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Leona Maguire interview: ‘My game is in a good spot, I’m trying to tie it all together’

Cavan golfer plots her own way with grand designs on more LPGA Tour wins, Major success and an Olympic medal

Leona Maguire is in action in this week's T-Mobile Match Play in Las Vegas. Photograph: Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images

Philip Reid
Wed Apr 3 2024 - 06:00

All eyes are on Nelly Korda these days. Which suits Leona Maguire just fine, as the Cavan golfer patiently plots her own way on tour with grand designs on more wins to add to a career CV – LPGA Tour wins, Solheim Cups – that has a long journey yet to completion. She’ll get her share of the spotlight.

Korda’s winning streak, three straight on the LPGA Tour, is one which Maguire can both applaud and learn from at the same time.

“It’s top notch, top quality,” said Maguire of Korda’s current run, “and we are all just trying to catch up at the minute. That’s the thing with the LPGA Tour, maybe 10 years ago there was five, six players you could say could win every week, now there’s 20, 25, 30 and that’s the way it has been.

“It’s unusual that somebody [dominates], I read somewhere that Nelly is the first since Lorena Ochoa [in 2008] to win three in a row. It is a testament to what the standard is like but it is also a testament too that you do have to be good and you have to be shooting multiple rounds under par to compete.

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“I think it is good for everyone, it drives everyone to push on and just catch her I suppose. She has a little more distance to be fair and that is beneficial, if you hit it a little bit further and have shorter irons into the greens. But, again, I have to stick to my strengths and I know week in and week out if I can hit it the way I know I can hit it and hole a few putts I won’t be far away.”

Maguire is back in matchplay mode for this week’s LPGA Tour stop – the T-Mobile Match Play in Las Vegas – on a course at Shadow Creek where she finished third last year. “There’ll be plenty of 9-woods. The greens are roly-poly, you don’t want any above the pin kinds of scenarios, so there’ll be lots of 9-woods to six feet short of the flag,” she said, identifying one of the strengths of her game.

Although called a matchplay tournament, the first three days, with a Wednesday start, actually involve strokeplay qualifying before the head-to-head duels set in Friday.

“It will be a long week hopefully, hope to be there right to the end. It is one of those weeks you can have a go at it, you have nothing really to lose. If you don’t play well you are not going to be there the next day so you might as well have a go at it.”

Nelly Korda of the United States continues to set the standard on the LPGA Tour. Photograph: Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Going forward, things come thick and fast. The Chevron in a fortnight’s time is the first of five Majors on the women’s professional circuit and, further down the line, there’s the Olympics, the KPMG Irish Women’s Open and another Solheim Cup, in Virginia, which this year switches back to even years in the calendar.

“The schedule looks very full when you are looking at it on paper but, to some extent, it sets itself. At the minute I have tended to figure three events in a row is the max. I tried to do four at one point last year and I think it is just an event too far, especially with the Majors.”

The Olympics. The Solheim Cup. The Majors. Always something to look forward to, and Maguire is just waiting, patiently as ever, for it all to come together.

“My game is in a good spot, there’s been some glimpses, a couple of nicely under par rounds and just trying to tie everything together, to tie four rounds together. Getting a few putts to drop makes a round go from good to great and trying to put four of those together would be nice in a couple of weeks time [at the Chevron].

And, of course, there is the KPMG Irish Open which, after a successful two-year stint at Dromoland Castle, moves to Carton House in Maynooth in August.

BMW has mirrored its partnership with the Amgen Irish Open on the DP World Tour by also partnering with the LET for the KPMG Irish Open as official car partner, a move which Maguire acknowledged demonstrated the tournament’s status as one of the standout events on the European circuit.

“It feels more like a Major event rather than just a regular season event,” observed Maguire of how it has impacted on the LET since its revival in 2022. “It is all leading to being a great event at Carton House.”

Before then, Ireland’s pioneering golfer – the first to win on the LPGA Tour, and with the defence of her Meijer Classic the week before the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June – will be aiming that the spotlight switches from Korda to someone else. Preferably her.

Philip Reid

Philip Reid

Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times

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