A GOOD WALK
ALEX Maguire was just 18 when he jetted off to the USA last summer to begin an exciting new life on a golf scholarship - and it’s been a dream start for the boy from Mornington.
The former Colaiste na hInse student seems to have adapted brilliantly to life across the Atlantic, and as far as the golf goes Alex has been helping set new standards at Florida Atlantic University.
Probably the only disappointment is that year one had to be cut short because of the coronavirus, but Alex is glad he managed to get home for the summer rather than being stuck thousands of miles from his family.
There were a couple of anxious days a few weeks ago when it became evident that he would have to act fast - or face the possibility of spending the entire summer holiday on the FAU campus.
Recalling that stressful time, he told the Drogheda Independent: ‘When I was over there the pandemic wasn’t showing on the news so much and I didn’t think about how much it could spread, although I saw a couple of podcasts which talked about the virus being in Italy, but two weeks later I had booked a flight home!
‘My mum’s friend’s husband works as a pilot in Aer Lingus and he wasn’t sure what flights would be still running the next week, so he was saying ‘get him home as quick as you can’.
‘On the Friday I was out practising and Mum was screaming down the phone - I got a flight for the Sunday!
‘In hindsight it was great I got home rather than being stuck over there on campus.’
Going through secondary school, Alex hadn’t really considered America as an option, but that all changed after the FAU coach spotted him playing in the British Boys Championship at Royal Portrush.
‘I didn’t have any great ambitions to go to America - I thought I would go to Maynooth because my type of game works in Ireland - although there were a couple of other offers,’ he recalled.
‘I first heard about FAU when I played in the British Boys Championship in August 2018, but at that time their programme hadn’t been financed properly for a while and it wasn’t on my radar.
‘When I researched them, though, it caught my eye that Ryan Jamison was there because he is a great coach. I had a couple of calls with him and he offered me a great deal.
‘And being in the far south, Florida has amazing weather and it’s in the high 20s all the time.’
Academically, Alex’s business degree has gone better than he expected, despite the heavy golfing commitments which see him regularly traversing one of the biggest countries on the planet to compete for FAU. Overall, year one has been a wonderful learning curve for the now 19-year-old.
‘The first two months were tough being away from home,’ he conceded. ‘I hadn’t been away before for more than two weeks without my parents and I had to acclimatise to the heat. I tended to get quite tired and maybe I wasn’t getting the right vitamins into me.
‘But I love playing for the team and travelling the country. I get all the experience I could possibly get and I found it interesting that the level of competition runs much deeper, so you’re being pushed all the time and you have to have your best game with you no matter where you go.
‘The travelling is tough. Sometimes you have to drive 11 hours because it’s the most economic route and by going that way it frees up money for something else. We’ve been to California twice this year, and although a single flight is five hours, sometimes you can’t go direct and there’s connecting flights or layovers.
‘You want to be able to rest