Jennifer Kupcho, following swing crisis earlier this season, pairs up with Leona Maguire for the 'Irish Goodbyes' at the 2025 Dow Championship

By Annie Watson 

MIDLAND, Mich. – At last year’s iteration of the only regular-season team event on the LPGA Tour, ‘Ping-Pals’ Jennifer Kupcho and Ally Ewing felt a win at the Dow Championship within their grasp. Going head-to-head with rising stars Jeeno Thitikul and Ruoning Yin, Kupcho was one putt short of ending a two-year win drought and becoming the only two-time winner at the team event in the Great Lakes Bay Region.

Her runner-up finish with Ewing, who retired at the end of last season, was the second of six top-10 finishes last year. Kupcho saw even more success in team events last year as a member of the U.S. Solheim Cup team, marking her third such appearance and the first win for the U.S. since 2017.

So, as the calendar turned to 2025, Kupcho’s stock was at its highest since her 3-win season in 2022. With the likes of fellow Americans Lauren Coughlin and Allisen Corpuz, she had sustained her status as a fan favorite and was in pursuit of another win, major or otherwise.

Come April, however, those prospects looked incredibly bleak.

Kupcho teed off in Texas for the first major of the season fresh off her first missed cut of the year at the JM Eagle Championship in LA, despite posting a T11 finish earlier in the season in Thailand.

“Going into Chevron I didn't know where the ball was going,” Kupcho said earlier this month. “Coming into this year, I just expected my game to stay the same [as last year]. But I struggled a lot at the beginning of the year, and I struggled mentally too."

“I pretty much completely lost my swing back in LA.”

Kupcho bore the weight of this reality both on the course – she missed the cut at the Chevron Championship and the U.S. Women’s Open earlier this summer – and behind the scenes. With the help of her team and her husband, who caddies for Corpuz, Kupcho hoisted her first trophy in three years on a drizzly New Jersey Sunday at the ShopRite LPGA Classic.

And following an improved major campaign at the KPMG Women’s PGA, where the Colorado native finished T23, Kupcho had her sights on Michigan, a state where she and her new partner, Ireland’s Leona Maguire, tend to perform consistently well.

It's no wonder the ‘Irish Goodbyes’ was formed for this year’s Dow Championship. Maguire and Kupcho’s careers, both collegiate and professional, draw several parallels, far past mere coincidence. 

To start, they competed against each other in the ACC, Maguire for Duke and Kupcho for Wake Forest. As a Demon Deacon, Kupcho won the 2018 NCAA Individual National Championship, defeating several of her now-peers on the LPGA Tour, including Cheyenne Knight, Lilia Vu, Bianca Pagdanganan and Andrea Lee. In Maguire’s time as a Blue Devil, she was a two-time runner-up at the National Championship and became the first two-time recipient of the ANNIKA Award, given to the top Division I female golfer, in 2015 and 2017.

While their path to obtaining their Tour cards differed, they both secured top-ten finishes in their rookie years – Kupcho finished runner-up at the 2019 Evian Championship and Maguire finished T4 at the 2020 ISPS Honda Vic Open.

In 2021 and 2023, they competed against each other at the Solheim Cup, where Maguire and the European team continued their winning streak at the premiere team event on the LPGA Tour. In 2022, they both became Rolex First-Time Winners. Maguire’s came at the LPGA Drive On Championship, while Kupcho hoisted three different trophies: the Chevron Championship, the Meijer LPGA Classic, and the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Midland, then partnered with Lizette Salas.

The duo even takes a liking to similar courses, having both won in Grand Rapids for the only other tournament in Michigan, the Meijer LPGA Classic, with Leona’s win coming just one year after Kupcho’s.

But just like every good rom-com, the two finally found each other after a grueling plot where they were each other’s right person at the wrong time.

In remarkable fashion, no less.

Kupcho and Maguire head into moving day atop the leaderboard at 13-under par following a 60 from Friday’s four-ball round and a 67 from Thursday’s alternate shot format, which further proves just how natural this duo can be on the course — this time, as teammates rather than competitors.

“I think we're both very similar putters, very similar players in general,” Kupcho said following the first round on Thursday. “I obviously have a little bit more length than her, but other than that, we're pretty similar. We don't get too aggressive, I would say, on attacking pins. So we give ourselves lots of putts and kind of have our speed under control and just make it easy on each other.”

“Overall, we've played a lot of golf together,” Maguire said, referring to how this pairing came together. “We've known each other over ten years probably. We know each other's games pretty well.

 “The golf course is in fantastic shape. It's a great part of the country. Jen's played well in Michigan, I've played well in Michigan. It's very similar to Ireland actually, being so green and all the trees [as well].”

Despite the switch to four-ball on Friday, the ‘Irish Goodbyes’ have no plans on switching any strategy, given their styles of golf mesh well as the sole leaders heading into Saturday’s alternate-shot round.

“Jen's a little bit longer off the tee than me, so I was trying to take advantage of her length where we can,” Maguire said following the pair’s 10-under 60 Friday. “We tried to give ourselves two chances on every hole and it dovetailed pretty nicely.”

“Obviously, lots of golf to go the next two days as well,” Kupcho said. “I think [we plan to] kind of just stay where we're at and continue what we're doing the best we can.”

From the atmosphere of the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan to their decade-long parallel careers, Kupcho and Maguire’s journey heading into the second half of this year’s Dow Championship could come down to the wire on the 18th green on Sunday, a scenario with which Kupcho is all too familiar.

But instead of carrying the weight to victory alone, Kupcho could have Maguire by her side.