(Photo: Sun Devil Athletics)
Arizona State’s women’s golf season is right around the corner and holds a lot to look forward to. The Sun Devils finished last season ranked 19th in the Clipp’d poll, putting them among the top teams in the Big 12.
This season also marks the 10 year anniversary of the Sun Devils last national championship. Head coach Missy Farr-Kaye led the team during its last run and now enters her 12th season at ASU.
After losing three golfers in the offseason, she has filled those gaps with new talent and looks ready to build off of the previous season. Coming off an up-and-down season that found them finishing as high as second multiple times and as low as 16th, they now hope to return to the form they have shown throughout their history.
Returners
ASU will be led by key fifth-year senior Patience Rhodes, who returns to ASU after graduating this past fall. Rhodes had one last season of eligibility after taking a redshirt as a freshman.. The 2025-26 Big 12 Player of the Year played a major role in the team’s success last season, leading them to a third straight national championship appearance.
Throughout her career, she has compiled 20 top-20 finishes and 14 finishes in the top-10, including a fourth-place finish at the last Big 12 Championships.
Coming off a strong year, she enters this season ranked 28th nationally and has already earned preseason second-team All-American nods from both Golfweek and the Golf Channel.
Along with Rhodes, there are three second-year players returning for the Sun Devils, hoping to build off of strong first seasons. Johanna Axelsen, Kate Dillon, and Fai Rubrong all came in together last year, deciding to stay in Tempe to continue their Sun Devil careers.
All of them had mixed opening seasons, but there were bright spots, with Dillon and Rubrong finishing as high as second place in their best outings. Rubrong, in fact, brought home Big 12 Freshman of the Year honors and looks to leap in year two. Showing flashes in their inaugural seasons, they hope to improve and find their stride with the rest of the team.
Newcomers
Filling the voids left by the departures of seniors Beth Coulter, Paula Schulz-Hanssen and sophomore Isla McDonald-O’Brien, Coach Farr-Kaye had her work cut out. She went out and brought in fresh new faces via the transfer portal and high school.
Through the portal, she brought in second-year Amelia Wan and third-year Isabella Cioe. Wan spent last season at Baylor, but decided to move to a Big 12 foe, ASU. As a freshman, she had two top-20 finishes, with one being in the top 10.
Wan comes over with Cioe, an Arizona native who grew up in Scottsdale. She started her college career at San Jose State and competed in the Mountain West Conference. She appeared in five tournaments and 15 rounds last year, finishing with a 74.8 stroke average, the best of her career.
Cioe and Wan look to add experience as incoming transfers to fill in the holes left from last year’s roster.
While Farr-Kaye explored the transfer portal for fresh talent, she also recruited with the addition of first-year Natalie Aparicio. She ranked as the No. 15 overall recruit in the 2026 class and was the No. 1 player in Italy.
Aparicio comes one year removed from winning the 2025 Italian Girls U18 National Championship. In her career, Aparicio has 19 top-10 finishes and even had a top-15 finish this past summer at the European Ladies’ Amateur Championship.
Now with an NCAA school for the first time, she hopes to make an immediate impact as she is set to play in the upcoming Mason Rudolph Championship.
With a new-look roster, Farr-Kaye and her squad looked primed and ready to compete for ASU’s NCAA-leading 9th national championship. Their season tees off Sept. 18 in Franklin, Tennessee, for the Mason Rudolph Championship.
