Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)
Some of you may have seen towards the tail end of last week that Lisa Maguire, twin sister of Leona Maguire, has decided to step away from the competitive side of professional golf and, instead, take up a position with ‘Modest! Golf’, the very management company she and Leona signed with back in 2018 upon turning professional.
Speaking about her decision in ‘Irish Golfer Magazine’ Lisa said:
“It’s not a decision that anyone wants to make. The way I looked at it, I like to give everything in my life 100% and I felt like I was giving 100% on the golf course and not getting the same in return, and as you can understand, that was incredibly frustrating.”
Now, since reading that article – and I’ll leave the link for it here – I’ve found that it’s really stuck with me. And the reason why I think it’s done that, is because I feel like I’ve been to the place where Lisa probably was when she realised this was the best decision for her.
See, we all have dreams growing up; those things we fantasize about becoming or doing when we’re older. For me, when I was a kid and well into my teens, all I wanted to be was a soccer player. When frustrating injuries at the exact worst times put paid to that dream, however, I decided to be realistic and focus on going to college to get a good degree – which I, then, duly did. Come the final few months of that course, though, I realised I wanted to try and give songwriting/singing a crack because, the way I saw it, I was only 21 and thought I could make a go of it.
Fast forward a few years, however, and, though I’d had dealings with different record labels, I finally came to the realisation that the music just wasn’t going to work out for me. Now, granted, I’d started getting into writing in the previous years as a hobby and had begun to see signs of promise with that, but I can still vividly remember the night I decided ‘enough was enough’ when it came to the music – or, at least, when it came to the idea of being an on-stage performer, at any rate.
And it sucked.
Because I’d put so much of myself into trying to achieve that goal, given it everything I had for four or five years, and yet, after all that, there I was after reaching a point where I was letting that dream go. It felt like I was quitting. It felt like all those years and all those late nights had been for nothing. It felt like I was saying, “You know what? You win. I’m not meant to do this.”
And whilst there’s no way of knowing for sure if that’s how Lisa was feeling when deliberating whether or not to step outside the ropes and, essentially, walk away from the very thing she had probably dreamed of becoming since she was a kid and spent fifteen years of her life pursuing, two things are for certain: one, the process through which she would have ended up coming to this decision would not have been an easy one; and, two, it’s an incredibly brave decision for her to make.
What’s of the utmost importance now, however, is that Lisa finds contentment in the choice that she’s made – because, ultimately, that’s all that matters for anyone. And by the sounds of it in that article, she’s excited at the prospect of diving head first into a new challenge and seeing where it takes her; and so she should be. Because, the fact is, she’s only 24 years old. She’s got plenty of time to try and find what it is that she wants to do. It might be something involving growing the ladies game, as she says herself, or, just as equally, there’s every chance that it could be something completely unrelated to golf. There’s just no knowing for sure – and that’s what’s exciting.
What I would say to her, though, if she was right here in front of me is to prepare herself for the possible irritating little pangs that might rear their heads every now and then over the next while. Because it’s one thing to walk away from a dream, but it’s another thing entirely to silence that part of your brain which wonders what could have been.
And, look, like I said, she’s only 24.
So if that voice wondering ‘what could have been’ gets loud enough, there’s nothing stopping her from getting back inside those ropes and trying to answer that question.
Because though this decision changes her occupation, it doesn’t change one very important fact:
That Lisa Maguire is still a bloody good golfer.