Leona Maguire hopes that switching from long time swing coach Shane O’Grady to Tiger Woods’ former coach Sean Foley will help her gain the distance and height her ball striking needs to remain competitive at the top echelons of the LPGA Tour.
Maguire was ranked as high as 10th in the Rolex World Rankings in 2022 but a slide over the last two seasons saw her begin 2026 outside the top-100. She says it was an accumulation of things that made her link up with Foley who can be on site at LPGA events regularly compared to childhood coach O’Grady who is based in Blackbush Golf Club in County Meath.
Now aged 31, the Cavan star is one of the more experienced players on tour and she wants to keep up with the fast pace of the LPGA Tour which is shifting to longer golf courses with firmer greens.
“It’s been good, tricky getting used to a different way of doing things. I can see the benefits in what we are doing it has been a learning curve and I am excited for the few months ahead,” said the two-time LPGA Tour winner of her relationship with Foley which has seen her break back into the world’s top-80 with two top-10s and a comfortable 32nd on the order of merit.
“I’ve only been home once since Christmas and that was only for a couple of days to do a few sponsor things so it makes a big difference when we are week to week, I go back to Orlando and he is there so it really does make a difference having that hands on approach opposed to sending videos back and forth all the time.
“He has a lot of experience in that regard too so it definitely makes a difference on the off weeks. It also limits the amount of travel I have to do, this is week four coming up of a five week stretch so it helps conserve energy and not having to make a lot of trips back and forth all the time.”
Maguire and O’Grady enjoyed tremendous success together. As well as reaching world number one in the amateur rankings, Maguire won twice on the LPGA Tour, once on the Ladies European Tour and played on two successful European Solheim Cup teams in what was a glorious and groundbreaking period for Irish women’s golf.
But sometimes a change is as good as a rest and in a bid to arrest her slump she revealed that O’Grady encouraged her to explore her options.
“At the end of every season you assess where you are at and what needs to be done to get to the next level. Shane and I both acknowledged we were at a crossroads and didn’t know what the next step was. We had tried quite a few things for the last few things and some things worked for a week or two and some hadn’t. One of the things he said to me was to explore and one of those things I did was go and see Sean.
“I’m very happy with what I have achieved on the tour with my wins and Solheim Cups could have stuck with the same and kept going the way I was going but I wanted to go and search for more consistency and it was a decision I had to take.”
Maguire admitted that her season to date has been inconsistent despite finishes of 2nd and 9th recently, although she has missed the first two Major cuts. But success is never linear and she has grown tired of hitting fairway woods into greens which are only getting faster and firmer on the LPGA Tour.
In a bid to keep up with the Nelly Korda’s of the game she hopes some swing changes with Foley will give her the length and height she needs to turn the one and two under rounds into something in the mid to low 60s.
“I’m playing the long game with it. We saw Nelly Korda and Jess talking about the bow and arrow. You have to pull the bow back to go forward and I like that analogy. Sometimes it takes a lot of work behind the scenes before you see those results, it is easy to get hung up on why the results aren’t happening.
“It’s a distance and it’s consistency of ball striking. At CME in Tiburon two years ago I shot nine under but the golf course was shorter. Last year I was going into the greens with 5-woods and Nelly and Jeeno [Thitikul] were going in with 8-irons or 7-irons. You have to hit to 30-40 feet with a 5-wood and hope it stops at the back of the green and hole a few long ones to shoot one or two under. I’m not going to shoot the 7 or 8 under so you have to gain distance off the tee and the height going into the greens. You still have to have the short game too. To win any week on the LPGA Tour you have to do everything right.
“On the LPGA there is a transition to longer, bigger courses with firmer and faster greens so it’s important to hit the ball long and high so you have to keep up with that or you get left behind. That’s the reason behind it and ultimately you want to be able to walk away from the last round of your career saying that you gave everything you could to be as successful as possible.”
Maguire isn’t the first Irish person to tweak their swing in the pursuit of prolonged success either.
“I think Padraig Harrington has gone down every rabbit hole to get everything out of his game, some of it has worked, some hasn’t but you need to do everything possible and he has had a long and successful career too and when you do some of the struggles and blips along the way don’t seem all that consequential in the end.”
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