Meadow and Maguire seeks season-ending bonus in Florida
Stephanie Meadow. Picture: Philip Magowan / PressEye
Stephanie Meadow will crown her career-best LPGA Tour season at this week’s Tour Championship — just four years after fearing her career was over.
The Jordanstown star (28) is joined by rookie Leona Maguire (26) in a 72-strong field for the $3 million CME Group Tour Championship at Tiburón in Naples, Florida chasing a $1.1 million payday.
It’s all a massive contrast to her last visit to the Ritz-Carlton Resort in 2015 to pick up the Heather Farr Perseverance Award, just a few months after the death of her father Robert from pancreatic cancer.
She didn’t play for five weeks after losing her father, then suffered a stress fracture in her back, eventually slipping back to the second-tier Symetra Tour.
Leona Maguire
She won back her card in 2018 but only kept it by the skin of her teeth by finishing birdie-birdie in the last event last season before going on to bank $211,951 from 14 starts this year.
“Things have come a long way since then,” said 42nd-ranked Meadow of her father’s passing in 2015. “I thought about it today because I obviously stayed at the Ritz then.
"I was bummed to not be playing. I received such an amazing award, selected by peers. But in my heart, all I wanted to do was play. This is what I love to do, and it has always been my dream.
“There were definitely points in my career where I thought I was done - 2015 and 2016. I wasn’t in a good place mentally, so now to be in position where I’m playing, it hit me a little bit harder yesterday when I first walked on.
“I’m just proud of myself for sticking it out and excited to see what I can continue to do.”
It’s also been a memorable year for 59th-ranked Maguire who is one of just four rookies to qualify for the season-ending event after recording one top-10 and another four top-30 finishes from 13 starts.
There will be no Rookie of the Year title awarded this season because all 2020 rookies will be rookies in 2021 as the LPGA Tour retains all categories due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Nevertheless, the Slieve Russell National touring professional will be gunning for her first win.
She’s 64th in the money list with $172,258 and 59th in the Race to CME Globe standings, qualifying for Florida alongside fellow rookies Yealimi Noh (14th in CME Globe Points), Andrea Lee (50th) and Bianca Pagdanganan (65th).
“It’s a nice bonus to finish off the year so looking forward to hopefully finishing off the season strong,” said Leona, who leads the average number of putts per round statistics ahead of Inbee Park with 28.73.
“It’s my first time playing Tiburon, which is a very typical Florida style course. It has grainy greens and is similar to where we played the Second Stage of Q-School.”
In the Rolex Player of the Year race, Park leads by just six points from KPMG Women’s PGA champion Sei Young Kim with Danielle Kang third and Mirim Lee fourth.
The scenarios for Kim to make up the six-point difference and claim at least a share of Player of the Year honors require Kim to finish no worse than fifth this week in Naples.
If she finishes alone in fifth and Park finishes outside the top 10, the two players would tie and become co-Players of the Year, a scenario that has occurred one other time in history when So Yeon Ryu and Sung Hyun Park shared the award in 2017.
