Olympics opening falls flat for Meadow and Maguire

Maguire was one among a clutch of players to speak glowingly of the occasion and of the crowds that have descended on to the Le Golf National acreage.

TOUGH GOING: Leona Maguire of Team Ireland in action on the eighteenth green. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Stephanie Meadow had been buzzing for this. The Irishwoman was tasked with getting the women’s 2024 Olympic golf tournament underway on Wednesday morning and she would be sharing the honour with Perrine Delacour of France.

The home crowds have cheered every French athlete to the hilt here, regardless of sport or time of day. This 9am local tee-time was no different and Delacour emoted later about trying to hold back the tears as La Marseillaise rose up into the summer sky.

“Yeah, I got lucky to be able to hit the first tee shot at the Olympics in my home country,” she said later. “It was definitely a lot of emotion, and as you can see on the scorecard, I kind of left a lot of energy for the rest of the round.” 

The 30-year-old, drained or not by the enormity of the occasion, shot a seven-over par 79 to leave her 14 shots behind her countrywoman Celine Boutier whose 65 left her three strokes clear of Ashleigh Buhei of South Africa in second.

No-else broke 70.

Meadow was another for whom that first tee probably ranked as something of a highlight once the day was done. Her six-over par 78, containing seven bogeys and just the one birdie, leaves her playing for pride having finished seventh in Tokyo in 2021.

The birdie came at the last hole.

“It’s one of those courses that you’ve got to be in the short stuff and that hurt me today but I did some things well and hopefully I can take those positives into the next three days," Meadow said afterwards. “It was nice to finish there on 18 there with a birdie.

“It’s probably one of the most daunting second shots on a par five I’ve ever had, and only a five iron in my hand, so it was nice to pull that off. It’s golf right? It happens. It wasn’t my best stuff but I did have fun out there.” 

Meadow spoke about the joy in representing her country and seeing so much Irish green around a course where the crowds again came out in numbers after the men’s tournament last week, but joy probably isn’t a word Maguire was using at the first.

A double bogey to open her challenge was a disastrous start, two more bogeys followed on seven and eight and then she had to sign for an eight on the par-five ninth. And it got worse before it finally got better with three birdies at the end of the back nine.

All this on a course that GB’s Charley Hull described as “very scoreable”.

Then again, Hull shot an 81 and if any of those players needed a lesson in how to hold tight under pressure and turn a day around then it came from the USA’s world number one Nelly Korda who found herself three-over through seven.

Korda finished level-par. Not great but not disastrous given ten of the dozen players above her on the leaderboard after close of play on day one were within two strokes. There was no sense of panic, she said later, when the turn approached and her game wasn’t playing ball.

“No. I just got into the mindset of one shot at a time. I was just trying to figure out the basics of just hitting my shots. Yeah, the putting was… I was hitting them a little short, too, expecting a release from my longer irons.

“But they just weren't releasing either because they were much softer than what I was practicing yesterday. So overall, it just took a little bit to adjust but adjusted well on the back nine.” 

The two-time major winner was one among a clutch of players to speak glowingly of the occasion and of the crowds that have descended on to the Le Golf National acreage. She could only imagine what it had been like for Boutier as she climbed the ladder.

“Yeah, I saw the crowds for the men, and to see the similar crowds for the women is just kind of, for me, mind-blowing. I wasn't sure what to expect walking on to that first tee, and obviously my first view was the tee.

“Then I kind of looked out to the green and I just saw like four people deep and I told Jason [McDede, her caddie], I was like, ‘oh my gosh, this is absolutely amazing’. Like, I did not expect this many people to come out and support everyone out here.”