When does a non-counting score count in the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship? When the competition is so close that it’s the only way to decide the champion.

That was the case on Saturday in Singapore, where the U.S., Spain and Republic of Korea all posted scores of 18-under 558 in the 72-hole tournament at Tanah Merah Country Club. The tiebreaker then became which team had the lowest non-counting score, and that card belonged to reigning U.S. Amateur champion Megha Ganne, whose even-par 72 in the third round provided the difference for the Americans to capture the Espirito Santo Trophy for the 15th time.

It was Ganne, a New Jersey native and Stanford senior, who led the way in the final round when she shot a team-best 68. For the tournament, Catherine Park, a senior at USC, had the lowest total score of 281, while Texas junior Farah O’Keefe shot 282, including a first-round 67.

“We are beyond happy. We don’t get to do this often, to play for country, so we were just excited to be here,” Ganne said. “We were so impressed at the level of golf from Korea and Spain. It’s a heartbreaking tiebreaker for them, but we knew that the third score yesterday and today could matter.”

In the rules, the first tiebreaker is the non-counting scores from the final round, but the U.S. and Spain were deadlocked on those, with Park making a birdie on the 18th to shoot 71 to match Wake Forest alum Carolina Lopez-Chacarra. That moved them to the lowest non-counting score in the third round, which belonged to Ganne.

“With my rules official background, I was very conscious of the tie-breaking element,” said U.S. captain Kendra Graham, who worked in Rules and Competitions for the USGA for more than 10 years. “The first phone call I had with each of them, I told them every single player was in it every single day… if it ever comes to a tiebreaker, we are going to that score.”

Captain Kendra Graham of United States of America

From left, Americans Catherine Park, Farah O’Keefe and Megha Ganne hoist the trophy they won in the Women’s World Amateur Team Championship.

Steven Gibbons

The Americans trailed the Koreans by three strokes going into the final round, but rallied on three strong performances—Ganne’s bogey-free 68, O’Keefe’s 71 and Park’s 71, which she fashioned by making birdies on her final three holes.

“I’m over the moon. I’m so happy for the girls. They all contributed big time. I mean, unbelievable the way each one of them played. … I didn’t say much going into the round. I don’t give pep talks. I just said, just do what you do. You’re all really great.”

With a 15th gold medal in the 31 times the team championship has been played, the U.S. women are now only one win away from matching the American men in victories. The men have a chance to build on their total when they compete next week on the same course. If they produce a victory, it would be only the second time that men’s and women’s teams from the same country won in the same year. The U.S. was the first to do it in 1994.

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com