It's a huge day for women's sport in Ireland but one of the most unexpected breakthroughs has come at Pebble Beach, along the Pacific Coast Highway, as Clare golfer Aine Donegan has surged into early contention in the first round of the US Open.
The 21-year-old amateur, who plays out of Lahinch Golf Club and is a student at Louisiana State University, only qualified for the US Open last month but lead the tournament on her back nine and wakes up today in a share of third place, after shooting a three-under par round of 69.
She's joined on three-under by compatriot Leona Maguire.
Donegan's stellar round included five birdies and an eagle.
The brilliant first round is even more astounding in light of the damage inflicted on her golf clubs on her flight to Pebble Beach.
Donegan tweeted at United Airlines on Tuesday to inform the airline that her driver had been destroyed after her flight.
@united I am not happy with you. My clubs finally arrived to Pebble Beach for the @uswomensopen and my driver is destroyed pic.twitter.com/hF0kwMK7oz
— aine donegan (@DoneganAine) July 4, 2023
Here's how Donegan explained the issue after her round.
I had a team event last week in Scotland for Great Britain and Ireland, so I flew from Scotland on Sunday morning at about 4:00 a.m. from Scotland to Dublin and Dublin to Newark, and then Newark to San Francisco. When I arrived in San Francisco the clubs hadn't arrived.
We were traveling at least 30 hours by then. So they told us at the airport they're going to come the next day and they didn't end up coming, so I send a tweet out and made a few headlines. Eventually they have arrived, but I played my first practice round with Ping clubs. Scott from Ping helped me out.
So full Ping set. I play Ping irons, and so that helped anyway. That particular practice round I started to hit the driver really well and I said it to my caddie, who's also my coach, Gary, I said, I might change to this driver for the week.
He said, you know, we're going to have a bit of a dilemma when your clubs do arrive. Anyway, the clubs arrive the next day, I think on Tuesday, and my driver is smashed, completely smashed.
At least it stopped us thinking oh, which driver we'll use. We had only one choice then.
So I put that in. Honestly I am delighted I did. It's like everything happens for a reason, that the clubs were late and then the driver came and it was broken and all of a sudden I have no choice but to put this Ping driver in.
But the driver issues did not impact the Clare golfer as she was rock solid throughout the opening round on one of the world's most famous golf courses.
Donegan grew up not far from the Woodstock Golf Club in Ennis and has just completed her sophomore year at LSU and won second team All-SEC honours from a strong season on the bayou.
She arrived in the tournament almost by chance. She told RTÉ that she was convinced to play in a qualifier by fellow Irish golfer Anna Foster.
We just said we'd go out and play for a bit of fun. And we were in San Francisco. We got to go around and see the usual, see the Golden Gate Bridge and all that, downtown. We actually played TPC Harding two days before the event started with her uncle and another guy from Ireland - there's loads of Irish in San Francisco."
One month later, Donegan found herself atop the leaderboard in the US Open. We'll see where the weekend goes from here..
