No. 1 Women’s Amateur Golfer Discusses Life as an ‘Infant Pro’
· Yahoo Sports
Farah O’Keefe is riding high early in her senior season at Texas. The reigning NCAA Division I women’s golf individual champion and No. 1-ranked amateur is likely to be front and center on the LPGA Tour one day soon, but in the meantime is walking the tightrope between college life and the travel demands that came with her recent success.
“I feel like I’m an infant professional,” O’Keefe, 21, told Front Office Sports.
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After winning her first NCAA title in June, the Austin native played in three LPGA events (including two majors) and the Women’s Amateur Championship in the U.K., and also competed for the U.S. in the Curtis and Palmer Cup team events. O’Keefe has NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals with Titleist, Huntington Bank, training brand Downshift Golf, and course operator Arcis Golf.
Next up for O’Keefe is her first visit to the home of golf as Texas competes in next week’s St Andrews Links Collegiate event, which plays its final round on the world famous Old Course. FOS caught up with the rising golf star to discuss NIL, her relationship with Texas alum Scottie Scheffler, and more about college sports.
Below is a Q&A portion of the conversation, some of which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Front Office Sports: What has your life been like since winning the NCAA championship?
Farah O’Keefe: I feel like I’m an infant professional. My vision as a pro is not very good, I guess is how I would put it. I’ve played in a handful of professional events now. I’ve kind of been thrown into the fire a little bit. It’s crazy how one event can change your life. I literally was home for maybe thirteen or fourteen days all summer. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time that I’d won a national championship, and then I came home and that’s all anybody could talk about.
FOS: What was it like getting a call from Scottie Scheffler to congratulate you?
FO: I thought it was a prank for like the first ten seconds. I had no idea what was happening. I thought they were just showing me a picture of him, and then he was like, ‘Hey Farah.’ And I was like oh my gosh. So, that was crazy.
FOS: Have you been able to stay in touch with Scheffler?
FO: He’s kind of a busy guy. I haven’t talked to him since, but he did tell me on the phone that he wants to go play. So, maybe we’ll go play sometime. I think I need to make sure that everything’s firing on all cylinders if I’m gonna try to take him on. But that would honestly be like a dream come true. If I could beat him, I think that would be like the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I might just retire on the spot.
FOS: Is it overwhelming to try to manage travel, NIL deals, and school?
FO: Yeah, it is a lot. But I think it’s part of growing up. It’s the growing pains. I have a lot of really good people that help me. I really don’t have to think about it that much, which is nice. I do have to look at things, but I feel like I’m my own boss in a sense and I can ‘okay’ things or I can say ‘I don’t really want to do that.’ I just feel so fortunate that I have people in my corner that can help me with all of this stuff that I’m not smart enough to figure out. Like taxes—they’re not for me.
FOS: What is thebiggest lesson you have learned about NIL?
FO: You have to let your play speak for you. More lucrative or bigger deals will start coming your way when you start playing really well and you start beating everybody. It’s almost a distraction—NIL is in your peripheral vision, and if it becomes your main focus, then you forget to do your one job, which is to play your sport.
FOS: Texas men’s golf coach John Fields has been leading efforts for Carlsbad, California, to potentially become the permanent home of the NCAA golf championships. What do you think about that?
FO: I think it’s a great idea. I talked to Coach Fields a lot about that. He asked me last year: ‘Do you like La Costa?’ And truthfully I told him: ‘No. I think you need to make it a little bit softer.’
The first two years that we played it, the course was just really firm. It felt like players that would get lucky are the players that would play well. This past year they really set it up to where it wasn’t easy—there were still bogeys out there—but it was just a little bit more fair. I think it’s definitely turning into a place that could be the permanent home of the NCAA championships. It’s really just a cool place. The fact that you get to stay on property and then just walk to the practice tee or walk to breakfast or do whatever you want to do is a pretty big deal for the national championship, considering how many people are there.
FOS: What are your final collegiate and amateur goals over the next year?
FO: The Augusta National Women’s Amateur would be really cool—that’s definitely one I really want to win. That would be the one where if I didn’t at least give myself a chance one time in amateur golf, I’d probably be pretty upset at the end of my career. I want to win a team national championship—that’s kind of been my goal since I started college.
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