Move to the pro ranks a question of time for Leona Maguire

They have largely gone through their golfing lives as one, referred to as the twins, answering with 'we'. It has always been that way with Leona and Lisa Maguire. Two become one. One becomes part of the other. 'I' is cast out and 'we' takes over, steers conversations and keeps life away from a confusion of explanations.

In a golfing world that has hurried along for them and constantly exposes both to new people and experiences, the ‘we’ might deny them a personal identity, blend them into one amorphous, foolishly talented Maguire. But it works just fine.

Lately, though, the ‘we’ has become ‘I’. Lisa and Leona, on scholarship in Duke College, USA, have slowly begun to un-splice, diverge.

“I think we are still as close as we were at school,” says Leona. “Both of us play together like we had been doing at home. It brings you on. That has helped in the transition of going over there.

“She’s been struggling a bit at the moment, so it would be nice to see her come back to give me a run.”

There’s more certainty than hope in her words.

Leona smiles, mildly amused and a little uncomfortable; she’s lightly built and compact. Measured and with some of the self -awareness she possessed as a teenager, her nearest rival and sibling is her closet friend. The stick to beat her, the carrot to encourage her, the soft shoulder is Lisa.

Despite continuing in the “we’’ mode, Leona is striking out. On the cusp of turning professional after an amateur career that is pock-marked with breathless achievement, she realises careers take different paths and accelerate at different speeds. That her sister is now behind, where once she was the leading player, will right itself. An identical twin should know.

“As sisters they will always be close,” says their mother, Breda. “But that doesn’t mean they will always be together.”

Turn professional

“In their amateur career Lisa was probably a bit ahead of Leona. That has turned now. Lisa’s dream is not that she wants to beat Leona but she wants to get back into that place again.

“Leona is the younger sister by 15 minutes. Every year since they were in school people have asked when they would turn professional. When Leona played Curtis cup at 17-years-old, people thought then was the right time. What more?”

Parents Declan and Breda, both teachers, believed then that education and golf handicaps were on an equal footing. Curtis Cup or not, the teenagers stayed in school and hit the books.

“They did Transition Year, went to America, played in Europe then they took a gap year and did a little bit more golf and then went back to do their Leaving Cert,” says Breda. “They would both be very good academically.””

Leona earned 615 points, Lisa 600. But they didn’t want academia. They wanted golf and to play professionally. Now Leona has raced to launch point in to the professional game.

For her the “we’’ has become “I’’ faster than expected. She crushed the golfing records in Duke and in her first year there was voted the best college player in the United States. Warned that it would take a year, maybe two years to adjust from provincial Cavan to the dog eat dog of college golf, she not so much assimilated quickly as shot across the horizon in a vapour trail of wins, top-five finishes and shooting rounds in the 60s.

Earlier this year she became the best amateur golfer in the world, a position current world number one New Zealander, Lydia Ko, held two years ago. Her scholarship at Duke was for four years. Leona needed only one to convert a precocious amateur career of simmering achievement into one robust enough to face hardened tour professionals.

At the beginning of July she went to Buckinghamshire to play as an amateur in the European Ladies Masters. It was, she says, to road test her game against top players on the professional circuit. A 15-foot putt on the 18th that slipped right denied her a playoff with Californian professional Beth Allen.

Leona finished second with rounds of 69, 70, 69, 69, her €45,000 prize money, which she could not accept as an amateur, falling to third-placed Thai professional, Nontaya Srisawang. Laura Davies was tied seventh. Gwladys Nocera, who currently leads the professional European Order of merit, 13th.

“Yeah, it was a great experience,” says Leona. “I’d played in a few Irish Opens in Killeen a few years ago but that was the first I’d played in a while. It was great to test my game against the pros. I’d been doing well at amateur but it’s good to compare with professionals in what was one of the bigger events.

“Pretty much all the big names were there, so it’s nice to have that confidence to know that you can play with the best of them. If a few putts had dropped here or there it would have been a completely different week. I wasn’t playing as well as I sometimes do out in America.

“But it was great to know that I have another level that I can go to. A huge confidence boost for me to know the gap between the top amateur and pro isn’t maybe what people think.”

It probably IS what people think. Had she been born in the USA, she would have been burdened with the ‘Phenom Leona’ tag from the moment her career defied convention at 11-years-old, when she came joint third in the under-12 World Golf Championship at Pinehurst, North Carolina. Her twin Lisa beat more than 800 competitors to win it.

Trophies fell

The following year, 2007, Leona won the U-16 Scottish Open. But 2008 was bigger. At 13-years-old the French Under-18 International title fell to her and she finished runner-up to Lisa in the European Young Masters at Chantilly. Both were picked for the European Junior Ryder Cup Team.

The years turned and trophies fell. In 2011 she won the Portuguese Ladies Amateur Open by 15 strokes and the British Ladies’ Open Strokeplay Championship by six shots, the youngest, at 16-years-old to win the event.

