Anne Walker tries to catch herself before she gets out – but she always does.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, Stanford Women’s Golf coach has a front-row seat to one of, if not the, most competitive rounds in the women’s game, where her loaded Cardinal team plays against each other to determine the top five players for the upcoming tournament.
“I find myself saying out loud, ‘Wow,’ on some of the shots that hit,” Walker told GOLF. “Literally, I’ll be standing there, and it comes out of my mouth. I’m like, ‘Wow.’ And then I catch myself and I’m like, ‘Dude, you can’t be the old lady in the car box, like, ‘Oh, you’ve hit it so far!’
“I don’t think of (practice rounds) as fun, I think of them as part of the process and it’s ingrained in who we are at Stanford. Just seeing these guys play golf all the time is pretty cool.”
That’s a good problem for a coach to have, and one that involves the powerhouse Walker has built in Palo Alto. She recruits the best talent that enters the Stanford process and fits the team culture that is the foundation of what she has built in the Bay Area. The Cardinal Program rests on a few key principles: love, trust, joy and, perhaps most of all, competition. It’s something Walker’s current squad has embraced, and it’s why she should brace herself as she watches what could be her most talented unit yet feed off each other as they compete for a spot in the starting five this week.
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But this week will be different for Walker. This week, that won’t be a problem. This week, on the world’s most famous golf course, she will watch as her five stars – or five number ones as she calls them – arrive at Augusta National to compete in 2026 Augusta Women’s Amateur National.
Megha Gane, who won the US Women’s Amateur Championship last summer, will return for her sixth ANWA. Paula Martin Sampedro, who won the British Amateur and European Ladies Amateur last summer, will play in her third, as will Andrea Revuelta and Kelly Xu. Meja Ortengren will make her second trip to Augusta National. Sampedro is the No. 2 ranked player in the women’s amateur golf rankings. Revuelta is number 3, Ortengren no. 5, Ganne no. 6 and Xu is number 20.
“I think the cohesiveness is really unique,” Walker said of the five Cardinals going straight Augusta National. “You are the product of the people you spend the most time with in life. You’ll end up imitating their habits. You’ll be influenced by their behaviors. We just can’t help being human beings, the community we’re in. And so just by showing up every day with your best energy and emotional state, you’re automatically influencing others, even without them having to think, even without having an influence” in a continuum of improvement and progress just by being each other.”
This stacked Cardinal team, whose average WAGR rating is 7.2, has a rare bond that Walker hasn’t experienced in her 13 years at Stanford. All of her teams are close, yes, but this group is different. Sampedro and Revuelta grew up together in Spain. Ganne and Xu have played together on Junior Solheim Cup teams. Ortengren and Nora Sundberg, a sophomore on the team who will not play in ANWA, grew up together in Sweden. Bonds are everywhere, creating a close-knit group that is the definition of a team in a normally individual sport. It has created a comfort level that serves as a launch pad to push them further, higher.
It’s a team full of talent. Walker describes Sampedro as “the little engine that could”. A brilliant player whose focus, determination to improve and love for the game shine through in the way she attacks her day job. Xu, a senior, is the definition of a coach’s dream. “She wants the truth,” Walker said of Xu. “She’s the first to say, I don’t know what I don’t know, and I’m going to go find the answers.”
Then there’s Ganne, whose impact on the Stanford golf program will be felt long after she’s gone. It’s a void that’s already apparent even before she closes the book on her remarkable college career.
“She’s going to leave such a big hole in our program because she’s such a presence,” Walker said of Ganne. “She’s such a presence that not only will her departure be felt within our program, but it will be felt within our men’s program as well. So Stanford golf as a whole, and I don’t think we’ve ever said this about any player, male or female, but that’s the development of Megha Ganne.”
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This is not the first time the Cardinal has sent five to the famed grounds of Augusta National to compete in what has quickly become a pinnacle event in the women’s amateur game. In fact, since ANWA began, Augusta National’s color for the week has been cardinal red, rather than the traditional green and gold. Rose Zhang is the only Cardinal to win this eventbut Stanford has been omnipresent at Augusta National since 2019, deeply woven into the nascent event’s DNA.
And yet, the class of 2026 is one that perfectly encapsulates the excellence of the Stanford women’s program, the paramount importance of an event still in its infancy, and the growing connection between the two.
