Leona Maguire goes into matchplay weekend with top billing in Las ...

Leona Maguire plays a shot on the fourth hole during day three of the T-Mobile Match Play at Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images

Leona Maguire won the tournament within the tournament when she led the 54-hole strokeplay qualifying of the T-Mobile Matchplay Championship at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, and will aim to carry that momentum on to the knock-out phase where the Cavan golfer faces Thailand’s Moriya Jutanugarn in the quarter-finals on Saturday.

A third-round 69 for a total of six-under-par 210 gave Maguire a three-stroke margin over the trio of Rose Zhang, Angel Yin and Minami Katsu following the strokeplay, but all those scores are binned headed into the matchplay element of the innovative tournament on the LPGA Tour.

Maguire described heading the qualifiers as a “big mental win” in difficult, windy conditions with firm greens, where her patience on shot execution stood to her.

“It was so challenging and swirly and the winds and stuff, you couldn’t really get too far ahead or focus on anything other than the shot at hand, which I think was quite nice. I personally didn’t watch the leaderboards. I know Dermot [Byrne] was keeping an eye on them if we needed to do something. I kind of leave that to him and was trying to hit as many good shots as I could,” explained Maguire of her own mindset in navigating a route into the knock-outs.

Maguire was third in last year’s event and has again felt very much at home in the desert: “I love this golf course. I think it’s one of the best, if not the best, golf course we play all year. It’s an unbelievable test. It’s really a Major championship golf course. You get punished if you hit bad shots and get rewarded if you hit good shots, and that’s exactly how golf should be I think. I really enjoy the test that it brings. Looking forward to another day [against Jutanugarn].

The other three quarter-finals feature Zhang against Sei Young Kim; Katsu against Naran An, and Nelly Korda against Yin.

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Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times