meghanmaclaren

It was unintentionally pointed out to me a while ago that I’m quite good at posing questions without giving definitive answers.
It’s probably the reason why I wouldn’t be great at writing a regular column for anyone – or writing for anyone else full-stop – and the reason why most of my blogs are both longer and shorter than I ever intend them to be. I am acutely aware of the concentration span of most people, myself included – opening an article or blog often results in its closure when you scroll through a few sentences and see the little grey bar on the right hand side getting smaller and smaller as you attempt to find the place where the words stop. It’s funny in an existentially worrying way that the only thing we usually have to get back to is digesting 120 character, three second snippets of other people’s lives.

And yet, when I start writing, I am simultaneously aware that there is no end to what I could say. Writing for me seems to be a constant unravelling of the threads in my mind, and like headphone wires or Christmas tree lights, there seems to be no beginning or end. Only a confused mess in the middle that you pull on with ever increasing aggression until something gives. Or tightens.

I find it hard to define what it is that I even write about. Golf, obviously, is the backbone, and the chaotic juxtaposition of its addictiveness is what creates the confused mess that needs untangling so regularly. I often worry that my writing makes it look like golf is a burden to me. It is and it isn’t. That’s its beauty, and its appeal. That what I’m missing already.

I love practice and I love the process, and like I suspect a lot of professional golfers right now, there are elements of this enforced off-season I know will be of benefit. That can be addictive, if you approach it properly. But it isn’t the beauty. It’s going through that process with (only occasionally wavering) conviction, laying the foundations of excellence until your feet can’t feel anything but the solidity of confidence, and then barely being able to break par in your next few tournaments. It’s enduring a four week stretch that feels like an entire career trying desperately to fit the pieces together, wondering if you’re destined to be good but not great, wondering if your weaknesses are always going to define you, and then winning. It’s recognising what “the zone” is – after the fact – when everything is crystal clear, when every yardage is perfect and every read blindingly obvious, and spending months trying to get there again. Only to find it once you give up searching.
It’s addictive, and beautiful, in trying to make sense of things that just don’t.

And for me, without competitive golf to provide that backbone, I don’t find myself with things to write. I have ideas for long-term projects, and maybe I’ll do my best to share pieces of that, as now more than ever people need things to occupy themselves – whether it be three second snippets or reruns of golfing greats or glimpses of the everyday lives of current superstars. I want to write, I want to give people something. But there is no tangled mess to unravel.

All of us right now, are living life without definition. It’s necessary, and in the grand scheme of things not the biggest hardship in an effort to protect those who need to be protected. We’re not being forced to go to war, as our great-grandparents were. But that doesn’t make it easy. It doesn’t make anyone’s mental struggles any less relevant or real than anyone else’s. The societal effect of all of this is going to be bigger than we can perhaps imagine, which governments cannot and are not ignoring. But the mental, day-to-day effects… it’s not just a case of getting outside to exercise. It’s having individual definition. We have a collective definition – a critically important one – to look after each other, to protect each other. But removing your structure for an undefined period of time… it’s already hard. And it’s going to get harder.

Like most blogs I write, I’m ending this not entirely sure what I’m writing about. But that in itself is symbolic of what’s happening. None of us are really sure what’s going on, what we really have to do, what its impact will be and when it will end. But we just have to keep going anyway. Try to keep doing the little things you usually do, even if it’s in novel ways. And maybe, once this is all over, we can all appreciate what our normal is. What our definition is. Because nothing is a given… not even tangled headphones.

…Don’t worry. This isn’t a blog about periods.

But what I said half-jokingly in my tweet (you won’t regret reading the replies) – which isn’t really a joke – I’ve pulled out of two pro-ams from feeling like that and could see no way out of withdrawing from this tournament – which represented a chance I’ll probably never have again to join a ridiculously illustrious group of players – apart from sleeping for as long as I could (one hour before my 1.15 tee time) — it is something that needs some illuminating, if not by me. And really, if the words ‘period pains’ are “too much information” for you…. Where are the females in your life?!

But the broader issue it ignited for me is one that golf in particular seems to specialise in. Sweeping under the carpet anything that isn’t “PC”… or off-white, as Koepka might say, with an arched eyebrow of contempt that seems to be as much for himself at excelling at a sport that his alter-ego probably never considered a sport.
It’s not ok.
It lessens what golf is. It lessens the stories it provides, it lessens the humans that provide those stories and it lessens the ability of those humans to be role models. To be real.

