Match Play Madness: USGA, top-ranked amateurs one round away from historic rematch

Three weeks after Rianne Malixi defeated Asterisk Talley, 8 and 7, in the final of the U.S. Girls’ Junior Amateur at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana, Calif., the teenagers could potentially square off again in the final of this weekend’s U.S. Women’s Amateur—and make USGA history in the process.

Malixi and Talley each won their quarterfinal matches Friday at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla. Malixi is set to face Kendall Todd in the semifinals Saturday morning, while Talley plays tournament medalist Maria Jose Marin. If Malixi and Talley each win, it sets up a first-of-its-kind rematch. While two players have faced each other on more than one occasion in the final of an individual USGA event, no pair has competed head-to-head in the final of two different USGA championships, much less in the same year.

The randomness of how a match-play bracket is formed at a USGA championship—scores from stroke-play qualifying determining the seeding—helps explain why this hasn’t happened previously. The closest to occurring took place in 1989, when Vicki Goetze and Brandie Burton played in the finals of U.S. Women’s Amateur after being in the semifinals of the U.S. Girls’ Junior that year. Goetze took the Women’s Am title, avenging her loss to Burton at the Girls’ Junior (Burton going on to win that title).

Six times previously a finalist at the U.S. Girls’ Junior has advanced to the finals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur.

• 1956: JoAnne Gunderson Carner
• 1963: Peggy Conley
• 1989: Brandie Burton
• 2001: Nicole Perrot
• 2004: Jane Park
• 2016: Eun Jeong Seong

Seong was the only one of these six to win both the U.S. Girls' Junior and U.S. Women's Amateur in the same year.

Should Malixi and Talley collide, it would be a match with two players seemingly at the peak of their match-play games. Malixi, a 17-year-old from the Philippines, is on a streak of 11 straight wins at match play, dating back to the U.S. Girls' Junior in July. She also was the runner-up at the 2023 U.S. Girls’ Junior and reached the second round of the 2023 U.S. Womens’ Amateur, meaning her record in USGA match play the last two years is 17-2.

Meanwhile, Talley, a 15-year-old from Chowchilla, Calif., won the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball title with Sarah Lim in May, so her match-play record in USGA events is 14-1 in 2024. Oh, and she also shared low amateur honors at the U.S. Women’s Open in June.

A dicey weather forecast in Tulsa has the semifinal matches going off Saturday morning, with the 36-hole championship match that was previous scheduled for Sunday now starting pushing the first 18 holes up to start Saturday afternoon.