'Pride on the line' for Leona as Solheim Cup revs up

Interview

PAUL FITZPATRICK caught up with Leona Maguire ahead of her debut in the Solheim Cup this week.

Some rest and recovery at home in west Cavan may have seemed like just the tonic after a hectic few months of competition on both sides of the Atlantic but for Leona Maguire, it didn’t work out exactly as planned.

Not that the Ballyconnell woman was complaining. When the Celt caught up with her last Sunday afternoon, she was preparing to catch a flight the next morning back to the States to link up with the rest of the European Solheim Cup squad for the 17th renewal of that competition.

When her schedule allows it, Leona returns home as often as possible but the announcement that she had made the cut for the Solheim – making history as the first Irish player to do so – was a massive story and she soon found herself inundated with media requests.

Still, it was a nice problem to have and just something that comes with the territory. Up to 43rd in the world rankings, her game is trending in one direction only and it seems just a matter of time before she gate-crashes the top 20 and secures her first win on the LPGA Tour. Leona is now a household name in Ireland; her profile has grown exponentially in recent years and her record-equalling round of 61 at the Evian Championship (a Major) generated headlines around the world.

It’s not in her nature to get carried away, though. She takes it in her stride. The nature of her career – tournament after tournament, week on week almost – demands that she must be able to ignore the noise and zone in on the next challenge.

“This week was definitely really busy. It was nice that after the Evian there wasn’t too much of a fuss because the Olympics had already started, I think everybody’s attention had switched to that. We went straight from Evian to Tokyo and from there to the Scottish and British,” she said.

“I suppose that’s the nice thing with golf, you don’t really have too much time to dwell on the real highs or the real lows, because you have to reset and go again and go again, which I quite like. It’s a long season so you can’t really ride the rollercoaster like that, you have to take each week as it comes.

“That’s the thing with pro golf, there are different demands on your time, whether it’s pro-ams or media stuff or corporate days or things like that, it’s just a case of managing my time and making sure I have enough time to get my practice in and my rest and recovery and all those other commitments as well that goes along with it.”

While, on the face of it, hers seems to be a dream job – have clubs, will travel to the best courses in the world – it is hard work too. When she’s not competing or fine-tuning, putting in the hours on the range or the practice green, she rests up and conserves energy. There is not much room for distractions in the pursuit of excellence at the highest level and Covid has complicated that further.

“Hobbies? None particularly!” she laughed.

“I suppose getting as much rest in as possible is a big thing. Taking time away from the golf course to unwind. I’ve always had a great interest in sport so I keep up with things like that. It will be nice when things open up again to be able to go to things but at the minute, I’ve had to be so careful, even when I’m home, I’m not seeing too many people or doing too many things or going anywhere just in case.

“I’m keeping the bubble quite small just to make sure everything keeps ticking over till things settle down a little bit. It’s a case of more going for walks and keeping things quite contained at the minute really.”

Maguire’s focus is such that she didn’t entertain thoughts of making the Solheim Cup team, despite fairly intense speculation in the media that her form would secure her a wild card selection. Having only been competing on tour for 18 months, her ranking, while improving rapidly, was not really commensurate with her standing in the game so the wild card route was always going to be her best shot.

All she could do, she says, is play as well as she could, every time she took to the course. Simple, really.

“It was something that was in the back of my head I suppose. At the start of the year it wasn’t really on the radar, I was quite a bit off on the rankings and all of that but it was something that people mentioned to me from time to time. But I adopted the attitude that the better I played in each individual event, the better chance I had.

“There was really no point worrying about it until I had played myself into a position where it was actually possible. And then at that stage I was playing well and playing consistently so it wasn’t something I needed to worry about by then either, so it kind of looked after itself quite nicely without me having to think about it too much.”

Having experienced team golf as an amateur in the likes of the Junior Solheim and Curtis Cup as well as college events, Leona is a fan of the format anyway. The added spice of Europe versus the USA adds to the buzz.

“It’s just a different dynamic to what you have every other week. There’s pride on the line as well and that’s a big part of it too, it only happens every two years, to try and bring the cup back this side of the Atlantic.

“Obviously there is a long history to the event and everything that goes with it. We don’t get to play team golf very much at all, we don’t get to play match-play that often either. I think it’s just a fun week in that regard, it’s different to every other week of the year, going from place to place.

“It’s a nice change and a nice dynamic I suppose.”

Leona’s surge up the rankings cannot be attributed to any one area. Her putting was the best on tour last year and while she did focus on strength and conditioning to add more length off the tee, there has been more to it than just that.