“I don’t take it lightly and I know how special it is and I know what a privilege it is to have this spotlight for all of us who play this tournament,” Ganne said at last year’s ANWA. “I keep that in mind. Maybe if a shot doesn’t go my way, I try to keep the bigger picture.
“I think it’s the most exciting week in amateur golf, men’s or women’s, in my opinion,” Ganne said. “I think everybody in golf knows about it. They might not know about some other tournaments, but when this is happening, people tune in. It just draws so much attention in the best way, and these women carry themselves in such a wonderful way. I’m very excited to see where the tournament goes, although I don’t think it can get much better than it is now.”
Added Revuelta: “Playing Augusta last year was like a dream come true for me. Everything there is so special and magical that it makes you really want to love it – it really made me want to push myself this year to come here and practice and do well in this tournament. I think for a lot of young girls Augusta National is the motivation.”
Perhaps no one has better understood the importance of Augusta National to the growth of the women’s amateur game than Xu. One look at her Stanford bio and you’ll see how the brainchild of Alister MacKenzie and Bobby Jones shaped the Southern California native’s golfing journey. At the end it is written: First Female Champion at Augusta National (Inaugural Drive Chip Putt, 7-9 age group)
Kelly Xu and Augusta National have a connection. Every golfer has an imagined connection to Augusta National. It is a driver on many golf trips. But Xu is real and tangible. She feels it deeply.
“I’m really so, so blessed to have it come full circle and to have such a large part of my golf arc, the arc of my golf journey, almost like it revolves around Augusta,” Xu told GOLF.
“I think having that Drive, Chip and Putt experience is something that made me realize at a very young age how this game is so much more than just competing for yourself. I think being able to understand like a deeper understanding of the game. Like, being able to understand, like, the history of the game, kind of made me realize that it’s more than a game.”
This will be Xu’s last appearance in ANWA. But her time at a course that is steeped in golf tradition and has a history of excluding women and people of color makes her see the bigger picture. Kelly Xu wants to win the Augusta Women’s National Amateur. But more importantly, she wants to be a driving force in getting young girls, girls who grew up like her, into the game and getting them to dream big – believing they too can walk the beautiful fairways of Augusta National and become part of the club’s history.
“I want to show that it’s possible for other township kids to one day play in Augusta, one day you can play at this level — like this can be. And I always try to be that version of myself that my nine-year-old self would be proud of because I wasn’t, you know, I was practicing in a township and I was so lucky that I think more than anything in August that I was able to do that early. dream and that bigger goal.”
This dream and goal is part of the promise of ANWA, a tournament that can elevate and shine a spotlight on the women’s amateur game in a unique way.
ANWA’s greatest gift is yet to be known. But Anne Walker sees how big its impact can be on the road. As a young golfer in Scotland with aspiring professional dreams, she never saw Augusta National as part of her path. She looked up to the Masters, of course, but she never imagined herself on those hallowed grounds. That’s just not how the story went.
But the stars of her team have lived a different reality. They have been able to carve out the world’s most famous path to stardom for themselves, trying to chase down a victory that would be as much a “career highlight” as any other great. If you want children to dream big, you must give them reason to believe that there is a world in which those dreams can become bigger, and that must be the world in which they live.
“These young kids, they don’t remember a time when Augusta wasn’t an option for them, and it’s the pinnacle of amateur golf,” Walker said. “And they get to, in their mind, picture themselves hitting the same shots that Scottie (Scheffler) is going to hit, hitting the same shots that are going to play out like Tiger hitting at 16. They have dreams at night about it, and it just drives them forward. So I don’t even know that we can influence WA or wrap our arms around women. I think there’s more to come, but I think they took the end of the game higher, and they dragged it higher, they all went up, because now when they go to bed, they’re dreaming of hitting the shots that are so famous in the history of sports.
This week on ANWA, Anne Walker won’t have to stop herself from cheering “the old lady on the tee box.” She will be free to experience all the thrills with her five as they pursue their dreams and a place in history on the hallowed grounds of golf.
When the final shot falls, win or lose, they will have left their mark and left the women’s amateur game in a better place than when they arrived. Next week at the Masters, fans will flood the merch tent in search of memorabilia of all shapes and sizes. But this week, the real gift comes without a price — and it can only be found on the course at Augusta National.
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