Mary Doyle, 18, is the Irish Ladies’ Golf Champion. She is starting her Leaving Cert exams today. She lives in Clonad, near Portlaoise, Co. Laois with her parents and younger brother.
I’m one of the few students sitting their Leaving Cert English Paper 1 today already knowing where I’ll be in September. Whatever way my results go, I have a scholarship to a university in North Carolina in the US to play golf for the next four years — but that doesn’t mean I’ll be any less nervous this morning!
For the past few months I’ve been trying to balance study with golf practice. Despite already having my place at college, I really want to do well in the Leaving so I’ve been staying in school after class with my head in the books.
I won’t finish my exams until my last paper — Agricultural Science on June 18 — which seems very far away right now.
I’ll be so relieved when it’s over — when it’s all over — and my life can just get back to being about my golf and my golfing future.
When I was 12 years old my dad brought me to a golf course for the first time to mess around a bit, but I loved it.
I have played pretty much every game and continued to play basketball, soccer and every other sport on offer in my early teens.
What makes golf different is that it is all down to me.
How I do and the final result is all in my hands and I like that.
I have always wanted to be in control in games, I hate relying on other people to score that goal or make that tackle. Going solo suited me.
I quickly got noticed and started competing in regional competitions before moving up the chain to compete nationally and abroad.
I’ve played golf all over Europe at this stage, in Portugal, France and Scotland for instance.
I’m the current Irish Ladies’ Golf Champion and I hope to hang on to that title if I can!
As Golf gripped me, I adjusted my secondary school life to suit. For the last while I’ve been getting up extra early most days — at about 6.30am each day — to go to the gym and train before I go to school.
It’s extremely important to be strong and fit in golf. I’ve been working on my cardio and strength training quite a lot recently, before getting ready, putting on my uniform and sitting down to a breakfast of eggs.
I’m getting better at looking after my nutrition but I’m still a bit addicted to sweets. When I’m playing a tournament I have the willpower to stay away from bread, sugar and anything else that might make me sluggish or result in an energy slump, but I slip back into bad habits the rest of the time.
In my two breaks at school, I try most days to stick to healthy snacks such as rice cakes with peanut butter.
I’ll have a chicken salad for lunch and before study period in the evening, I always have a glutenfree cereal bar to get me through to dinner.
After school, it has been all about practice. Most evenings I manage to get in at least two hours.
The past few months have been difficult in some ways because I injured my back and so I had to go back to the drawing board and re-work my swing it ensure that wasn’t going to be an ongoing problem. I got there though.
More million golf manufactured every Right now, I play ‘off scratch’, which means I have a handicap of zero. But I have done better and I hope to be back to playing off plus one again soon.
Of course I have made sacrifices and there are typical teenage things I’ve missed out on over the past couple of years in particular as I have become more and more serious about my golf.
My friends have been a bit cross with me at times because I haven’t made it to lots of parties and sleepovers or to big events like Electric Picnic.
In regular life though, nobody at school or anywhere else has made a big deal out of what’s going on with me and golf. We just talk about normal things though there is some common ground, like Rory McIlroy — my non-golfing friends love him almost as much as I do.
Rory and Jordan Spieth, who won the US Masters this year, are my golf idols.
I haven’t met either of them yet, but I have met Darren Clarke three times and he was really lovely.
My sportswoman idol is definitely Katie Taylor. She’s really inspiring and so focused on being the best. I think she’s just brilliant.
My dinner time depends on my training each evening, but I’m lucky because my mam will have cooked something for me so I don’t have to worry about that.
She’s a great cook. She’ll serve up chicken or fish with sweet potato or rice most of the time, she also does a great lasagne too.
A few months ago now I got invited over to this university in North Carolina.
I was absolutely thrilled when I read that email. It’s known by everyone that talent scouts from American colleges come to Europe to find young golfers who they might be able to poach for their teams and it is an amazing opportunity.
How I’ll play golf all over the States for the next four years — while also doing some study, of course — and then my real ambition is to turn pro.
Women’s golf is getting bigger and bigger, so I think that’s a realistic ambition at this stage.
I haven’t thought too much about actually heading off to America on my own.
I suppose it’s a pretty big deal but I’ve had to go away without my parents a few times already — to play in various tournaments — so I’ve become used to landing in new places on my own.
It probably wasn’t what my dad had in mind when he brought myself and my brother to the golf course that day to mess about, and I’ll miss my family loads.
But Skype will help us to keep in touch and I’ll make them proud over there.
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