Meath amateur Alex Maguire speaks to The 42 before he tees it up at the Open Championship tomorrow.
Meath-born amateur Alex Maguire went to the Open Championship last year as a fan, sleeping in the nearby tented village and watching Cam Smith break Rory McIlroy’s heart at St Andrew’s. Smith is now at Hoylake to defend the Claret Jug, McIlroy is the bookie’s favourite to wrestle it back, and Maguire is teeing it up.And as improbable a series of events this is, Maguire says he always believed qualification for the Open was attainable.
“I took that week off and it beat me in the ass when I was sat at home looking at the scores on the laptop, doing the calculations”, he says. “I had done all the calculations on my notepad and the calculations were that I won by two or three points, that’s what I was guessing. But the WAGR didn’t update, I still was in the dark.
“There are a lot of friends who are posting him pictures of tissues and Kleenex and all the things he will need for the week!” He was emotional. It’s the first time aside from speaking to his friends that he was saying those things to the public. It all got to him, and he said how proud he was that I am playing.
And so to the business of playing. The first few days after earning his invite were spent on the logistics of the thing – tickets, transport, and accommodation – and it was only on Monday that realisation of playing sunk in. Maguire and his caddie Jack McDonnell went hunting for his locker, assuming he would be between MACINTYRE, Bob and MATSUYAMA, Hideki. Nope.
“I didn’t speak to him for too long, but he was nice, he said, ‘Congratulations on qualifying, great job’: all the niceties you say when you’re meeting someone. It’s a strange life for him. Everywhere he goes everybody knows him and everyone is looking for him, so he has to keep his head down so he’s not being dragged into conversations he doesn’t want to be in. But when it was just me and him in the locker room, he knew I wasn’t going to disturb him and ask him for a picture.
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