I read Iain Carter’s blog for BBC Sport on Patrick Reed (here) and he nails golf’s contradicting inability to deal with such a character. Reed is a classy golfer with an inarguable resume putting him amongst the world’s best. That ability is celebrated by those providing him the platform to demonstrate it. Reed is also, depending on your interpretation or willingness to reach logical conclusions, a cheat. That is neither celebrated (well actually… “perfect gentleman”) nor condemned by those providing that same platform.
Dustin Johnson failed three drugs tests, two for cocaine, (as well as some other pretty unacceptable behaviour) but all we heard was of a “leave of absence” to deal with his personal life. Compare that to Rio Ferdinand missing (not failing) a drugs test and having his entire career threatened as the FA sought to make an example of him. Then there’s the incessant fan-girling over the PGA Tour from its broadcasters at the expense of real analysts with real knowledge of the game, and of the actual viewer experience. Of anything resembling criticism. There’s also Saudi, which I won’t go into, but it’s there.

The irony of it all is that if it’s about money (whether I or you agree with it or not), it’s about entertainment. And what’s entertainment without drama? Without gossip? Without indiscretions and weaknesses and vulnerabilities? We watch for the awe, yes; we play for the unachievably intoxicating mastery of technical and psychological perfection – but maybe above all we watch and we play for understanding. The understanding of the dynamic in not wanting either Reed or Dechambeau to win but knowing it had to be one of them, the understanding of Rory breaking down on the course and off it at Portrush, the lack of understanding as we wonder whether the Jordan Spieth we watched getting a yardage from the fringes of the driving range of — was a figment of our collective imagination. The understanding of Tiger that we never thought was possible.

And yet, still golf does not like to talk about its demons.

Is it for shame of weakness? Is it for competitive edge? Is it for image protection? Is it simply not for public consumption? Maybe.

But both the studios and the twitter crowd – professional golfers included in each – will engage in debates about swing tendencies and 976 different methods of returning the clubface to square at impact, and argue about rolling the ball back and bifurcation and the merits of thick rough versus contoured greens, and whether the need for public golf courses outweighs the need for an exclusive world tour (anyone thought about the novelty of inviting women to that by the way? Tell me who went the longest without making a bogey in 2019), and whether playing aggressive golf is actually committing to conservative targets rather than going at every pin, and whether one PGA Tour win equates to five European Tour wins (it doesn’t) and whether Bernhard Langer, while relentlessly competitive, still anchors his putter (that might fall into the former category, on second thought). Even, remarkably – say it quietly – whether female golfers deserve a little more respect.

But we still hang back on talking about the things that make professional golfers people.

Talking about the things that are less to do with the glossy efficiency of elite level performance and everything to do with the flawed human tendencies that make the fan able to appreciate the person who makes the golfer. The thing I’ll never understand about it, is that one makes the other. There is no golfer without the person. So why deny that? Why drown it in meaningless platitudes or suffocating silence?

Why don’t we talk about the genuine effect of the human element on performance? Of having food posioning, or sleeping terribly, or having a fight with a loved one? Or stupid things that trigger a change of mood, a change of mindset? I locked myself out of my Airbnb in Adelaide after going back to practice on the Thursday evening of the Australian Open, and didn’t get dinner till 9.30. Two weeks later, I swung on my balance discs in my Airbnb in Dubbo, just before going to bed on the Saturday evening of the NSW Open, and clean smashed a glass lampshade, sending pieces of it absolutely everywhere.
Golf impulses combined with a lack of awareness that create 1%s you might not be able to get back.

It’s like when you get to a certain level of performance, you’re not allowed to have ‘normal weaknesses’ anymore.

And being vulnerable is not a weakness.
“To grow up is to accept vulnerability”.

We don’t talk about the doubt that rookie professionals feel – not how they really feel. Not how shooting 80 when they’re in the last few groups on the weekend makes them question if they’ve really got what it takes. Not how they can go from feeling so full one day to so empty the next. Not how you can be back in the exact same place a couple of years later, with an entirely different set of circumstances but the exactly the same set of doubts.

We don’t talk about how practice weeks makes you long for tournaments so you can prove to yourself that you’re on the right path, and how tournaments make you long for practice weeks so you can remind yourself progress doesn’t always show up immediately in the results.

