Sarah Stirk
You can really feel the intensity building with each tournament at this time of the year, and there have already been some memorable weeks to whet the appetite for Major season. One display that got a lot of attention over here, and rightly so, was a maiden LPGA Tour win for Leona Maguire at the Drive On Championship. Many people were taken aback by her outstanding Solheim Cup debut last year, but to those who had been following her rise through the ranks, that performance came as no surprise.
The Irishwoman is really starting to fulfil her vast potential and there are a number of reasons why those close to her believe this is just the start. Firstly, her singlemindedness is something to behold. In an era where the stars are turning pro – and winning – ridiculously young in the women’s game, she resisted the temptation to leave college and stayed on for four years to complete her studies. In that time, she topped the World Amateur Golf Ranking for a record 135 weeks in total and picked up numerous titles and accolades.
That grounding in the amateur game, followed by a couple of years on the Symetra Tour, has allowed her to develop at a steady pace. She has kept the same close-knit team throughout and this has really started to pay dividends. At 27, she could be considered a late entrant into the winners’ circle, but her career trajectory has been one of incremental success.
Her work ethic is also a phenomenal asset. She’s been compared to Padraig Harrington in that regard and is always first on the range and last to leave. It took her 18 months on the LPGA Tour to get her first win and it would have been very easy for her to question her methods and deviate from the plan in that time, but she stuck to her guns. We’ve seen so many players get to the pro ranks and then try to change things up and lose something along the way. She knows her own mind and her own game and she’s been meticulous in how she’s gone about things. It’s that sort of steely determination that sets the top players apart.
The other thing playing into her favour is her fantastic ability on the greens. She ranks very highly in all the LPGA putting stats, which is vital when it comes to those high-pressure moments. If you use the example of a player like Inbee Park – who is obviously a very solid player from tee to green but her ball-striking doesn’t stand out like a Lexi Thompson – it shows what a formidable putting stroke can help achieve. She has seven Majors to her name so far and I see parallels with Maguire when it comes to the flat-stick.
I don’t want to get too carried away as this was only her first win, but it feels like that career trajectory I talked about is only going to carry on moving in the right direction. The next step would be to compete for, and then win, a Major, which I think she’s more than capable of doing this season. Last year, she equalled the record for the lowest round at a Major – her 61 at the Evian helping her to a T6 finish – and she proved at the Solheim she can perform at her best when the stakes are at their highest. Now she’s got the monkey off her back, I think she’ll really kick on and I only see more positive news for her as the year unfolds.
As for elsewhere in the world of golf, I know the debate about the Phoenix Open has been raging since the remarkable scenes we saw on the 16th hole in February. Just to add my thoughts, I witnessed it first-hand two years ago when I went over there for Sky and the crowds really are like nothing else I’ve seen in the sport. It’s a unique event and one that I feel is a good thing on balance. Anything that gets so many new eyeballs on the sport, whether that be in person or on social media, has to be a positive. I’m not saying I want to see greens showered with beer cans every week, but as a one-off I’m all for something completely different. The quality of the field tells us the players have bought into the whole thing, so we should too. It’s one hole for one week of the year, so why not?
“Leona Maguire is starting to fulfil her vast potential. The sky really is the limit”