Leona Maguire is embarking on her seventh full season as a professional and given that her previous six campaigns saw her maintain a steady rise it shows how high expectations are of her that a Ladies European Tour win and Solheim Cup appearance last year was considered a damp squib.
Maguire enjoyed continued success on the LPGA Tour, winning twice and propelling herself to two Solheim Cup appearances during her first four years, but last year proved to be a sticky one as she just about clung on to a place at the Tour Championship.
The Cavan star began 2024 quite well, finishing 12th at the Tournament of Champions at Lake Nona where she makes her return on Thursday and then came a succession of made cuts before her run to the final of the Match Play was halted by a rampant Nelly Korda who was in the peak of her winning rampage in America.
A 12th place finish at the Cognizant Founders Cup would be her best finish on the LPGA Tour after that but she did have the high point of becoming the first Irish winner on the Ladies European Tour at the Aramco Series event in London.
However, a caddie change, three missed cuts in five majors, an inexplicable omission from three of four Solheim Cup sessions and a drop to 54th in the Rolex World Rankings showed that perhaps the bad outweighed the good last year for Maguire.
It shows the lofty standards expected of Maguire that a winning year and a Solheim Cup year is deemed a disappointing one, and harshly so, after all, she did make history once again!
“It was an up and down year as a whole, the highlight was that win in London, that was a goal at the start of the year to try and get a LET win under my belt as the first Irish winner on the LET, it was definitely a highlight,” explained the Ballyconnell woman.
It’s fair to say that Maguire has held the Indian sign over Nelly Korda during their Solheim Cup matches but one must wonder how many LPGA Tour wins the 30-year-old would have had she not been felled by the world number one over the last few years.
“I nearly won in Vegas at the start of the year, ran into Nelly and could have been better, would have liked to play better in the majors didn’t play as well in them as I would have liked but it was an up and down year but there was consistency, still made a lot of cuts, still made it to the Tour Championship,” Maguire continued.
Maguire held the record for most weeks spent as world number one amateur and had similar ambitions for the professional ranks when she turned pro in 2018.
The highest she has reached is 10th in the Rolex Rankings and just three top-10 finishes in 24 major championship appearances, despite holding a 54-hole lead at the 2023 KPMG PGA Championship is motivation for her to try and find her A-game more often in the big events.
“Didn’t quite have my A-game as often as I would have liked, but I managed my way around events and squeezed my way through events.”
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