We don’t talk about the spiralling black hole of failure and fear that inevitably precedes form.

We don’t talk about what the yips really are, or how it makes you feel. I’m not sure I’m ready to do that myself just yet, but god knows enough professional golfers experience it during their careers. “Focal dystonia”. Whether it stems from technical flaws I don’t know, but telling people it’s all “in their head” or simply a mental barrier they need to work through isn’t going to help them.
Scientifically, physiologically, when you do too much repetition of one movement, individual neurons in the area can lose their specificity and sensitivity, causing involuntary movements. Or as I tried to describe it to the people around me, “it feels like something between what my brain knows and what my hand does is broken”. And that’s fucking terrifying if you don’t know what’s happening. You know when you get cramp in the middle of the night, and you can feel it coming but you can’t do anything about it? You know the moment your muscle twitches in a certain way, you’re going to experience unpreventable agony, and all you can do is lie there and wait for it to happen? And endure it? It’s a bit like that. Except it can undermine everything you believe about yourself.

And the only reason we don’t know what’s happening is because we don’t talk about it.

We don’t talk about any of it, and yet we sit and smile and share videos of players getting emotional after wins or performances that change things. Because we understand.

The inexplicable, inescapable reality of professional sport and the humans who engage in it. We should really talk a little more about it.

At some point in the last year, I made a new photo album on my phone. Probably not one of my better decisions and I’m still not sure why I haven’t deleted it, but it was to put all the screenshots of social media backlash I’ve had or seen in response to gender equality statements I (or my friends) have made.

It’s not a particularly pleasant place.

I keep it there in part for an unnecessary motivation; to prove one day to people who will have an argument against women’s sport forever that they are wrong. To prove that it is not and has never been “simple economics”, because “literally nobody watches women’s golf and nobody cares” (see also: “nobody wants to watch it and it’s shite love”), because women are “not marketable” (even though “some of these golfing ladies are fit”) or because I want to “play the entitlement card”, or believe women have “an absolute right to equal prize money”.

I keep it there to remind myself how far there still is to go; for however much progress women’s sport, and golf, is making, a wealth of informed journalists and a healthier tournament schedule are from enough to change perceptions of comparable athletes across the gender divide. Golf is a strange sport because it tries to keep up with the modern world while both reinforcing and refusing to accept its existence in its own self. Golf is not a game for the masses, and I think it is a mistake if it tries to make itself so. It is too demanding, too time-consuming, too frustrating, too technical. As a professional, too emotionally draining.

But trying to change any of those things lessens its beauty. In an age where golf is questioning its identity, wondering how and who should protect it while money tries to come in from dangerous places, its beauty remains prevalent if you keep from drowning in social media dissent. And its beauty can be utilised to address some of its deficiencies. Its beauty can be utilised to make people fall in love with it, both more deeply and for the first time. Its beauty can be utilised to educate the casually sexist commenters on a world beyond their misinformed notions of athleticism and talent and skill, without saying a word.

Its beauty can be utilised in showcases like the Vic Open.

At 13th Beach in Barwon Heads, Australia, stand behind the 7th green – or perhaps in the middle of it – and watch as men and women alike, capable of 350 yard drives and 10 shot margins of victory, of Solheim Cup brilliance and major wins, stand on the tee 105 yards away and wonder how the hell they are going to find the green.

Watch and admire players piece together seven 65s and a 63 in the first round alone – five from men, three from women – in entirely different ways. Watch a brother and sister, separated by just one tee time, go into a final round of a tournament, both with genuine chances of winning. Enjoy not having to be confronted by conditions that saw the final group in round 3 for each the men’s draw and the women’s draw collectively play in 22 over par.

On a course like this, every possible skill is being tested to the extreme. It will not be the player that hits it the furthest who wins, although it may play a part. Power is an essential skill in golf, and it is becoming more so with each year that passes. But it remains far from the only skill required to be successful. Watching players hit drives 350 yards plus is not the only element of enjoyment in watching golf. If it was, there would only be money in long drive contests.
Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan drew crowds and sponsors and fans to the game for a multitude of reasons, not least being they were two of the greatest golfers to ever play the game. As did, and as were, Annika Sorenstam and Karrie Webb. Not because any of them hit the ball 350 yards.

People come to watch golf. People pay to watch golf. To watch skill and theatre, athleticism and passion, imagination and patience, weaving through the unpredictable predictability of the rise and fall of each character; each actor; each golfer. Each woman, each man.

