ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — The rain and wind opened up in earnest on No. 11 for the final group on the Jubilee Course, coming down sideways in sheets. At this point, individual honors in the St. Andrews Links Collegiate was down to just two players: Farah O’Keefe and Hannah Ounap.
Ounap, a 17-year-old Scot playing her first year for the University of Washington, led most of the day, but by the 14th hole things began to tighten.
University of Texas head coach Lara Ianello is walking with her star senior O’Keefe. They chat a lot. They seem to be having fun, laughing, keeping things light. O’Keefe wears a burnt orange beanie over her white hat.
O’Keefe stands over a long birdie putt on the 14th green. Her rain pants are moving in the wind. All the players seem more crouched than normal, as though bracing themselves against the gale, with a little more knee bend and wider stances, seemingly hunkered.
A gust picks up as O’Keefe is over the ball. She hesitates, then backs off the putt. She recomposes herself, lags it up, and taps in for par.
Ounap has a 3-foot comebacker for bogey. She stands over it. The wind is gusting. Her rain pants are also flapping in the wind, so loud you can hear them across the green. She, too, backs off. She is wearing what look like spikeless white Air Force 1s, less than ideal footwear on the slick, tight grass, but they look undeniably cool. She steps in again and drains it.
“Putting is often the hardest part in the wind,” Mathilda Orring, a St. Andrews University senior who was in the final group, said after the round.
They leave the green, Ounap one stroke ahead.
Par-4 15th
It’s been gloomy, but as the players arrive to the tee box, the sun suddenly comes out. Coach Ianello puts her arms out and dramatically looks up at the sky, walking towards O’Keefe, signaling, “Finally, sunshine!” They laugh.
The wind is hammering off the right. O’Keefe’s ball takes off low, trying to ride under the wind, but it has draw spin. Nature is simply too strong. The spin multiplies and it’s hooking hard before it reaches its short apex. To get the ball in the fairway with a draw she would’ve had to start it in the right gorse.
The players’ golf bags on the tee box look distended, the big pockets stuffed with extra layers.
Ounap has two rain jackets looped through the handle of her bag. They whip around in the wind, threatening to fly away.
She also hits it left, saying afterwards, “I’ve been fighting the biggest draw of my life, like everything is drawing 30 yards.”
Both players are clear over the fairway bunkers, with a good angle to the green. There’s gorse long and a huge swale short. This approach shot requires precise distance control. In this wind, a serious challenge.
From this angle, the wind is quartering into from the right. Coach Ianello is over the mounds, watching the ball of Juliet Oh, a Penn freshman and the fourth member of this group, hit the false front and roll 40 yards backwards into the declivity.
You can see Ianello log this information in her head and walk with determination back to O’Keefe’s ball to inform her of exactly what not to do.
The wind is picking up now, reaching a new threshold of chaos. The kind of wind that makes you walk with your head down. As the intensity of the tournament ratchets up during the final stretch, it seems as though nature is giving an equal and proportionate response, and this new level of wind is now just a show of force.
Ounap is so far left she’s in the opposite fairway, with a clean lie, about 150 yards away. She sends the ball up high and it gets clobbered by the wind, then plummets, 20 yards short of the green.
O’Keefe and Ianello are really studying the yardage book. She is hitting blind to the elevated green over the featureless gorse. The only reference point in the sky to aim at is the distant TV crane.
O’Keefe’s ball is in the rough and she puts it far back in her stance. What looks like a hamburger wrapper, picked up by the wind, pinwheels across the grass and flies past her ball. She calmly steps off.
She waggles twice, big waggles, where the club passes her right foot. Just before taking the club back, her trigger is quickly lifting her right thumb off the grip and replacing it.
Steep swing. Lots of grass flies up. Right after impact she one-hands the follow-through, seeming dissatisfied. The ball is in the air, well right of the green. The wind’s got it now, taking it left. The ball lands like a dove and stays. It’s a marvelous result, 20 feet below the hole.
“Oh, great shot,” Ianello says.
As they reach the green, the wind is all over the place, tempestuous, losing prevalence, gusting hard from all directions. The red flag looks like a freshly broken loose sail in a storm.
Ounap chips it to the back fringe.
O’Keefe lags it up and taps in. Ounap misses her try for par, then takes her time with the 2-footer. Even a 2-footer is not to be struck without the most scrupulous attention in these conditions. She holes it and drops a shot.
They leave the green tied at 5 under.
Par-4 16th
On the dogleg left, the wind is directly crossing from the right, as it will be all the way home. O’Keefe hits one that starts on an aggressive line and begins violently turning over. “SIT!” she calls after it.
All the other players hit almost identical drives that curve hard left around the dogleg. It’s so windy that you can’t tell what shapes these players play. Their flights homogenize under the power of this wind.
Walking down the fairway, you can hear the gorse rustling, scraping together in the squall.
