LEONA’S GOT THE GAME TO MAKE A GIANT LEAP
Red-hot Maguire on course to become the next superstar name in Irish sport
WE all got a little excited on Friday evening as Leona Maguire confidently knocked in an early birdie during her second round at the ANA Inspiration Open. It seemed like half the Irish twitterarti posted ‘Up Cavan!’ while the other half simply thought it.
A week before Augusta National places us under its spell, here was an Irish flag sitting at the top of the leaderboard in a major championship. And it felt like the TV coverage was befitting of Maguire’s talent.
That wasn’t exactly the case the previous night. Those of us who decided to burn the midnight oil after noticing that Maguire was climbing into contention on the opening day wondered why we had bothered. Despite the fine round she was stitching together, there was no sign of Maguire until she was featured holing a par putt on the 14th.
Maguire’s opening 67 meant she couldn’t be ignored. Sky kicked off Friday’s coverage with Laura Davies speaking about the prospect of Maguire playing for Europe in the Solheim Cup. Team captain Caitriona Matthew was in California keeping a close eye.
‘She will know that the skipper is on the sidelines out there and Leona could do herself the power of good as far as the Solheim Cup goes,’ Davies explained. As Maguire fought her way to a 73 in the second round, Matthew will be impressed by her battling qualities, including at the sixth where she chipped in for a bogey after finding the water.
The Ballyconnell native is an impressive young sportsperson. One of the leading voices during the 20x20 campaign, there is a sense that once she starts to be a regular contender on the LPGA Tour, she will blossom into one of the most popular figures in Irish sport — we like nothing more than a bandwagon, after all.
Her gifts as a golfer are evident by the 135 weeks she spent ranked as the No1 amateur in the world and all of the collegiate records she smashed while at Duke. And there is her back story, talent nurtured by endless battles on the golf course with her twin, Lisa, and the fact she is cut from GAA cloth. Throw all that into the mix and the potential for superstardom is clear.
In case any of us were in any doubt as to what the ANA Inspiration meant, Davies spoke of its parallels with the Masters on Sky’s coverage. ‘It is the favourite event of every golfer on the tour,’ the four-time Major winner claimed. Just like a certain course in Georgia.
Just like the fitting of the Green Jacket, this Major also has its own tradition involving the winner leaping into Poppy’s Pond with their caddie, which featured heavily in Sky’s opening credits.
Between Davies and presenter Sarah Stirk, a fine job was done of teeing up how special this tournament is. It was a pity then that the coverage didn’t reflect that. The stage was shared with the Valero Texas Open, an event that had Jordan Spieth and Padraig Harrington and not much else. It was as if the women’s Champion League final was interrupted by Crystal Palace against Newcastle in the Premier League. Contrast that with the wall-towall coverage of the Masters this week. There remains different rules to how men and women’s sport are covered.
Women’s golf has been growing over the past number of years. Any time watching the ANA Inspiration Open this weekend made clear that there is a wealth of talent in the game.
Perhaps, what women’s golf is waiting for is that player who can take the sport to the next level — the way that Tiger Woods did. Michelle Wie was supposed to be that figure. It was at this tournament in Mission Hills 18 years ago, that a 13-year-old Wie burst onto the sporting scene.
By 15, she had signed lucrative sponsorship deals with Nike and Sony. When she was in college, Wie was talking about making an impact on the men’s tour and becoming the first female player to compete at the Masters.
Such was her marketability, Wie received a number of sponsors’ invites to European and PGA tour events, but they didn’t go well.
Wie was a prodigious talent — she finished in the top 10 at the ANA that year — but the way she was hyped into a female Woodstype figure did her much more harm than good. She has won one Major to date, the 2014 US Open, and arrived in California a married mother of one who has flirted with retirement on a couple of occasions in the past.
Wie’s ambition to compete for the Green Jacket and those illfated decisions to play in events like the European Masters underlined a need among the women’s game to be accepted by their stuffy male counterparts. The same year that Wie burst on the scene, Annika Sorenstam teed up at the Charles Schwab Challenge in the Colonial Country club.
Sorenstam’s attempt to break the gender barrier didn’t have universal appeal. It was reckoned that Vijay Singh was speaking for a fair proportion of the men’s tour when he barked: ‘She doesn’t belong out there. It’s ridiculous. Hope she misses the cut.’
Singh ultimately got his wish and apart from Wie’s few ill-fated attempts, there has been no other efforts to break gender lines.
But in the likes of Inbee Park, Lexi Thompson, Charley Hull, Anna Nordqvist and Maguire, women’s golf can now stand on its own. And when later this year in Galgorm, the best male and female golfers come together for a mixed tournament, the ISPS Handa World Invitational, they will compete for equal prize money. The event is the brainchild of Niall Horan, Mullingar’s most famous golfer, whose management company, Modest! Golf, looks after Maguire and has cultivated her star appeal.
It promises to be a fascinating event and as Maguire showed this past weekend, she has all the tools to be its star attraction.
‘She spent 135 weeks as the No1 amateur in the world’