In 2012 she was part of the Great Britain and Ireland Curtis Cup team which defeated the USA and in June she won the Irish Women’s Close Amateur Championship for the second time in her career.

In 2014 she left Ballyconnell, Ireland and Europe spread-eagled with 20 titles and two Curtis Cup team picks.

“It helps that Lisa is at Duke too,” says Leona. “Being from such a small town where everybody knows everybody, people wishing you well and knowing what’s going...you miss that sense of community.

“It’s a different form of life being a professional, travelling from week to week going from country to country with Pro-Ams and media obligations. But college life in the States prepares you for that, being on the road, travelling to different courses, getting used to different grasses and having to adjust to different climates.

“Many of the courses we played would have hosted Tour events. We played in Sedgefield Country Club, Concession down in Florida, Reunion and East Lake Country Club in Georgia where they play the Tour Championships. So we get to play in big golf courses. It gives you a glimpse of what tour life might be.

“And obviously strokeplay. Growing up in Europe there was a lot of match play events. Sometimes top amateurs struggle to make the transition.”

Breda says Leona is quiet and unassuming, a calm personality. She says that watching her on the golf course, the poker face never falls. Her set expression is unreadable whether she’s at 10 over or 10 under par,”she says.

This past week was one that set her a test at Irvine Golf Club. The bad day, a perfect storm. Leona shot a four over par 78 in a one round shoot-out for qualification into this weekend’s Ladies British Open at Turnberry.

Road test

The round left her far outside the top 12 players who qualified and denied her the chance of another road test against Park, Ko, Kim or Feng, the Americans Lexi Thompson, Lincocome, Wie and Pressel or the Europeans, Pettersen and Munoz.

“She’s confident in herself,” says Breda. “She knows she can have a bad day and understands it’s no more than that. She’s self -assured. She sets goals for herself and will work extremely hard to achieve them.

That attitude, she says, is how Leona got her high points total in the Leaving Cert because whatever she does, she does it without wavering.

She commits to what she believes in and if she doesn’t believe she won’t do it.

“Probably the goal in going to America was not to get a qualification. It was to play golf,” says Breda. “To be a professional golfer has been the dream from early teens. Watching from a distance it looks like a fairytale. And yes it is. It’s her dream. It is the fairy tale.

“She feels now she is at the stage where she can start living the dream. Competing at the highest level in America, in college golf, gave her the affirmation that she is able to play at that level.

“Doing so well in Buckinghamshire at the European Masters, that just reinforced what she was thinking. She’s ready for whatever. Now, it’s a case of putting everything in the background in place, seeing what offers are there and to weigh that up.”

Turnberry is a slap more than a serious knock back and while it might be a new experience, especially on the cusp of change and professional ambition, the brilliance of her amateur career will bring more opportunity. She knows it.

“You need to test your game so that when you get out there you know where it is at,” says Leona. “I’d be in the Evian Championship in France in September so I have a few different chances to test myself against pros.

“Everybody can hit the ball and everybody can chip and putt but sometimes in situations it comes down to who can hold their nerve or who can stay calm to make their decisions.

“Yeah, I want to turn pro. That’s been the dream for a long time now to get out on the LPGA and play golf over there. Pressure . . . . Not really. Everybody keeps saying it. I’m going to keep playing away. I’ve never been one to look at the rankings and even when I got to number one I wasn’t checking. I only knew when I got a text . . .

“You cannot rest,” she adds. “There is always someone coming along to work as hard as you.”

But it is Leona Maguire, who is coming along. She winces at the suggestion, can't contain the smile.

“Yeah,” she says looking down.

The others you mention are all looking at Leona. “Yeah,” she says again.

At the European Masters those looking back were professional players. “Yeah,” she says for a third time. No elaboration, her claim on humility as far-reaching as that on the amateur record books.

British Open qualification (18 holes) aside, her last seven stroke play competitions have ended 1st, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 1st and 2nd. Her stroke average of 70.78 was the best in the history of Duke and helped her win the 2015 Annika Award for the best golfer of the year in American colleges.

In place

The numbers have tumbled her way. They usually have.

“To do as well as she has done in America . . . ...as a Fresher,” says Breda. “It’s hugely important that she’s comfortable and feels ready, which isn’t very far away in her own mind.

“It’s important when she starts out on a pro career everything is in place so that she has no worries and can go off and play her golf. We feel that is not very far away.

“People had been saying don’t worry if your golf doesn’t take off straight away, there will be a settling-in period. It may take a year or two years. Leona has just taken it in her stride. As a parent that lets me see she’s okay.”

Not unlike boxer Katie Taylor there's shyness and a lack of conceit in Leona, a modest physical figure who is self-contained and who appears durable and, while wary of cameras and microphones, fearless.

“You can’t just turn pro and off you go,” she warns. “I don’t have an agent, no. I’m not ruling anything out, no. I have options, yes.”

The “we’’ becomes “I”. Her life is changing with her sister always at her shoulder, twins feeding off each other. Leona and Lisa.