My ‘argument’ for so long has not been that women simply deserve equal pay as golfers, the end. My argument is simply that in a supply and demand marketplace, if the supplies were given equal treatment, the demand would be much closer together than some people are willing to accept. Equal treatment is where all the questions lie, where all those with stakes in this game must look at themselves and ask if they can do better. Ask themselves what they would say when their daughter asks why playing golf may not be a viable career path when her brother didn’t have to wonder. Ask why it is ok to report on a male losing in the final of a tournament but not a woman winning in the final of the corresponding tournament on the same course at the same time. Ask why it is ok to have 190 pictures of golfers in a magazine and not one of them be of a woman. Ask if you’re really ok with why the winner of a men’s tournament receives a cheque 57 times the amount of the female winner of the corresponding tournament (yes, 57).

Or don’t ask. Don’t ask yourself if you really think that is what we are worth.
Just watch.
Watch a tournament that has already figured out how the world could really work. Should really work.

Find a way to watch the final round of the Vic Open, and pay attention to where the crowds of people are.
That’s why it’s offering equal prize money. Not because the sponsors or organisers feel some moral pressure to have it so.
It’s because the demand says it should be so.

The man and his dog will be there watching. But it won’t just be them.

Being a professional golfer at this time of year is weird.
I’ve been trying for a month to try and put it into words but it just won’t work. The symbolism of that is almost exactly my point, but I still don’t really know what I’m trying to say. That’s the whole problem with this time of year.

It’s the time of year you crave at regular intervals from February to November.

It’s the time of year that looks like a golden stretch of hallowed ground, a shining light that your outstretched fingertips can almost touch when you wake up trying to make the cut in your last tournament of the year, the fumes of exhaustion an unpleasant cocktail of anti-malaria tablets, 48 hours of nutritional intake consisting of a solitary chocolate ice cream, a lingering bug that could be from a day ago or could be from multiple trips to countries across the globe that your stomach just doesn’t seem to want on the schedule. Blended with the emotional baggage of another year of playing golf for a living, that I could spend the rest of my life trying to find the words to do justice to without ever coming close. (Disclaimer: I wouldn’t change a second of it.)
It’s the time of year that looks and smells like a bar to an in-denial alcoholic, the anticipation of the glass being raised to your lips while you’re walking back to the tee to try not to hit your third tee shot in a row out of bounds, point blank refusing to look up from the ground or to acknowledge the desperately kind “good shot” that trails your ball finally finding the fairway. For five.
It’s the time of year that looks like an endlessly soft bed with an endless supply of coffee with endless football to watch when you’re a little bit drunk in a pub in Woburn, trying to let alcohol provide the reason and rationality to fight down the firing squad of questions your brain is providing as answers for a derailing few weeks that needed to matter most.

There, in those moments, when you’re still doing the thing you love for a living but the only thing dragging you through is professional pride, the thought of this time of year is oxygen.

And then you get here, to this time of year, and you feel like you can’t breathe properly.

Because all those moments during the year when you crave some time, some peace, a chance to step back and see the big picture… you get here and you don’t know what the big picture is. You don’t know how it connects, and you thought this was the time when it was supposed to connect. In reality, it’s the in-between moments when it connects. When it makes sense… even if the moments themselves don’t.
The moments when you’re waiting in an immigration queue wondering whether to reflect on the tournament just gone or anticipate the one coming, the moments when you’re lying in a dark hotel room watching a Premier League game from six time zones away howling at a VAR call as you await an afternoon tee time, the moments when you walk past the slightly red-faced, slightly overweight, slightly upper class British tourists in Marbella to find a quiet rock overlooking a beautiful blue sea for an hour or so. The moments when you’re sitting in an airport in the middle of the night with around 100 occupants, 95 of which are other professional golfers and 4 of which are monkeys, casually juxtaposing with an unfinished roof and a shop selling Pringles and Dairy Milk.

Those in-between moments are the ones where you join up some of the dots. They’re the moments that create most of my blogs. The reason I’ve been struggling to write this one is because it’s a moment that’s in between the in-between moments, and I don’t know how to make sense of that. I don’t know how it connects.

But as someone much wiser than me told me recently, that’s when you keep going, one piece at a time. Connecting one more dot to another. Connecting the space that separates. Even if it’s only to get from one in-between to another in-between. Finding the precipice where you can breathe. Finding the precipice where you can succeed.

