Leona Maguire was bullish after her second round – a one-under-par 71 – and admitted that she felt there was a low round in her. In fact, that 71 could easily have been a 65 or a 66 in her estimation as putt after putt threatened the hole but stayed up.
It didn’t take her long to justify her declaration, and less than 24 hours later she was walking off to sign for a nine-under 63, tying the low round of the week, and setting the clubhouse lead at 11-under-par.
The round began in a steady drizzle, but as it came to its conclusion, that had increased to a constant deluge but that didn’t put her off, ending the day with nine birdies and no blemishes on the card.
“Yeah, I think we were expecting quite heavy rain today,” she said. “We got lucky in patches, so we got a few breaks, and yeah, it was nice to hit, hit a lot of good shots today, holed a few more putts – my caddie Simon read a few putts for me today, which helped – and I felt like we did a really good job at this so far.”
Despite shooting the low-round of the day to that point, she feels that she’s going to have to produce something similar in Sunday’s final round if she’s to become the first home winner of the KPMG Women’s Irish Open.
“Yeah, it’s probably going to need another one of the same, but the goal this morning was to get to double digits and at least we’re in double digits now,” she said.
“So, Casandra’s [Alexander] obviously got quite a big, a big head start, but we’ll just try and make her sweat a little bit if we can.”
While she was talking, the hooter sounded temporarily halting play as several greens began to have surface water issues, and she couldn’t hide her disappointment as she knew it was giving a reprieve to Alexander and the other leaders who were still out on course.
But on her own game, the swing changes she’s been working on with new coach Sean Foley appear to be bedding in nicely and she’s happy with how she’s struck the ball this week.
“Yeah, absolutely,” she replied when asked if she was getting more comfortable with her new swing. “I hit some really, really nice approach shots and I suppose the last two years the approach shots have been the thing that maybe let me down a bit and been a little bit inconsistent here and there.
“They’ve been really solid this week in general. So, if I continue to keep holing puts and we’ll try and do one more low one tomorrow.
“The last few weeks, I don’t think the scores reflected how I was playing, and obviously missing cuts is never fun, but it didn’t feel like I was playing that bad, and you know, the standard is actually very high [on the LPGA Tour] as it is here on LET, and, it’s nice to put a really low one together. I haven’t done that in a while. I knew it was there, but you still have to go and do it.”
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