| Venue | The Honors Course, Ooltewah, Tenn. |
| Dates | Aug. 4-9, 2026 (practice rounds Aug. 2-3) |
| Setup | 6,539 yards, par 36-36—72 |
| Field | 156 players; 1,422 entries accepted |
| Format | 36 holes stroke play, cut to low 64, five rounds of match play, 36-hole final |
| Eligibility | Handicap Index of 2.4 or lower; no age limit |
| Trophy | Robert Cox Trophy and the JoAnne Carner Medal |
A Championship Without a Champion to Chase
Megha Ganne will not be at The Honors Course. The 2025 champion, who beat Brooke Biermann 4 and 3 in the 36-hole final at Bandon Dunes for her first USGA title in her seventh U.S. Women's Amateur start, has since turned professional and now plays the Epson Tour. That single fact reshapes the week.
Ganne's run last August was the kind that closes a chapter. She never trailed Biermann, took a 3-up lead at the turn of the afternoon 18 when Biermann's putter went cold at Nos. 11-13, and rolled in a 35-footer at the 22nd hole to move 4 up. Biermann, who had survived three extra-hole matches just to reach the final, never got closer than three down the rest of the way.
What is left behind is the deepest, flattest women's amateur field in years — a bracket where the top seed is a target and the 40th seed has a real path.
The Names That Will Shape the Week
The USGA does not publish the full starting field until the week of the championship, but the players who have defined the 2026 amateur season are the ones to track when the pairings post.
Kiara Romero
The world No. 1 and 2025 McCormack Medal winner has held the top spot in WAGR for more than a year. The Oregon senior tied for fourth at the Augusta National Women's Amateur — the best ANWA finish in program history — then finished T-6 at the U.S. Women's Open at Riviera as low amateur, and went out and won her Curtis Cup singles match at Bel-Air. She has made match play at this championship before. She has never won it.
Farah O'Keefe
Nobody in the amateur game is playing better. The Texas senior won the NCAA individual title, took the ANNIKA Award as college golf's player of the year, shared low-amateur honors at the Chevron Championship, and then went a perfect 5-0-0 at the Curtis Cup — only the fourth player to do it since the Match went to a three-day format. Match play is where her week has already been proven.
Asterisk Talley
Still 17, already a two-time Curtis Cup player, and the runner-up at the 2025 ANWA who led the 2026 edition through 36 holes before Marín ran her down. Talley has been in contention at nearly every big amateur event she has entered for three years. The U.S. Women's Amateur is the one trophy that would settle the argument.
María José Marín
The 19-year-old from Cali became the first Colombian to win the Augusta National Women's Amateur, doing it at 14 under with rounds of 65-69-68 — the only player in the field to break 70 all three days and a new championship scoring record. The Arkansas standout also owns an NCAA individual title. Her ceiling on a hard golf course is very high.
Anna Davis
The 2022 ANWA champion and rising Auburn senior beat Beth Coulter 4 and 3 in Curtis Cup singles. Davis has the temperament and the shot-shaping range that Dye courses reward.
The International Contingent
Valentine Delon of France won the Women's Amateur Championship at Muirfield, beating Andrea Revuelta 3 and 1 in the 36-hole final — and Revuelta, the ANWA runner-up, has been on the doorstep all year. Yunseo Yang of Korea won the Women's Amateur Asia-Pacific at Royal Wellington by eight, equaling the championship record.
The Juniors
Clairey Lin, 16, was the stroke-play medalist and then the champion at the U.S. Girls' Junior at Old Chatham, beating Amelie Zalsman 5 and 4 to give Canada back-to-back titles. Zalsman earned an exemption into this championship with the runner-up finish. Kylee Choi arrives off a Women's Western Amateur title at River Forest.
The Golf Course
The Honors Course opened on July 2, 1983, a Pete Dye design at the foot of White Oak Mountain outside Chattanooga, built by Coca-Cola bottling heir Jack Lupton for a single purpose: amateur golf. Gil Hanse refined the layout roughly four years ago. It has never hosted a U.S. Women's Amateur.
The land carries more history than the golf. Archaeological work on the property traces back to Cherokee settlement in the 1500s. The site later became part of the Chattanooga DuPont plant and, in 1912, the Atlas Powder Company — a DuPont munitions spin-off. A fatal explosion in 1945 ended powder manufacturing there for good.