Do you ever scroll through Twitter and wonder why the hell you waste your time on it? In a world where time seems to run away from us, we actively choose to use up some of that time reading inflammatory news bites and ignorant vitriol disguised as opinion; words and views united only by their intention to anger.

(I blame Brexit more than I blame Twitter.)

We’re lucky in our precious golf bubble that even our most divisive issues are relatively unimportant when it comes to the bigger picture (and I say that as someone whose world is golf). But it does intrigue and slightly depress me that the issues that truly seem to ignite people’s passions, even in our golf bubble, are those that also unearth the most conservative contempt.

Denis Pugh seems to have a knack for finding those issues. Slow play always does it. Equality does too, but only really when it can be condensed by the ones who like to condense it into ‘economics 101’. And I think we can now add calling out other players/knowing the rules to that list. Maybe that’s the problem; none of these issues are clearly defined, and a space that calls for short-form quick-fire commentary doesn’t lend itself to prolonged or reasoned debate. (It is Trump’s preferred communication method, after all…) But it can be difficult to understand or comprehend the personal nature of some responses. I think when you’re used to sharing enough of yourself on your social media to give what you think is a general sense of your character, the backlash can feel like an attack on that (and sometimes it very much is), which can be shocking, and upsetting – even when you know the ignorance is unjustified and meaningless. None of us are immune.

The ability or substance required for any one issue to ignite and engage is beside the point. The point can get so lost it makes you wonder why it’s worth igniting in the first place. But that brings me here. Maybe it was the entire (naive) purpose of social media from the very beginning… its ability to connect.

I might be way too long winded about it sometimes (exhibit A) but I like sharing some of what the ebb and flow of being a professional golfer looks like, because it’s undoubtedly one of the loneliest sports on the planet. But we’re somehow together in that loneliness too.

It’s the shared experience that connects us all, that makes us all care. It isn’t rules justifications, it isn’t slow play, it isn’t the distance debate, it isn’t the gender pay gap.

It’s the complexities and intricacies of each of us versus the sport. It’s why we, as a golf world, cared about Brendon Todd winning the Bermuda Championship. It’s why we cared that Haley Moore got her LPGA card. It’s why we cared when Steven Brown did more than just secure his European Tour card in Portugal. It’s why I write, and why I put it out there for people to see.

Whatever level of golf you play or understand or coach or watch, you get it. You get how one day you can have a confidence that can make you fly, and the next day you can be in a black hole of anguish that makes you question everything.

It’s why I can nearly win a tournament one week despite feeling more comfortable with a 5 iron than a wedge, and then average under 10ft with my wedges the next week and still make more 6s than 4s on par 5s. Why I can be astounded at playing with a girl with a swing speed of over 100mph and still hit rescues in tight while she flies greens with short irons. Why that same girl can hit her first tee shot straight into the water the next day and still end up shooting 64.

It’s why I can get the putting yips in a 144 hole tournament that determines an entire year, and yet still believe in winning a European Order of Merit mere weeks later. Without looking for sympathy or back-slapping or advice or criticism. Just to share, and just to connect. To be together in our loneliness. Because let’s be honest, when we strip back all the controversies and ignorance and things that need to change and things that drive us to despair… we’re damn lucky to love this game.

And on we go.

Just off your second 9 hour flight in 3 days.
One of those immigration queues that feels like it gets longer the more time you spend in it.
The mixture of long-haul flight sweat and irritable why-aren’t-we-at-Disney yet child and parent stress washing over everyone as the metallic tannoy voice announces the BA flight luggage belt is awaiting technical support… as if anyone’s got that far yet anyway.
There’s a coffee stain on the sleeve of your jumper that’s starting to smell like it’s been there since you left India.

But that’s not the only thing lingering. It must be something to do with airports. It’s like the anchor of transition, if there can be such a thing; you’re either leaving one place or arriving at another, and yet you’re in neither one place or the other. Not sure whether to look backwards or look forwards. Trying to bottle a feeling that might have already passed, or anticipate a feeling that hasn’t yet arrived. Still processing what you’ve left behind, but the pace of that processing might affect what’s ahead.

You stood in this same immigration queue at this same airport exactly two years ago.
In the exact same place.
And yet, in an entirely different place.