“I think it’s been a combination of a lot of different factors. I think that was one piece, yeah, it gave me that little bit of extra control going into the greens as well.

“Shane and I worked a lot of on my iron play at the end of last year as well, we switched my irons and changed back to the same golf ball I used in college. There were a lot of sort of minor tweaks that all added up to something a bit bigger.

“We did it in a quiet, controlled way, we made little changes rather than anything too drastic. They all complemented each other quite nicely. The big thing was getting the consistency back, I didn’t feel I was as consistent last year right throughout my bag as maybe I would have liked or I had been in college in the amateur game.

“That’s why I was so successful in college, the consistency of my play and my game so it was about getting back to those fundamentals of what I did really, really well there and then try to move everything up a notch and get that consistency with it.”

It wasn’t that her form deserted her anything of the sort but she wanted more stability. In that regard, the shortened rookie season she enjoyed was a help as it gave her a foundation and a taste of what life on tour could throw at her. This year, then, she was ready to dive right in.

“It’s one of those things, obviously there’s always a jump any time you move up a level in anything. Going from junior golf to senior golf and then up to college golf and up through the amataeur game, there’s always levels and pro golf is another level then.

“Getting used to the golf courses, getting used to how the events work and making cuts and all the different things that go along with it. So it was nice last year, even if it was only half a year, to have that chance to sort of find my feet a little bit and figure out how things work.

“And then me and my team sat down at the end of last year and assessed how everything went, what went well and what needed improvement to hit the ground running for this year.”

Tinkering with swings and equipment is a delicate business. Changes take time to bed in; sometimes they can go wrong, with disastrous consequences. Leona’s approach was to be cautious but open to trying new things, too. With such a packed schedule of events, there is no room for error anyway.

“That’s the nature of golf. The season is so long and the events sort of run into each other so much that you can’t really make too many drastic changes. You kind of have to just do it incrementally, little by little, and I suppose that’s something I’ve done throughout my whole career, everything has been quite meticulous, quite planned and, yeah, that’s just what works for me.

“Knowing that there’s a plan and sticking with it – sometimes, things click together quicker than you might think and sometimes they just take that bit longer and it’s having that trust in that plan, that what I’m doing’s working and just sort of being patient till it all comes together.”

Her remarkable run of form recently, contending several times and rarely out of the top 20, is all the more noteworthy given that she is almost alone out there due to the pandemic. Her coach, Shane O’Grady, is based at home and much of their work together has been done remotely. Attendance at events has been greatly reduced and Leona does not have an entourage. It’s herself and caddy Dermot Byrne, taking on the world.

“With Covid, everything is quite scaled back, in terms of going to each event, it’s just me and my caddy, Dermot. Lisa was out at a few of the events in the summer.

“My coach Shane is back in Dunshaughlin, in Black Bush. Everything is over Zoom or Whatsapp, sending videos back and forth and checking in that way. No-one really is on-site at the tournament apart from me and Dermot so I have to be quite independent myself and know my routines and my processes and what I need to stick to when I’m at those events.

“And if something does go a little bit off or whatever, I report back to Shane and the rest of the team and we kind of figure out together what’s going on. I suppose that’s been the nice thing for him, the better I do, the more I get on telly and he can keep an eye on it from afar.

“There are certain things maybe he can notice that I’m doing, maybe take a screenshot of it or record it or whatever and send it back to me if there’s something that needs a bit of attention.”

Life on the road can be tough. While golf has taken Leona all over the world and brought her experiences money could not buy, Cavan is still home. She’s a sports fan and missed Cavan’s Ulster final last November, but her Dad Declan kept her up to speed.

“I was gone back to the States. Dad was keeping me updated as he usually does with every score and the pre and the during and the post-match analysis!” she laughed.

When there is no tournament, she stays at Lake Nona in Florida.

“I go to Orlando when I have weeks off. If it’s too quick of a turnaround to come home, I’ll go to Orlando and practise there and the same in the winter time, in January, February when the weather is not too kind to golfers back here.

“I’ll stop off there throughout the season and then where there are longer breaks, maybe two weeks off, I’ll come home then. Things are starting to go back to normal a little bit more, last year I didn’t come home at all really because I didn’t want to risk flying too much but it’s getting a little easier now.”

This week, there is no time for a stop-off. It’s straight to Toledo. Strictly business.

“We go straight into Solheim Cup, the team is meeting up tomorrow evening, Tuesday morning kind of thing. The team is a bit scattered at the moment, some of us are in Europe, some are already gone back to the States after the British last week.

“We all fly in tomorrow at some point and then everything kicks off Tuesday.”

All in a week’s work for this modest superstar.