<p>Leona Maguire. Picture: Tristan Jones/Ladies European Tour</p>
Golf is a numbers game and Leona Maguire, briefly a fixture inside the world's top 10, is thanking her lucky stars this week.
Just 0.04 ranking points separated the Co Cavan star from missing next week's US Women's Open entirely. But as Maguire knows better than most, numbers don’t always tell the full story.
This week, the 31-year-old returns to Seaview's Bay Course near New Jersey, the site of her LPGA debut eight years ago, where she tied for 15th. She’d ended 2017 as one the most decorated amateurs in the history of women's golf—132 weeks as world number one.
Now she arrives for the Shoprite LGA searching for something perhaps more elusive than that early promise: consistent form.
"It's tougher every year," Maguire told RTE's Greg Allen on the station's Game On programme recently. "You very much have to elevate your game every year, or you get left behind."
Five missed cuts in ten starts this season would suggest the struggle is very real.
But that’s not quite the full story.
She needed to remain in the top 75 in the world when the Rolex Women’s World Rankings were updated this week to qualify to join Olivia Mehaffey in the US Women’s Open at Riviera Country Club next week.
She fell two spots to 75th to make it on the qualifying cut off and while a second-place finish in April's Aramco Championship at Shadow Creek showed she remains a class act, it’s time now to show more consistency as the Major season looms.
After more than two decades with lifelong coach Shane O'Grady—the man who guided her to that world number one amateur ranking, to Duke University success, to the top 10 of the professional game—Maguire sought the counsel of Sean Foley, Tiger Woods' former coach.
"Shane's been a massive part of my journey all along the way, he always will be," Maguire said carefully, respectfully. "But I was sort of at a crossroads at the end of the year. Do I settle for finishing 40th or 50th on the money list week in, week out, or do I want to actually get back into the top 10?"
With the understanding that breaking eggs might be necessary to make this particular omelette, she’s patiently waiting for her swing changes to click.
Foley identified inefficiencies—a lack of width, insufficient turn, a ball flight too low for the firm, fast, lengthening courses the LPGA now routinely plays.
The early returns have been, as Maguire admits, mixed. She's hitting it longer—seven or eight yards added—and making more birdies. But the inconsistencies have also produced more dropped shots and more weekends off than she's accustomed to.
"He's seen tens of thousands of golf shots," Maguire said of Foley. "He knows the swing inside out. But at the same time, he can keep it simple. Ultimately, we still have to go out and compete. You're playing golf, not golf swing."
Woods, Nick Faldo, Pádraig Harrington and even Rory McIlroy have gone to new coaches in search of the next level and the hope is that the grit that Foley admires in Maguire will translate into results sooner rather than later.
"He walked around and watched a few holes," Maguire recalled. "I think he was amazed by some of the things I was able to do with hybrids and woods. That sort of grit and resilience, getting things up and down when things maybe weren't 100 per cent. That's a very Irish thing. Pádraig and Shane and Rory all have that as well."
The major season now looms. Riviera Country Club for the US Open—a new venue for the women's game, but one Maguire relishes and Hazeltine for the KPMG Women's PGA Championship, where she played on an invitation in 2019 — are courses that demand planning, discipline, and the ability to chip and putt under pressure.
"Major championships are always a bigger and better test," she said. "They test all aspects of your game."
When they began working together, Foley predicted it would be June before significant progress would show.
June has almost arrived and Maguire is hoping he’s right.
"Ultimately, when I walk away from my career," she said, "I want to know I've left no stone unturned."
Article Link: Leona Maguire: Breaking it down to build it up - News - Irish Golf Desk