It’s 3:18 p.m. The clouds are back, covering the sun Coach Ianello so gratefully praised only a hole ago. The temperature is dropping and the wind is somehow getting even stronger. You can see the wall of rain coming. It starts to pour from all angles. Umbrellas become useless.
This is easily the strongest wind of the day, of the week, even. Right here, on the 16th hole of the final round of stroke play.
Ounap hits a solid long iron from a cut lie in the rough to just short of the green.
O’Keefe addresses the ball nearby. As she takes the club back, a burst of wind screams in. She tops it. The No.1-ranked amateur in the world just cold topped it. The ball dribbles down the fairway.
She says after round, “I almost got knocked over by the wind and barely made contact with the ball.”
The only way to describe the wind now is disturbing. Up by the green, Oh’s bag blows off her push cart and clatters to the ground. The rain is driving into the players, pelting.
O’Keefe takes extra time on the wedge shot. It comes out nicely, but it looks as though it has topspin, moving fast, slinging in the draw wind, scuttling across the green, to 30 feet.
Coaches are now guarding potentially runaway push carts, with their arms looped through the handles and a foot on the wheels.
Ounap has no control over her 70-foot putt in this wind. It’s a hit and hope. The ball comes up well short. It’s howling, pumping above 35 mph, borderline unplayable now.
Orring’s blonde ponytail is spinning like a Ferris wheel as she addresses her putt.
A briefly unattended push cart blows over. O’Keefe doesn’t use one, her bag lays on the ground, long ago having abandoned the stands. This is, as on-course reporter Tripp Isenhour says, “The full Scotland.”
O’Keefe’s putt is 30 feet but probably playing closer to 60 into this wind.
She can’t get her ball to stay still on the green. It moves a couple of inches. She replaces it. Then as she’s over it, it moves not 2 inches but 2 feet across the green, UP the hill. She replaces it again and rolls it to 3 feet.
The wind pushes her next try away from the cup. She taps in.
Ounap four-putts.
Carnage. They share double bogeys and remain tied.
University of St. Andrews’s coach Ian Muir announces, “This is match play at the moment.”
Par-3 17th
In the vicious wind, O’Keefe waggles big twice, sticking to her routine. The ball starts way right, swings, swoops, diving left like a kite, landing in the front middle of the green.
Ounap starts it at the pin, and the wind takes it left of the green.
Ianello says as they walk towards the green, “You gotta love a little adversity.”
O’Keefe laughs, then says, “I can’t feel my face.”
Ounap is on a slight downslope, in the rough, with no green to work with. This is a true links shot; can’t go high. She executes a lovely bump and run to 4 feet. Exactly what the moment and the terrain called for.
The sun comes out while O’Keefe reads her long birdie putt. It seems extra bright, bursting forth from the gloom. The rain seems to shine as it falls. The wet grass glistens.
O’Keefe leaves her putt 4 feet short. The greens have slowed considerably from the downpour.
She misses yet another short one.
Ounap drains her putt and takes a one-shot lead.
Par-4 18th
The wind calms and the rain halts on the final tee.
O’Keefe takes off a layer of rain gear. She seems like she’s trying to gather herself, make a change to the vibe. Reset.
Ounap’s swing is long, with a full turn. She gets the club to the top, sets, and pauses slightly. It can only be described as smooth. Rhythmic and balanced, she smokes a high draw down the middle.
O’Keefe hits a low drive down the right that narrowly misses a penal pot bunker.
Ounap is first to play, 156 yards away, and overturns one left. The ball disappears into a greenside bunker.
O’Keefe is 155 yards away and aims 30 yards right of the pin, at the clubhouse. She flushes one. It cuts a severe draw arc across the hazy sky, lands on the green, and ground draws, crawling towards the pin to 12 feet. Her teammates erupt from behind the green.
O’Keefe walks to the green with the mojo back.
A good coach knows when to speak up, and what to say. They also know how much to say, and sometimes that is absolutely nothing. Ianello lags behind and lets her star horse run.
Ounap arrives to her ball and it’s up against the steep back lip. She can’t make a backswing in aiming at the pin. Now it’s a dogfight. She takes it in stride, laughing at the unfortunate result. She plays away from the pin, and splashes out to 50 feet. It’s all she could do.
She leaves her long putt 7 feet short.
O’Keefe now has a birdie putt to win. It looks good, then slides right and hits the uninviting lip. She taps in for par.
Ounap’s uphill putt breaks left. She starts it left edge and it curls, then finds the center of the hole.
The flag is put in and the two superstars embrace. It’s a tie at 2-under 142. No playoff. It almost feels fitting, like a truce between two generals after a very bloody, but valiant war.
They sign their scorecards and stand up from the scoring table. The pair embrace again.
“Well done,” O’Keefe says.
Ounap looks back at her and smiles: “Well done.”