At 6,539 yards it will not overpower anyone. What it will do is ask questions: a 132-yard 14th and a 148-yard 16th that will play as birdie-or-bogey coin flips in match play, a 551-yard 11th and a reachable 494-yard 17th that hand the momentum back and forth on the closing stretch.
| Hole | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | OUT |
| Par | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 36 |
| Yards | 386 | 504 | 176 | 403 | 425 | 545 | 376 | 167 | 352 | 3,328 |
| Hole | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | IN |
| Par | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 36 |
| Yards | 407 | 551 | 325 | 384 | 132 | 378 | 148 | 494 | 392 | 3,211 |
Yardages subject to change.
Schedule
| Tue., Aug. 4 | First round, stroke play |
| Wed., Aug. 5 | Second round, stroke play; playoff for the final match-play spots if needed |
| Thu., Aug. 6 | Round of 64 |
| Fri., Aug. 7 | Round of 32 and Round of 16 |
| Sat., Aug. 8 | Quarterfinals and semifinals |
| Sun., Aug. 9 | 36-hole championship match, beginning 8:30 a.m. |
How to Watch
At least 15 hours of live coverage. All times ET.
| Thu., Aug. 6 | 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Golf Channel |
| Fri., Aug. 7 | 3 – 6 p.m., Golfchannel.com |
| Sat., Aug. 8 | 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. and 3 – 6 p.m., Golf Channel |
| Sun., Aug. 9 | 3 – 6 p.m., Golf Channel |
Admission is free all week and no ticket is required. The course opens to spectators at 7 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. Thursday, and 7 a.m. Friday through Sunday.
What the Winner Gets
The JoAnne Carner Medal and custody of the Robert Cox Trophy for one year
Exemption into the 2027 U.S. Women's Open Presented by Ally at Inverness Club
Exemptions into the next 10 U.S. Women's Amateurs and 10 U.S. Girls' Juniors, if eligible
A likely invitation to the 2027 Augusta National Women's Amateur
Likely exemptions into The Chevron Championship, the AIG Women's Open and the Amundi Evian Championship
Her name on the 2026 USGA Champions' plaque in the USGA Museum's Hall of Champions
The Trophy's History
First played in 1895, one of the USGA's three original championships, contested every year since except 1917-18 and 1942-45. Glenna Collett Vare won it six times, a record that has stood for nearly a century. JoAnne Gunderson Carner won five, and her eight USGA titles overall tie Jack Nicklaus, trailing only Bob Jones and Tiger Woods at nine.
Repeat winners have been a defining pattern. Beatrix Hoyt, Alexa Stirling, Vare, Virginia Van Wie and Juli Inkster all won three in a row. Genevieve Hecker, Dorothy Campbell, Margaret Curtis, Betty Jameson, Kay Cockerill, Kelli Kuehne and Danielle Kang each went back-to-back. The list of past champions also runs through Patty Berg, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Louise Suggs, Marlene Stewart Streit, Anne Quast Sander, Barbara McIntire, Catherine Lacoste, Carol Semple Thompson, Beth Daniel, Morgan Pressel and Lydia Ko.
USGA Championships at The Honors Course
This is the seventh, and the club is already down for the 2031 U.S. Amateur — back for the first time in 40 years.
| 1991 | U.S. Amateur — Mitch Voges |
| 1994 | Curtis Cup — halved; GB&I retained |
| 2005 | U.S. Mid-Amateur — Kevin Marsh |
| 2011 | U.S. Senior Women's Amateur — Terri Frohnmayer |
| 2016 | U.S. Junior Amateur — Min Woo Lee |
| 2024 | U.S. Senior Amateur — Louis Brown |
This is the 18th USGA championship and the fourth U.S. Women's Amateur held in Tennessee, following Memphis Country Club in 1937 (Estelle Lawson Page) and 1979 (Carolyn Hill) and The Golf Club of Tennessee in 2018 (Kristen Gillman). With seven, The Honors Course has hosted more USGA championships than any other venue in the state.
Where It Goes Next
| 2027 | Pinehurst No. 2, Village of Pinehurst, N.C. |
| 2028 | Brae Burn Country Club, West Newton, Mass. |
| 2029 | Oakland Hills Country Club, Bloomfield Hills, Mich. |
| 2030 | The Olympic Club, San Francisco |
| 2031 | Baltimore Country Club |
| 2032 | Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Ore. |
AmateurGolf.com will have live coverage from The Honors Course all week — stroke-play leaderboards, the full match-play bracket, and daily updates from Ooltewah beginning Aug. 4.
