Curtis Cup 2016 United States Team Packed With Dyanmos

The Curtis Cup 2016 United States team is packed with power & talent.

The 2016 Curtis Cup team is packed with young golf dynamos. All eight players on the USA Team are among the top 30 of the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking™, with Hannah O’Sullivan (No. 2), Sierra Brooks (No. 4), Mariel Galdiano (No. 6) and Bailey Tardy (No. 7) in the top 10. Breaking news: Here comes the next crop of LPGA rookies!

The USGA’s International Team Selection Committee announced on Tuesday the 8-player team who will represent the United States in the 39th Curtis Cup Match against the Great Britain & Ireland team at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in Enniskerry, Ireland, June 10-12, 2016:

• Sierra Brooks, 17, of Sorrento, Fla.
• Mariel Galdiano, 17, of Pearl City, Hawaii
• Andrea Lee, 17, of Hermosa Beach, Calif.
• Mika Liu, 17, of Beverly Hills, Calif.
• Hannah O’Sullivan, 17, of Chandler, Ariz.
• Bailey Tardy, 19, of Peachtree Corners, Ga.
• Monica Vaughn, 21, of Reedsport, Ore.
• Bethany Wu, 19, of Diamond Bar, Calif.

Meet The United States Team

Hannah O’Sullivan will bring substantial strength to the United States team. She won the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur by a 3-and-2 margin over Brooks at Portland Golf Club. Earlier in the year, she won the Symetra Tour’s Gateway Classic, becoming the tour’s first amateur winner since Kellee Booth in 1999 and the youngest since Cristie Kerr in 1995.

O’Sullivan also earned victories in the 2015 Rolex Girls Junior Championship and 2015 Rolex Tournament of Champions. She partnered with Robynn Ree to finish runner-up to Liu and Rinko Mitsunaga in the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball at Bandon Dunes, and she finished tied for 53rd in the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open at Lancaster (Pa.) Country Club.

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Following in the footsteps of Lizette Salas, Jennifer Song and Andrea Gaston, all now playing with considerable success on the LPGA Tour, O’Sullivan, who qualified for the 2012 U.S. Women’s Open at age 14, will enroll at the University of Southern California in the fall.

Sierra Brooks earned victories last year in the South Atlantic Women’s Amateur (the Sally) and Women’s Southern Amateur, and was a semifinalist in the Polo Golf Junior Classic, an event she won in 2014. Brooks will start her freshman year at Wake Forest University this fall.

Mariel Galdiano captured victories in the 2015 Joanne Winter Arizona Silver Belle Championship and the 2015 Canadian Women’s Amateur Championship. She also earned runner-up finishes in the 2015 Junior PGA Championship and 2015 Polo Golf Junior Classic. Galdiano competed in the 2011, 2013 and 2015 U.S. Women’s Opens, with her best finish a tie for 42nd in 2015. Following Alison Lee’s collegiate path, she will enroll at UCLA in the fall.

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Andrea Lee won the 2014 Rolex Tournament of Champions and the 2014 Yani Tseng Invitational. That same year, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the quarterfinals of the U.S. Girls’ Junior and tied for 69th in the U.S. Women’s Open. Lee earned a silver medal for the USA in the 2015 Pan American Games, and the next week she again reached the U.S. Girls’ Junior quarterfinals. She will start her freshman year at Stanford University in the fall.

Mika Liu teamed with Mitsunaga to win the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship in 2015. She kicked off the 2016 season with a win in the Sally Tournament. Her other victories over the last two years include the 2014 Women’s Southern Amateur, the 2014 Women’s Western Amateur and the 2015 Thunderbird Invitational Junior, and she notched runner-up finishes in the 2015 Ione D. Jones/Doherty Amateur, the 2015 Women’s Eastern Amateur and the 2015 Rolex Tournament of Champions. Liu, who reached the quarterfinals of the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 2015 U.S. Girls’ Junior, has verbally committed to attend Stanford in the fall of 2017.

Bailey Tardy won the 2015 North & South Women’s Amateur Championship over Wu, rallying from 2 down with two to play to prevail in 20 holes. She reached the third round of match play in the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur, and in 2014 she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open. Tardy is a freshman at the University of Georgia, where she earned her first collegiate win, in the 2015 Windy City Collegiate, in only her fourth start.

Monica Vaughn is a junior at Arizona State University, where she has victories in the 2016 Northrop Grumman Regional Challenge and the 2015 Ping/ASU Invitational. As a sophomore, she finished fifth in the individual competition of the 2015 NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championship.

Bethany Wu was runner-up in the 2015 North & South Women’s Amateur and the 2015 Canadian Women’s Amateur, and reached the semifinals of the 2015 U.S. Women’s Amateur. She was a quarterfinalist in the 2014 U.S. Girls’ Junior and earned medalist honors in the 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the same year she successfully defended her Annika Invitational victory. Wu is a freshman at UCLA.

The biennial international women’s amateur golf competition between eight-player teams from the United States of America and Great Britain and Ireland (GB&I) consists of six foursomes (alternate-shot) matches, six four-ball matches and eight singles matches over three days of competition. The USGA selects the USA Team and the Ladies’ Golf Union selects the GB&I Team.

The USA won the 2014 Match at St. Louis (Mo.) Country Club, 13-7, and leads the overall series, 28-7-3. The GB&I Team won the 2012 Match at The Nairn Golf Club in Scotland, the last time the Match was played on GB&I soil, to halt a streak of seven consecutive victories for the USA. Prior to that, the USA had not lost since the 1996 Match at Killarney Golf and Field Club, the only other time the biennial competition has been held in the Republic of Ireland.

Next: Women's Golf: Predicting Winners for the 2016 Major Championships

Notable past USA Curtis Cup Team members include U.S. Women’s Open champions JoAnne Gunderson Carner, Paula Creamer, Juli Inkster, Cristie Kerr, Patty Sheehan, Hollis Stacy and Michelle Wie, as well as past and present LPGA stars such as Beth Daniel, Jessica Korda, Stacy Lewis, Nancy Lopez, Dottie Pepper and Lexi Thompson.