The sprinkling of stardust at the KPMG Irish Open grows heavier. It is fair to say the tournament – which last year was acclaimed as the best on the Ladies European Tour (LET) – punches above its weight.
This latest edition again has Leona Maguire as the headline act, with a supporting cast including Solheim Cup players and Major winners.
Anna Nordqvist, Charley Hull, Madelene Sagstrom and Georgia Hall are among those Solheim Cup teammates of Maguire’s providing star appeal. Lottie Woad, the world amateur number one, is playing on a sponsor’s invitation in the tournament, which has a €450,000 purse. The O’Meara Course at Carton House, Co Kildare, is a worthy setting.
Of the 132 players in the field, a record 16 – seven professional and nine amateurs – are Irish. It is, in many ways, a reflection of Maguire’s pioneering impact. She has created history by becoming the first Irish player to win on the LPGA Tour and also on the LET. Now, a queue of players are keen to follow in her footsteps.
So far, an Irish Open has proven beyond Maguire’s reach.
“It’s always one of my favourite events of the year,” said Maguire. “I feel like I have some good momentum heading into this week.”
She is back on home soil after a stretch of events in the United States that, after a rough few weeks, brought improvements with back-to-back top-20s in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and the Dow Championship.
Those encouraging performances came after four missed cuts, but the 30-year-old Cavan woman wasn’t letting the bad run get on top of her.
“I wasn’t very concerned; I knew I’d been playing well,“ she said. ”The LPGA [Tour] is very competitive. It’s probably the most competitive it’s ever been. And I felt like I actually played some good golf and just wasn’t quite showing up as a scorecard, just tiny little things. It wasn’t any major issue.
“That’s the nice thing with golf. It’s sometimes not as far away as you think it is, or it looks like from the outside. No matter if it’s going well or not going well, you kind of have to stick to the same process, same routines. Trusting that the team behind the scenes have planned everything out, that we’re working on the right things, are working in the right direction, even if the results sometimes don’t quite click as fast as you’d like.”
The days of Maguire appearing to carry the entire weight of home expectations into this tournament have passed. The arrival of Lauren Walsh, Anna Foster, Sara Byrne and Annabel Wilson into the professional ranks has helped grow interest in the sport. All of them are performing strongly on the LET after also emerging through the US collegiate ranks and Golf Ireland team programmes.
Byrne was a standout Curtis Cup player on last year’s winning Great Britain and Ireland team against the United States before winning her LET card at Q-School. She has been named in one of the marquee groups for the opening two rounds alongside English duo Hull and Hall.
Foster, the 23-year-old Dubliner, comes in on the back of a career-best fourth-place finish in the German Masters. She identified her ball-striking as a strength in her aim to make an impact with the benefit of home support.
She said: “In general, I’d say ball striking, being able to get it in play and find fairways and greens . . . that would be my strongest point. I can always fall back on that. Since turning pro I’ve been trying to work on my short game a lot and working on my mental game – probably the most important at this level. Everyone is really good at golf, at the same high standard. It is finding these tiny things each week that might give you an edge.”
Walsh, of all, is the player probably most familiar with the O’Meara course as she is the touring professional at Carton House and will also have strong Kildare support from her home club Castlewarden.
The seven Irish professionals competing are Maguire, Walsh, Foster, Byrne, Wilson, Canice Screene and Olivia Mehaffey. The nine Irish amateurs are Beth Coulter, Áine Donegan, Olivia Costello, Anna Dawson, Emma Fleming, Rebekah Gardner, Róisín Scanlon, Anna Abom and Marina Joyce Moreno.
