Rianne Chasing Top Honours at US Women’s Amateur

Ooltewah, Tennessee, United States: Rianne Malixi will once more be chasing top honours when the 126th US Women’s Amateur Championship commences tomorrow.

The 19-year-old from the Philippines will be among the favourites to triumph at The Honours Club in one of the game’s most prestigious amateur gatherings.

Malixi, 10th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), will also be chasing a slice of history by becoming the first player from the Asia-Pacific region to win the title on two occasions.

It was in 2024 that Malixi became just the second player to win both the US Women’s Amateur and the US Girls’ Junior in the same year, joining Korean Song Eun-jeong (2016).

Following her historic 2024 season, Malixi enrolled at Duke University, where she produced one of the finest freshman campaigns in programme history. She earned WGCA First-Team All-America honours, was named the WGCA National Freshman of the Year and ACC Freshman of the Year, and led the Blue Devils with a 70.60 scoring average.

Malixi captured her first collegiate victory at the Sea Best Intercollegiate while recording five top-five finishes and six top-10 finishes. She also placed third at the NCAA Championship and represented the International Team in the Arnold Palmer Cup.

Last summer, she earned co-medallist honours at the US Women’s Amateur before falling in the Round of 64 as the number one seed.

There are 16 countries represented in the 2026 US Women’s Amateur. Of the 40 non-Americans in the 156-strong starting line-up are 25 players from the Asia-Paciifc region – Australia (six), China and Japan (five each), Korea (four), Chinese Taipei (two) and Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and the Philippines (one apiece).

They include six of the top-20 from the WAGR – Korean Oh Soo-min (ninth), Malixi (10th), the Japanese trio of Aira Nagasawa (12th), Yurina Hiroyoshi (13th) and Anna Iwanaga (19th) and China’s Liu Yujie (20th). 

Hiroyoshi and Iwanaga were part of the Japanese line-up that triumphed at the Asia-Pacific Women’s Amateur Invitational Team Championship for the Queen Sirikit Cup in Indonesia in May while Nagasawa is the reigning Japan Women’s Amateur champion.

Making her second US Women’s Amateur appearance, 17-year-old Oh has been a model of consistency this year. As well as recording a third-place finish at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, she was runner-up at the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific (to compatriot Yang Yun-seo), the Chinese Taipei Women’s Amateur and the Ladies European Tour’s Women’s New South Wales Open in Australia. 

Attention will also be focused on Liu, who last year claimed her first China LPGA Tour title with a five-stroke victory at the Guangdong Women’s Open and has added top-10 finishes at the Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific (WAAP), Royal Junior, Girls Junior PGA Championship and China LPGA Tour Championship.

Liu, who first rose to prominence when she made the cut at the 2023 WAAP when aged 12, is a three-time junior All-American who placed 12th in the 2025 Blue Bay LPGA, competing against a professional field.

Among other prominent Asia-Pacific players taking part this week are Korean Park Seo-jin (WAGR 27), Australians Jazy Roberts and Raegan Denton (WAGR 32 and 47 respectively) and Hong Kong’s Arianna Lau (WAGR 37).

The championship is open to female amateur golfers who have a Handicap Index not exceeding 2.4. In 2026, the USGA accepted 1,422 entries for the US Women’s Amateur.

Following two 18-hole rounds of stroke play on August 4-5, the field will be cut to the low 64 players for match play. Five 18-hole rounds of match play will determine the finalists who then will square off in a 36-hole championship match on August 9.

The Honors Course was designed by Pete Dye and opned for play in July, 1983. The course sits at the foot of the White Oak Mountain, near Chattanooga. The club was founded by Coca-Cola bottling heir Jack Lupton, and its mission is focused on amateur golf.

The property has a rich history of archaeological treasure dating to the Cherokee Indians in the 1500s. The land was later sold to the Chattanooga Dupont Plant, which in 1912 became known as Atlas Powder Company, a spin-off of Dupont’s munitions operation. A fatal explosion ended all powder manufacturing at the site in 1945.