It’s a quiet week in Europe for our Irish hopefuls with no representation on the DP World Tour while the HotelPlanner Tour continues its spring break. But there is plenty of interest Stateside and in South Africa.
LPGA Tour
Leona Maguire will look to brush off a missed cut last week as she tees it up in the opening major of the season at the Chevron Championship. The Cavan woman did finish second a fortnight ago for her first top-10 in eight months but has a career best finish of 18th in seven appearances at the Chevron.
Maguire worked with Tiger Woods’ former coach Sean Foley over the winter and had been seeing green shoots recently so perhaps a weekend off gave her an opportunity to get back into the groove.
This tournament takes place at Memorial Park Golf Course – the same golf course where Shane Lowry struck a hole in one before the Masters.
PGA Tour
Golf becomes a team sport this week, unless you are an avid LIV Golf fan and can name all of the teams without looking. The Zurich Classic of New Orleans takes centre stage at TPC Louisiana. Often known as little more than a hit and giggle Shane Lowry makes up half of a very intriguing pairing as he teams up with Brooks Koepka.
Lowry and Rory McIlroy combined to win this event two years ago while the current holders are Ben Griffin and Andrew Novak. Also competing are Seamus Power and Matti Schmid while Matt and Alex Fitzpatrick are brothers in arms this week.
Ladies European Tour
Anna Foster and Áine Donegan are in the field for the Investec South Africa Women’s Open as the Ladies European Tour wraps up its southern hemisphere stretch.
Donegan missed the cut last week in bizarre fashion after her golf clubs never arrived on site at the tournament forcing her to play with a different set of sticks.
“It was a total nightmare to be honest, if Gary (coach) wasn’t here I don’t know what I would have done. They weren’t my clubs, Brad from PING was very good but they just weren’t my clubs, they were double the weight on a Thursday. My putter is a very different type as well.
“It was a learning experience because I went and practiced up in Royal Joburg afterwards and we got some really good work done. This could end up being better than making the cut and coming 40th last week because we got lots of good work done.”
Alps Tour
Sam Murphy, Hugh Foley, Robert Moran and Cathal MacCanna are currently competing at the Dreamland Open.
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