At the 2021 Solheim Cup at Inverness Golf Club in Ohio, Mel Reid was one of the more experienced European players as she was embarking on her fourth appearance. Naturally, she was paired with one of the competition rookies in Leona Maguire and she took the Cavan woman under her wing.
It wasn’t long before the nestling took full flight, however, and Maguire’s fearsome Solheim Cup reputation has continued to grow ever since. A lasting friendship has ensued between the English woman and her shy partner from 2021, and Reid believes that Maguire’s competitive edge is what’s made her one of Europe’s greatest weapons over the past two stagings.
“She’s my best friend, as everyone knows,” she said when asked exactly what makes Maguire excel on the biggest stage in women’s golf. “She actually sits next to me at dinner now without me pushing her, which is actually quite nice. She’s fiery on the golf course. I think you see that. She’s very passionate. She loves match play. She loves Solheim Cup. She loves looking her competitor in the face saying, I’m going to beat you, and she wears that extremely well in the team.
“She has no — she never gives up. She has so much grit and determination. It’s exactly the kind of player you want on your team. And she’s not a long player, and I think that’s what frustrates the competitors as well, is that she just gets it done not hitting it very far.
“As far as a teammate, obviously she’s one of the quieter players, but at the same time, she’s really come out of her shell in the last few years. I spoke about this at the previous Solheim Cup, I think, that I was part of, and even Inverness. From the start of the week to the end of the week, she’s a completely different person.
“I’m just really proud of how she’s really kind of grown and is very comfortable in her own skin now. But, yeah, we still call her the MVP. She really is. She really has excelled at the last two Solheim Cups, and she’s really becoming quite a fierce player, someone that you don’t want to be drawn against.
“So we’re just really proud that she’s on our team and she’s a great teammate and just an all-round top class girl.”
She wasn’t quite finished there, and in typical good-natured Anglo-Irish relations, she finished with a quip suggesting that waxing lyrical about a close friend didn’t come easy.
“It almost made me sick saying nice things about her,” she added with laughter.
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