It was the 24th instalment of the Wee Wonders Championship and the trio at the top of the Girls 9-10 category offered a compelling insight into an exciting future.
Leona Maguire had paved the way and players like Roisin Scanlon, Olivia Costello and Zoe McLean-Tattan would later make the step up to Irish panels and elite amateur company.
For Costello, who finished second that day, she began playing golf as a seven-year-old and just a year later was at St Andrews competing in the Wee Wonders event.
There she met her coach Shane O’Grady, forged a great friendship with his daughter Niamh, and began her own journey towards the top of the Irish girls’ ranks.
Now 17, the Roscommon native is preparing to play in her fourth KPMG Women’s Irish Open – competing alongside her hero Maguire once again – after she has another tilt at the Flogas Irish Women’s Amateur Open Championship this weekend.
“Headfort this year is one of the biggest tournaments in amateur golf in Ireland, so it’s definitely up there. It’s one of the biggest on the calendar so I’m really looking forward to it,” said Costello.
“I played it there a few days ago so I’ll go and try and get maybe one or two more practice rounds in before the tournament starts and put a plan in place and stick to the plan and try and post a few scores and just see what happens.”
Costello is a Transition Year student at the Convent of Mercy in Roscommon, having helped her school to back-to-back All-Ireland Senior titles in recent years.
There has already been plenty of silverware, her breakout win came at the Scottish Girls’ Open in April 2023, when she finished four shots clear of Sadie Adams (England) to seal her first major win outside of Ireland, in Longniddry.
Adams would avenge that defeat in the 2024 Flogas Irish Girls’ Amateur Open Championship when she won and Costello finished third at Belvoir Park.
That acted as another opportunity for Costello to learn and grow, something she has focused on over the last couple of years as she looks to fine tune her game.
Initially, when she set out on her voyage, the only thing that matched her talent was her determination to get better and her first course of action was to hone in on a swing that would lead to great things.
“I used to play with my brother, he was a lot more natural at picking up a golf club than I was, but I was always determined to get things done with my golf swing,” said Costello.
“The one thing I focused on when I was younger was my golf swing. I probably didn’t put as much time into putting and chipping, but the way that my dad and my coaches looked at it was if I get my golf swing, get into good habits from the start, that when I do get older, it’s obviously something that I have to keep an eye on, but at the moment, I do very little with my golf swing.
“Every now and again, my tendencies start to show up that I have to look back at, but there’s no big swing changes that I’m making or anything like that because I put so much time and effort into it when I was younger.
“Now I do a lot more inside 100 yards, chipping, putting, that’s where I’m putting my focus on now.”
Costello’s father, Michael, introduced her to the game and she had her first lessons with Philip Murphy at Roscommon Golf Club. O’Grady came on board following the first Wee Wonders tournament and she soon flourished.
She made her breakthrough in 2023 and later that year she had already featured in her second KPMG Women’s Irish Open at Dromoland, where Maguire was also in the field.
“Leona would be my inspiration and Shane O’Grady also teaches her, so you go up to Shane’s and you have a whole wall of all the amateurs, the professionals, whenever they’ve ever won anything, if they’ve ever done something he has pictures and little mentions on the walls,” said Costello.
“Then when you look to the left, it’s a whole wall of Leona, so when you grow up going to Shane, every time you go up to see him, you see all Leona’s achievements, everything that she’s done.
“It definitely was very inspiring to see what she had done, and obviously she’s the first ever Irish female to win on the LPGA and you look at all her achievements and everything, and it definitely was a massive inspiration.
“When you look at what Leona’s gone and done in the game, for Irish golf it’s been absolutely huge, especially the women’s. You see the amount of people that know Leona in Ireland because of that.
“It definitely is something that a lot of golfers, like myself, want to do very similar. It’s something that’s always talked about, people want to do these things, but the fact she’s actually done it, makes it even more of a possibility for me, if I take my opportunities.”
The opportunities have come already in 2025; in March Costello missed out by the minimum in an enthralling Spanish Women’s Amateur Championship final. She was beaten on the 18th by Spaniard, Nagore Martinez Salcedo, after she slotted a closing eagle.
And following the heroics of reaching that final at Real Club de Golf Barcelona, she pushed on with a 14-shot win at the Triple A Series World Final at San Roque Golf Club, before another stunning victory at the Woodbrook Scratch Cup.
She missed out on reaching the matchplay stages in the Women’s Amateur last week at Nairn but based on her performances so far this season, she is primed for another big showing in Headfort.
“I’m going to bring what I learned from them. The wins are great that they happened but leaving them behind and moving on and bringing what I’ve learned into the next tournament is what I’m trying to do,” said Costello.
“It’s going to be the exact same. I’m going to bring everything that I’ve learned over the last couple of months into it, and I’ll come back, and sit down and have a bit of a review.
“It’ll be the exact same thing then going forward.”
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