Leona Maguire has never been one to rest on her laurels and having finished off her year with an impressive showing alongside partner Lucas Glover in the Grant Thornton Invitational in Florida last weekend, she’s already plotting her assault on the women’s golf circuit in 2024.
The now two-time LPGA tournament winner and heroine of the European Solheim Cup side was in the K Club, for whom she is the touring professional, having been honoured by the Irish Golf Writers’ Association as their Women’s Professional of the Year recipient and she reflected on the year gone by.
“Any year you win, it’s obviously a really good year,” Maguire said. “I think you’ve seen in the last five years, even on the LPGA, how hard it is to win. See how long Lexi [Thompson]’s gone without a win and Lydia [Ko, world number one at the start of the year] didn’t win this year [apart from the Grant Thornton last Sunday]. There are a lot of good players that played some very good golf this year but didn’t win. So yeah, anytime you can win, it’s always nice.
Her win at the Meijer LPGA Classic, where a back-nine charge saw her claim victory in an event she’d previously been runner-up in, was the standout moment from an individual perspective, but it was her heroics at the Solheim Cup, particularly her match-winning final hole chip-in which turned the tide on day one and her comprehensive singles victory on Sunday that will live longest in the memory of most golf fans and with the event reverting to even years from 2024 onwards, we don’t have long to wait to see her in Solheim Cup action again.
“It was a great week,” she recalled. “I mean, another one next year, I think we’ll have a very tough task. I imagine the Americans will pull out all the stops.
“I mean, the first job is to make sure I’m on the plane going to DC. But at Finca, it was the Irish people that went over in their droves. I think that was one of the most impressive things to see that sort of support. It felt like we were almost in Ireland more than the south of Spain. That was really cool. That was really good to see, I think for Mom and Dad as well, because they didn’t get to experience that the last time. They really enjoyed having people coming up to them and seeing where everybody was from and all that and the posters and the outfits.”
As Rory McIlroy said in the post-Ryder Cup Press Conference, winning an away Ryder Cup is one of the hardest things to do in sport, and though the Europeans won in 2021 at Inverness, Ohio, winning back-to-back away Solheim Cups might be an even greater accomplishment.
“That would be four [three wins and a retention] in a row, and that’s never been done before,” Maguire explained. “So, you’re moving into new territory all the time. It’s a challenge, but Suzann [Pettersen, who’ll captain Europe again] loves a challenge more than anybody. She’s already asked for feedback from this time around. So, I know she’s already getting ready.”
For a player of Maguire’s calibre, the major championships start taking on greater importance every year and though she finished tied for fourth at the 2022 AIG Women’s Open, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol this year was the first time that she’d properly contended in one of the game’s most coveted championships but, coming off a win the week before, her challenge faded in a weather-stymied final round.
“I mean, I think because we literally went the next week into the Houston Open there wasn’t really much time to start to dwell on it too much,” she said when asked about the disappointment of not getting her first major title, but added: “I think the big thing was I think I probably underestimated how much (winning) Meijer had taken out of me the week before. I mean, I would say I got my schedule wrong this summer.”
With competing tours and a natural desire to support and headline her national open, getting the balance of where and when to play can be a tricky and potentially stalling issue and it’s one she’s yet to fully master.
“I ended up having to take quite a big break before the Irish Open and missed some of the [LPGA] events of the year, and then it was a bit stop-start and I didn’t get any momentum to finish off the year. So, I think I’m going to have to very carefully plan out next year with five majors, the Olympics, and the Solheim Cup again. It’s going to be a big, big summer, and it’s not easy to get the schedule right.
“I haven’t quite got that piece of the puzzle yet. But yeah, I mean, there are many big tournaments to look forward to next year.”
In 2024, she’ll embark on her fifth season as a full LPGA Tour member, and her steady climb and all-round consistency means that she’s now among the pre-tournament favourites any time she tees it up. But at the very top, the margins are so fine and though she knows she has the game to match anybody, putting it all together on a week is the biggest challenge.
“I know when I have my A game, it’s good, good enough to compete with the best,” she said. “It’s just a case of getting that a little bit more consistent, week in and week out. Generally, the weeks I putted the best this year were the weeks I contended the most. So, it’s just making sure that is consistent as well. I struggled this year, transferring from the fast greens in America to the slower greens in Europe in the summer. So that’s something I have to do a better job with next year.
“I didn’t putt well at Walton Heath [in the AIG Women’s Open] and didn’t putt well at Dromoland [KPMG Women’s Irish Open] either. I got it going again for Solheim and stuff like that. But yeah, I need to do a better job of adjusting to that. And some of that coming off the back of majors. It’s just learning to adapt a bit more. I think we’re all still learning. It’s year four in the books. It seems like a long time. But at the same time, it’s only four years. It’s not that long.”
The Grant Thornton Invitational was the ideal way to sign off for the year; a limited field event with big prize money and with added exposure as the women got to play alongside their counterparts from the PGA Tour and showcase their own talents.
“Everybody was very excited to be a part of it and get to play with the lads,” Maguire said. “That’s the thing. We watch them every week, and we see them on TV, and it was nice to see them and hear their positive comments about our games. It wasn’t just, ‘Oh, you’re here to make up the numbers’. They were impressed by seeing us hit or putt, whatever it was. So hopefully, we could do a bit more stuff like that. And I know it’s obviously a bit of a novelty to finish off the year like that.”
Whilst ‘money talk’ continues to dominate much of the narrative in men’s professional golf, the women’s game, though prize money is increasing year-by-year, still lags some way behind.
“I think we don’t really notice it as much on our side,” she said of the bad press received by professional golf in the wake of LIV’s arrival and the subsequent money-grabbing and squabbling among those at the top. “I suppose we’re just happy to have the opportunity to play in something like that. I think you see that with the uptake on the girls’ side last week. All the major winners from this year were there.”
Though that was her final official tournament of 2024, she still had one final honour to take and it was a foregone conclusion that she would again be named Irish Golf Writers’ Association’s Women’s Professional of the Year, having been honoured five times as Women’s Amateur Player of the Year, twice sharing the accolade with twin sister Lisa.
“It’s great to be receiving this award,” she said. “It’s hard to believe it’s my seventh award from the IGWA going all the way back to Lisa & I being honoured in 2008. It was another winning season on the LPGA for me and it’s a nice feeling that the Irish Golf Writers Association have selected me for the award. I am really looking forward to next year already and trying to win more. 2024 is going to be a huge year with five Majors, the Olympic Games and a Solheim Cup. Hopefully we are having this conversation this time next year off the back of another great year!”
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