Leona Maguire was the number one seed heading into the quarter-finals of the T-Mobile Matchplay presented by MGM Rewards and she lived up to her billing with a dominant win over Moriya Jutanugarn.
Maguire roared into the semi finals courtesy of a thumping 4&3 win over her Thai opponent and she will face Sei Young Kim in the last four.
Kim breezed by Rose Zhang 6&5 in her quarter final.
A par at the first gave Maguire the early lead and she never relinquished it, rolling in a birdie on the third and she recovered from losing the fourth with a par on the fifth to return 2UP before another birdie on the par-3 8th saw her turn three holes in front.
In blustery and cold conditions again, pars were good and Maguire made two in a row on 11 and 12 to move 5UP. Jutanugarn won the 14th with a par to reduce the deficit to four but it was too little too late.
Maguire finished in style, almost holing out with a pitch on the 15th.
“This golf course is very demanding. It was nice to get my first par of the week on the second. I tried to just approach it like stroke play, as if today was round four of the tournament, and tried to play as well as I could.
“I knew Mo had a lot of great momentum from her really great round yesterday in the playoff, so knew I was going to have to play some really good golf this morning to beat her.”
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