After three flights across a 24-hour day of travel from Austin to Singapore, Texas women’s junior golfer Farah O’Keefe was exhausted. Unfortunately for her, golf marched on.

O’Keefe and her Team USA teammates, Stanford’s senior Megha Ganne and USC’s senior Catherine Park, had an early morning, heading to the course to practice for the World Team Amateur Championship just the day after they landed.

Despite their exhaustion, they pushed themselves. Instead of just playing the standard 18 holes, O’Keefe and her teammates set a birdie goal, not allowing themselves to leave unless they hit 10 birdies in 13 holes.

“It got all of us in the mindset to go make birdies and not just easing in for pars, and it paid off. The first day, we shot eight-under as a team,” O’Keefe said.

That extra preparation continued to pay off as O’Keefe and the rest of Team USA were able to win in Singapore, ultimately lifting the Espirito Santo Trophy on Oct. 4.

Their eight-under performance would be their best of the tournament, and they never shot worse than two-under throughout the two-day event. Their combined score of 18-under ended up being just enough to tie against the Republic of Korea and Spain. O’Keefe and her teammates then won on a tiebreaker, where Team USA counted the third-lowest score instead of dropping it like the rest of the tournament.

Even though it was not a win with the Longhorns for O’Keefe, being part of national wins like this can be huge for collegiate teams looking to seal the deal come championship time.

“Winning a World Amateur Team Championship is kind of like winning a national championship. It takes four really solid rounds of golf, and it takes mental toughness and fortitude to be able to continue good play for that long,” O’Keefe said. “(Now) I’ll have some insight of ‘This is how you deal with the long week,’ or ‘This is how you deal with other teams breathing down your neck,’ or ‘This is what happens when you have a three shot deficit going into the last day.’”

O’Keefe’s fellow Longhorn and junior Lauren Kim finished tied for 29th place individually for 10th-place Canada. While Kim was not able to bring home a trophy, she was able to hone her skills against some of the best golfers in the world.

“I like to compete, and I think taking too much time off isn’t really beneficial for me,” Kim said. “So for me to go and keep that competitive edge and play against all the top players at the World Amateur was nice.”

Three other Longhorns competed for their countries in the event. Senior Cindy Hsu and junior Selina Liao tied for 54th and 65th, respectively, both representing Chinese Taipei. Junior Vivian Lu finished 81st for New Zealand.

The Longhorns continue their season on Oct. 27 at the Nanea Invitational in Kona, Hawaii.