Six years, ago, when Megha Ganne was all of 15 years old, she played her way into the semifinals of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship at Old Waverly Golf Club in Mississippi. It was all such a blur before she was beaten by a woman she idolzed, Albane Valenzuela, that the Holmdel, N.J., native insists she remembers almost nothing from it. “I was like a baby,” she says.

Ganne does remember this: “I wanted to be in the final. I didn't get this last time, so definitely thinking about how to make my way there [this year].”

Now 21 years old and among the most accomplished players in college today, the rising senior at Stanford has indeed reached the final of the U.S. Women’s Am, and there is no doubt she’s going to remember nearly every bit of it, no matter the result.

On Saturday at Band

See Full Page