Leona Maguire brought the fireworks to the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions as she birdied her last five holes to finish in sumptuous style and keep herself in contention.
Maguire looked to be reeling after a double bogey on the par-3 13th dropped her back to one-under for the tournament but a sensational run of birdies from the 14th to the clubhouse propelled her back up to third place alongside Nelly Korda on six-under-par and four shots behind A Lim Kim who holds a three shot advantage over Linn Grant.
“Yeah, nice to finish off with five birdies in a row,” said Maguire who also picked up birdies at the 2nd and 12th but bogeyed the 7th. “Standing on the 14th tee I just wanted to give myself five chances to finish and that’s what I did. Nice momentum heading into the weekend.
“I mean, if we take 13 out of it it was a pretty nice back nine. Little blip there. The par-3s are strong here so it’s — you kind of want to keep it tidy on the par-3s and take advantage of par-5s.”
Maguire lives just around the corner from Lake Nona and she believes that home advantage might play in her favour heading into the weekend.
“Yes it’s an advantage. You know all the spots where to hit it and also know all the spots where not to hit it. On 8 I hit it left of the green. I don’t think I’ve ever hit it there since I’ve been here four and a half years.
“Yeah, there is a good group of girls here. Play with Lindy and Anna and Lydia quite a bit here. The conditions have changed quite a bit in the last few weeks. Starting to firm up a little bit, drying out, which is nice.
“Yeah, it’s nice. I had a putt on 17. I was telling Taylor earlier today, I had that putt on 17 that looks like it breaks. I’ve missed it enough times to know it doesn’t break so pretty confident it was a straight putt. It’s nice having those extra bits of course knowledge.”
Although this is also a celebrity pro-am event, the pins have been tucked away on the greens and the tougher set up might suit the Cavan star.
Y”eah, they’ve definitely been saving them the past few weeks. There was a few pins we saw the last few weeks that we don’t normally see tucked away. Yeah, just a few that they try and trick it up a little bit for this week.”
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