It’s a bleak outlook for the Irish as Stephanie Meadow and Leona Maguire lie tied 52nd and tied 57th respectively after round two of the Olympic women’s golf competition in Paris.
Both players got off to rough starts as they shot matching six-over 78s on day one, and Meadow can at least take comfort in the fact that she knocked five strokes off that tally on day two, twice getting into red figures for the day before dropping shots at the following hole. A run of four consecutive bogeys on the back nine did the damage, and despite clawing another shot back thanks to a holed 35-foot putt on 15, her round of +2 leaves her on +8 for the tournament with 36 holes to go.
Maguire entered the week with high hopes of being the first Irish golfer to stand on an Olympic podium, but her Olympic dream has turned into an Olympic nightmare as she only managed a single birdie in round two and closed out with a quadruple bogey nine that included two trips to the water as she carded a spirit-crushing 79 to reach the clubhouse at +13, 21 shots off the lead.
Switzerland’s Morgane Metraux charged out of the gates on Thursday at Le Golf National, recording an Olympic nine-hole record of an eight-under 28 and hung on through a bumpy two-under back nine to seize the lead after round two.
After starting her day with a birdie at the first, the 27-year-old Metraux went on a tear, starting with an eagle at the par-5 third and then reeling off three straight birdies on Nos. 4-6. She capped her front nine with her second eagle of the day, dropping a putt from 15 feet, 7 inches to turn in 28 and record the best nine-hole score in both the men’s and women’s Olympic golf competitions to date.
“The difference between yesterday and today at the beginning is just the putts that fell,” said Metraux, whose previous best nine-hole score had been a front-nine 30 that came during the first round of the 2023 Walmart NW Arkansas Championship presented by P&G. “It just brought me confidence going forward and just tried to stay as present as I could and one shot at a time. It went pretty well.”
The momentum slowed on the back with a bogey-birdie-bogey stretch over holes 13 through 15, and she found the water with her second shot while trying to go for the green in two on the par-5 18th to finish with a bogey.
Metraux, winner of two Ladies European Tour titles, including the 2024 the Jabra Ladies Open in Evian-les-Bains, France, holds a narrow one-stroke lead over China’s Ruoning Yin, who carded the round of the day with a bogey-free, 7-under 65. Two-time Olympic medalist and defending bronze medalist Lydia Ko (72-67) of New Zealand vaulted up the leaderboard and stands third.
Also posting a notable second round was Slovenia’s Pia Babnik, who carded a 6-under 66 that featured a run of five straight birdies on Nos. 12-16. Babnik, who opened with a 2-over 74 in Round 1, improved 26 spots on the leaderboard and currently sits in a tie for fourth.
First-round leader and Frenchwoman Celine Boutier, who opened with a 7-under 75 on Wednesday, struggled to a 4-over 76 in Round 2. She suffered a particularly rough stretch on the back nine, making double bogey at 13, bogey at 14 and double at 15. Defending gold medalist Nelly Korda had eventful final stretch en route to her second-round 70, making birdie at 15, quadruple bogey at 16, bogey at 17 and birdie at 18.