Hot Springs, Virginia, United States:  And then there were three. In a championship defined so far by the dominance of past winners – four of the top six finishers in stroke play, all seven in the field advancing to match play and six earning victories in the Round of 64 – just three former champions remain after a gruelling double-round day at The Omni Homestead Resort.

Following a morning Round of 32 that whittled the field to 16, Tuesday afternoon featured marquee match-ups between past champions: three-time winner Ellen Port taking on defending champion Nadene Gole, and three-time champion Lara Tennant squaring off against 2023 champion Sarah Gallagher.

Gole, 56, of Australia, outlasted three-time winner Port, two-up, in one of Tuesday afternoon’s most tightly contested Round-of-16 matches. Gole struck first to win the opening hole, but Port quickly answered, winning the next two to take the early advantage. By the sixth hole, Port, who has four US Women’s Mid-Amateur titles to go along with her Senior Women’s Amateur wins, had stretched her lead to two-up.

Gole, however, showed the resilience that carried her to last year’s win. She clawed back by winning the eighth and 13th holes to tie the match, then seized momentum with a win at the 14th. Another victory at the 15th gave her a two-up cushion, but Port wasn’t done, cutting the deficit in half with a clutch win on the 16th. Gole advanced to the quarter-finals by winning the18th with a steady par to seal the match, two-up.

“Today’s been a game of patience. It’s hard to explain, but you know, it’s a long day,” said Gole, who also defeated Port in a Round-of-32 match in 2023. “Ellen’s always going to be a tough match; she’s a great competitor. We started off a bit scrappy. She flew some good putts in there in the end, and I got some good ones, so I just got her there on the last hole.”

Similarly, on the other side of the draw, Gallagher outlasted Tennant, two-up. Gallagher struck first with a win at the fourth hole, only to see Tennant answer quickly by taking the fifth and sixth.

The back-and-forth continued as Gallagher squared the match on the ninth, before Tennant edged back in front with a win on 10. Gallagher’s birdie at the par-four 14th pulled her even once more, and she finally regained the lead on 16 with a conceded birdie – her first advantage since the early going. A par on the 18th sealed the hole and the match, sending Gallagher through to the quarter-finals for the third straight year.

“I knew I was going to have to be really, really focused,” said Gallagher. “I kind of expected her to make everything, because I know she’s got such a great short game. So when you have that expectation, you’re not really that disappointed when [her] ball goes in. I just kind of kept that attitude all day and tried to be really patient.”

Shelly Stouffer, the 2022 champion, was the other former winner to advance, defeating Marie Arnoux, of France, one-up. In addition to winning in Alaska in 2022, Stouffer, 55, of Canada, was also last year’s runner-up.

Also through to the last eight is Gole’s compatriot, Sue Wooster. A three-time runner-up in the event, having reached the final match in 2018, 2019 and 2022, this is her first quarter-finals appearance since 2022.

In the Round of 32, Wooster saw off American Adele Paterson 3&2, securing her a Round of 16 clash with fellow-Australian Gemma Dooley, who progressed in the morning with a tense success over American Jayne Pardus, a winning par at the short 18th giving her a one-up victory in a match in which she never trailed.

In the all-Australian clash, Wooster went ahead at the fifth and never surrendered the lead. Although Dooley birdied 16 to reduce her deficit to one hole, the duo halved 17 and 18, giving Wooster a one-up triumph.

In the quarter-finals, Wooster takes on Kristyl Sunderman while Gole tackles Stouffer, whom she defeated in last year’s final.