Maguire Sisters’ Winding Irish Road To Success

It was back in May 2009 that I flew over to Ireland to watch the then 15-year-old Maguire twins, Lisa and Leona, playing in the Irish Ladies Close Championship at Fota and ended up having a unique little insight into what would happen in the world of Irish golf 12 years on.

Lisa did as Leona had done the previous year before in winning the Irish Close. And on the Sunday evening, I was waiting for the Cork-Edinburgh flight when I noticed that everyone in that little airport had gathered around a television to watch the golf.

The golf on TV had nothing to do with the remarkable twins. Instead, it was all about the then 22-year-old Shane Lowry who was playing in the final round of the Irish Open at Baltray. Though still an amateur, he was on his way to winning that event from a strong professional contingent. No-one in the airport seemed to be taking any notice of the airport’s loud-speaker calls and, Ireland being the golf-mad country that it is, the suspicion is that the pilots, too, had found something which mattered rather more tha...