Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow tee it up this week in the Pelican Women’s Championship as the LPGA Tour reaches its penultimate tournament.
The top-60 at the end of tournament play will advance to the CME Group Tour Championship and while Maguire is already assured of her place in the season-ending event, Meadow needs to pull out all the stops to make it.
The Jordanstown native heads to Florida with a completely different mindset to last year where she was battling to keep her full LPGA Tour playing privileges, going all the way to the 72nd hole before doing so.
Now at 81st in the CME Globe Rankings, the 30-year-old has no such concerns but still needs to produce something special if she is to join Maguire in the LPGA finale.
Meadow arrives off the back of a 44th place finish in the TOTO Japan Classic but she will need at least a top-10 if not a maiden LPGA Tour win if she is to extend her season.
Maguire tees it up also needing a win to potentially keep her CME Globe title aspirations alive. At 17th in the rankings it has been a fantastic season for the Cavan native who made history by becoming Ireland’s first LPGA Tour winner in February.
The 27-year-old hasn’t played since the BMW Ladies Championship in Korea and after a hot late-summer period she has cooled off slightly with a missed cut and a 51st place finish in her last two starts although she did finish 4th at the KPMG Women’s Irish Open.
This is just the third playing of the Pelican Women’s Championship with Sei Young Kim and Nelly Korda taking the title in 2020 and 2021.
Home hero Brittany Lincicome is making her first start since the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship in June after giving birth to her second daughter.
Both daughters will be in attendance for an event she said is “right down the street from home,” and she is looking forward to a special week.
“It’s just so cool to get them out here and let them see everybody and see what mommy does for a living,” said Lincicome. “It’s cool to be a professional golfer, but now have two daughters watching what I do and maybe one day they can kind of follow in my footsteps or at least just play for fun.
“I don’t know if I’m ready. It’s either going to be really good or really bad,” laughed Lincicome. “This baby, I know moms say if your second baby came first you probably would never have that second one, because this one never sleeps. She hates sleep, which is so weird, because I love sleep… Thank God for Starbucks in the mornings to kind of get me going again.”
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