Could there be a fairytale ending in Paris for Leona?

Preview

There aren’t many golfers who grew up dreaming of being Olympians. Major winners? Sure. Ryder and Solheim Cup stars? Definitely. But Olympic Medal winners? These are few and far between.

Not Leona Maguire, however. The Ballyconnell superstar was a budding swimmer before she ever got her hands on a set of golf clubs and although she made the difficult decision – and what a wise move that was –to trade the pool for the fairways, she’s set to become a three-time Olympian when the Women’s Golf Competition gets underway at Le Golf National on the Parisian outskirts today (Wednesday).

“You ask any young kid and they all know what a Gold medal in the Olympics means,” she said earlier this year.

“They grow up watching it on TV. I was big into swimming when I was younger, and I always wanted to be an Olympian. I thought I was going to be a swimmer; I didn’t think I was going to be a golfer!

“But I remember watching Sonia O’Sullivan in Sydney. I know exactly where I was when I saw Katie Taylor winning her gold medal in London. Those memories stay with you. For me the Olympics has always been a big thing. For some golfers, it isn’t but that’s a personal decision for some of them to make.”

When golf made its return as an Olympic sport after a 112-year hiatus in 2016, the reaction was mixed and the disparity between the men’s and women’s games arguably never more apparent as most of the elite players in the ultra-wealthy men’s game voted with their feet and gave Rio a miss whereas all the leading female qualifiers recognised that the value of gold, silver and bronze extended well beyond their monetary worth.

Maguire was still an amateur in 2016, torn between capitalising on her World Amateur Golf Rankings number one status and turning professional, or returning to Duke University in North Carolina and completing the final two years of her Psychology degree and it wasn’t until after she’d made her Olympic debut – finishing as the co-leading amateur – that she opted to complete her studies.

By the time the Tokyo 2020 Games – held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic – rolled around, she was an established LPGA Tour stalwart, was catapulting up the Rolex Women’s World Rankings, and was about to establish herself as a household name in the months following.

But there was something a little bittersweet about effectively competing for an Olympic medal behind closed doors, locked within your own bubble and unable to sample any of the atmosphere for which the Olympic Games have become famous.

This time, it’ll be different. This time, there’ll be huge crowds, this time there’ll be massive support for the Irish, and this time, she’ll be part of an Irish team that are already the most successful we’ve ever seen at an Olympic Games.

But Olympic medals are never easy to come by, and few sports are tougher to medal in than golf. All 60 competitors are capable of finding themselves standing on the podium at Le Golf National next Saturday, and there are 72 gruelling examinations to pass on a golf course where danger lurks everywhere.

Modest finishes, by her standards, of tied-21st and tied-23rd in her two Olympic Games to date may not have set the world alight, but the Leona Maguire that is preparing for her third tilt at an Olympic medal is a completely different animal to the one that we saw in Rio and in Tokyo.

She’s since become a two-time LPGA Tour winner, and recently became the first Irishwoman to win on the Ladies European Tour with a grandstand eagle-finish to win by one at London’s Centurion Golf Club.

She’s a two-time Solheim Cup player, winning both her singles matches and taking five-and-a-half from a possible eight points in her paired matches, helping Europe to only its second ever victory on US soil in 2021 and then retaining the cup in Spain last year.

All of these achievements were historic milestones for Irish women as Maguire blazed a trail into uncharted territories, which, combined with her then record-breaking spell as the number one ranked amateur in the world, showcased her penchant for making the impossible seem possible, to break new ground, and to boldly go where no Irish woman has gone before.

And since no Irish golfer, male or female, has yet taken their place on the Olympic podium, who better to push the boundaries further still and further cement her place in the nation’s hearts?

“Every single athlete that week wants to win a medal,” she admitted.

“You want to be standing on a podium with your green tracksuit on and hearing the national anthem and all that.

“Being Irish, we don’t typically have many medal winners, so it is a big achievement for anybody who manages to get one.”

Those comments may have proven a little premature as Daniel Wiffen, Rhys McClenaghan and Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan are all going home with the most prized medals of them all, Wiffen, Mona McSharry and Daire Lynch and Philip Doyle have all taken bronze, and Kellie Harrington, at the time of writing, is guaranteed silver at worst, but there are still plenty of medals up for grabs and with Maguire’s history of making history, who’d bet against her being the first Irish golfer to get a taste of Olympic success?

Since she was playing on the LPGA Tour in Canada on the weekend before last, she wasn’t able to attend the opening ceremony and cruise down the Seine along with some of her Irish teammates – something which was out of her control – but the closing ceremony takes place 24 hours after the completion of the Women’s Golf event and what a way it would be to close out the most memorable Games of a lifetime than with another Irish medal winner coronated in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower.

It’s a romantic notion, I’ll admit that, but where better than Paris for a fairytale ending?