‘It's great to be home’ Lauren Walsh speaks ahead of Irish Women’s Open in Kildare

“Yeah, it's great to be home and so close to home. I grew up in Kildare, like 10 minutes down the road, so nice to be back at home and have all the support out this weekend, family, friends, everybody will be out. So, yeah, it's just good to be back,” the words of Kill-native Lauren Walsh who spoke to the press ahead of her appearance at the KPMG Irish Women’s Open.

“It was so nice, I caught up with some of the girls over the summer and then plenty of others.. Yeah, it's nice to catch up with everybody and see a lot of friendly faces. It's been good and hopefully the crowds can get out this weekend and see what a great event it is.”

It has been a huge year for the Kill golfer who has been playing her first season on the LPGA Tour having qualified for a tour card late last year and is currently on course to retain it for 2027. All four rounds of the 2026 Irish Women’s Open will be shown on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player from 2pm each day.

“It's been good. There's been a lot of ups and downs, a lot of challenges, a lot of rewards. It's been a big learning process. I've learned a lot about myself and myself as a golfer as well. I made a couple of tweaks to get myself in better positions out there and then had a good result, which was nice to see things come together,” Walsh explained.

“We're just hanging in there, staying patient, because the game has been close. It's just kind of trying to piece it all together. So overall, lots of positives, which has been nice.”

It’s been a hectic spell for the tour rookie but she says that support from everyone at home has kept her energy high and added, “A lot of my family will be out (at the Irish Open), I think on Thursday for sure. They are teachers, so some of them are back in school on Friday. But a lot of my friends are coming and extended family. It'll be nice to have a lot of familiar faces in the crowds.”

Walsh is part of a record Irish contingent of 16 players competing for the €450,000 tournament purse and spoke about the continued evolution of women’s golf in Ireland.

She said, “I think it's great. A lot of us grew up playing together on Irish teams and to see us all come out together in the last two to three years, I think that's been really important. We've grown up really good friends and we've been able to kind of keep that going out on tour. I think for the girls coming through now, you have the two or three of us that have been out for the last two or three years, I think that's made a big difference.

“Just having a group out there to travel with, to kind of enjoy life on tour, I think that's been really important. And hopefully, as you can see, there's a couple of amateurs in the field as well.

Hopefully they're inspired by that to maybe follow suit and have another group coming behind us. But it's so incredible to see. I think it's such a credit to the tournament that there's this many Irish girls playing and I think women's golf in Ireland is going from strength to strength and long may that continue.”