Former Duke women’s golf star Leona Maguire nearly won her third LPGA Tour event over the weekend, coming up short in the title match at the T-Mobile Match Play on Sunday.
The Blue Devil unfortunately ran into a buzzsaw in the championship match at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. World No. 1 Nelly Korda defeated Maguire 4-and-3 for her fourth consecutive victory and the 12th LPGA title of her career.
Maguire, 29, played for Duke from 2015 to 2018, and she became one of the most decorated amateur golfers of all time. She won the ANNIKA Award, given to the best women’s collegiate golfer in the country, in both 2015 and 2017, one of just three players to win the award twice. Maguire spent 135 weeks atop the World Amateur Golf Rankings, the second-most in the history of the women’s rankings. Golfweek declared her the best women’s collegiate golfer of the decade in 2019.
Now up to 23rd in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, Maguire’s professional career has come into its own over the past two years. She broke through for her maiden title at the 2022 LPGA Drive On Championship before winning her second at the 2023 Meijer LPGA Classic last June. She’s finished inside the top ten at three majors since the summer of 2021, and she spent two weeks inside the top 10 in the world rankings last summer.
Sunday was Maguire’s third top-13 finish in seven LPGA Tour starts this season, promising form with the first women’s major two weeks away.