a 3-wood approach from 230 yards that kicked off a slope and stopped 13 feet from the flagstick. She converted the eagle putt and Malixi missed.

“I'm just really grateful, especially today,” said Lau. “Like it taught me how to handle pressure, especially in match play.”

Talley, a member of the U.S. National Junior Team who was coming off a win last week in the Girls Junior PGA Championship and jumped to No. 13 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking®/WAGR®, never won a hole against Scaysbrook. She was 2 down after three and then lost four consecutive holes from No. 11.

Scaysbrook, who has spent the past two months in the United States competing in tournaments, also survived the Wednesday playoff, gaining the penultimate spot with a birdie on the par-3 12th, which statistically was the toughest during stroke play. The runner-up in the 2025 Women’s Australian Master of the Amateurs birdied three of the final four holes against Talley.

A match between two of the top 15 players in the WAGR lived up to its billing. Carolina Lopez-Chacarra (15), of Spain, a 2025 Wake Forest graduate who was the recipient of this year’s Inkster Award that is given annually to a top senior collegian, outlasted world No. 5 and University of Texas All-American Farah O’Keefe, of Austin, Texas, in 19 holes. O’Keefe, the runner-up in this year’s Women’s Amateur Championship at Nairn Golf Club (she lost to another Spaniard, Paula Martin Sampredo, in the final), rallied from a 3-down deficit to eventually take a 1-up lead with a birdie on 17. Lopez-Chacarra, playing sans golf shoes for the last six holes, converted a 5-foot birdie on 18 to force extra holes, then two-putted from 39 feet to secure a winning par on the 19th.

“I think [my feet are] just inflamed from the shoes because they were new this week,” said Lopez-Chacarra, a former college teammate of Doran.

If both win their Thursday morning encounters – Lopez-Chacarra faces UCLA’s Maye Huang – they would meet in the Round of 16.

Now that would be some good television, and maybe Doran could be mic’d up.

What’s Next

The only double-round day of match play takes place Thursday with the Rounds of 32 and 16, beginning at 7:15 a.m. PDT and 1:10 p.m., respectively. Match play continues with the quarterfinals on Friday, semis on Saturday and the 36-hole championship match on Sunday. Golf Channel has live coverage of the Round of 16 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT. Admission is free and spectators are encouraged to attend.

Notable

• The 15-for-6 playoff on Wednesday morning for the final spots in the match-play draw lasted six holes and 3 hours and 3 minutes. Two notables eliminated in the playoff were 2024 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur runner-up Lindsay Gahm and 2025 Canadian Women’s Amateur champion Michelle Xing.
  
  
• Six matches went extra holes, the most in the opening round since 2016 at Rolling Green Country Club, in Springfield, Pa. Catherine Rao, of Camarillo, Calif., outlasted fellow Ivy Leaguer Allison Paik (Columbia), in 24 holes, making a birdie on the par-3 sixth. Rao, a standout at Princeton University, has advanced to the quarterfinals the past three years.
  
  
• Ashley Kozlowski, of Littleton, Colo., had the comeback of the day, winning Nos. 16, 17 and 18 to force extra holes against No. 6 Vanessa Borovilos before tying No. 19 with a 25-foot par putt and then winning at the par-3 20th with a two-putt par. Borovilos had carded a championship-record 63 in Tuesday’s second round. Kozlowski, a 2024 Purdue grad, works as a systems engineer for Northrup Grumman in Florida. She also survived the 15-for-6 playoff.
  
  
• While the top two seeds were eliminated, No. 3 seed Eila Galitsky, No. 4 Lyla Louderbaugh, No. 5 Catherine Rao, No. 7 Jazy Roberts and No. 8 Cindy Hsu all advanced.
  
  
• It was a tough day for former or present U.S. National Junior Team members as Asterisk Talley, Gianna Clemente, Scarlett Schremmer and Amelie Zalsman were eliminated.
  
  
• In a matchup of 2025 USGA champions, Aphrodite Deng (U.S. Girls’ Junior) was defeated by Natalie Yen (U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball), 1 up. Yen’s partner and fellow Oregonian, Asia Young, also advanced.
  
  
• Anna Davis, a member of the U.S. National Elite Amateur Program, posted the largest margin of victory, a 6-and-5 decision over Avery McCrery.
  
  
• Thirteen different countries were represented in the draw with the United States leading the way with 44. Australia, Canada and Thailand had three apiece, followed by Hong Kong, China and Mexico with two apiece, while the People’s Republic of China, Chinese Taipei, France, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa and Spain with one each.
  
  
• Two-time USA Curtis Cup competitor and two-time U.S. Women’s Amateur semifinalist Rachel Heck, who failed to qualify for match play, stuck around to watch good friend Emilia (Migliaccio) Doran’s opening-round victory.
  
  
• Ella Scaysbrook has spent time this summer at the Orlando, Fla., home of Australian pro Sarah Jane Smith and her husband, Duane. The couple shared the house with six boys and five girls.
  
  
• During stroke play, all four of the par 3s at Bandon Dunes were the hardest statistically. The 12th was the toughest at 3.39, followed by No. 2 (3.29), 15 (3.27) and six (3.26). The four easiest? The four par 5s, with No. 9 playing to a scoring average of 4.67. No. 18 was the second easiest at 4.79, followed by No. 13 (4.82) and No. 3 (4.84).
  
  
• A couple of tees were adjusted for the opening-round of match play. The par-4 14th was moved up to 279 yards, while the par-3 6th measured 125 yards.

Quotable

“I never want to go this long again. I think I gave my entire family heart attacks, like my legs are sore.” – Catherine Rao after surviving a 24-hole match

“It's been a grind for both of us. We made some good birdies, a bunch of pars. I mean, Farah is a great player, so you never know…Just happy I get to play again tomorrow on this incredible course.” – Carolina Lopez-Chacarra

“It was a little windier, but I don't think this course has shown its teeth yet.” – Megha Ganne on the conditions

“I'm just really excited. I kind of have some stuff to work on, so I'm going to go hit the range at some point, too.” – Emilia (Migliaccio) Doran

“I'm just excited that I get to make it to the next round of match play. We have a hotel at the resort now, so get to stay a little bit closer.” – Katelyn Kong

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