Then, the confidence was mixed with the unknown. A quiet assuredness that your plan had worked, because the only goal was to not have to go to first stage of Q School ever again. The only definitive that came out of an amateur/professional transition that created a thousand identity questions you didn’t know how to form, never mind answer. And yet, a definitive that created a plan, that led to quiet rungs of progress that looked like they were planned all along. A confidence created from the reaffirmation that figuring out things your own way, on your own terms, was enough to take you anywhere. But the unknown of ‘anywhere’… that was the next question waiting to be formed.

A question that led you down dead ends and into brick walls, that you occasionally smashed through, when careful steps turned into steady jogs turned into blind sprints that sent you flying but also sent you spiralling. On the never-ending merry-go-round of professional golf and elite sport and life itself, never quite sure if you want to step off and take a break to catch your breath and look around, but wondering if doing so will make it too hard to get back on again.

Two years later, the same immigration queue and the same reaffirmation. Of knowing that figuring things out will make things figure themselves out. This time brought about differently, in fits and starts and discomfort and periods of pure calm that remind you where ‘home’ is. Standing in that same immigration queue with a brain still threading the needle of a tournament that started a week ago but only ended two (give or take) full sleeps ago in a country 8000 miles away. The reaffirmation; the pride, the fulfilment of knowing you’re right where you’re meant to be… tinged with slight disappointment, all floating in a cloud of something else that could be a slight bitterness and could be acceptance: that the world keeps turning no matter where the pieces of your jigsaw are.

I decided to write this with about an hour left of play on Saturday evening. I wanted to put the emphasis back on the golf; to try and unravel some of the intricacies that cause the nature of golf and the nature of humans to intertwine so tightly, with such complexity, in a manner that I think is worth understanding. A manner that makes this particular Solheim Cup so deeply fascinating; on the 26 individual pages of every player and captain; and one collective page of women’s golf.

I wanted to draw the emphasis towards that, and away from the one factor undercutting all of that quiet brilliance… before I realised, in that ensuing hour, that that factor is doing more than undercutting; it’s dominating.

Slow play.

Six hour rounds that are stirring social media disgust, fan apathy and journalistic impasse. I was going to address it, but dismissively, because as Thomas Bjorn tweeted, the Solheim Cup is not the place to fix it. The course, circumstances and conditions have all magnified an issue that very much exists over the last two days, but those that truly understand golf should know that this Solheim Cup is worth more than that.

I believe as strongly as anyone, and more so after that last 48 hours, that it is an issue that golf desperately needs to do something forceful about, an issue that governing bodies and rules officials need to have one clearly defined solution on, an enforceable solution that does not lend itself to bowing down to player stature and broadcasting necessities. That needs to happen. And fast. While social media sways more in the direction of worthless, unfounded opinions, the consensus of validity here is undeniable.
But it does not, and should not, define this Solheim Cup. This Solheim Cup is offering us too much to let the laziest story smear it.

And as I thought about it, I realised the slow play factor only adds to the picture I wanted to paint. The picture of Gleneagles and the Solheim Cup, the picture of gale force winds and chilling temperatures, the picture of the quiet determination of Catriona Matthew and the extroverted competitiveness of Juli Inkster, the picture of experience and respect trying to prove that they don’t have a point to prove and young, fearless talent standing, folding and trying to stand again as those blind-to fears stare them down.

Golf is hard. What seems predictable is inevitably unpredictable and what is unpredictable eventually seems predictable. We try to create narratives that create themselves. And really, we should all know better. In the end, it is golf that decides what happens. It is only about who can refuse to let their story end with the most insistence.

The intense competitor that rouses the crowd and pulls a team onto its feet, pulls so hard that she knocks herself over. The flawless golf swing that paves superstardom flails under the microseconds of technical imperfections invisible to everyone except a new moment in time. The solidity of experience crumbles ever so slightly in the magnifying glass of the end. And yet, the tired, over-battled duo who have finally run out of steam breathe in again. Breathe life again. Breathe a win again. And the sisters seemingly a step above everyone else, sat out and watched everyone else. The Americans who verbally bit off more than they could chew without backing it up, suddenly swallowed it and found their voices again. Climbed up the ladder of their words. The Americans who were just too cold, who wanted a warm bath and hot food and no referees and to be anywhere else in the world, lit a fire in the fading light that’ll burn until tomorrow.

In the end, one team will win. But every player will have beaten, and lost to, golf and its own complexity… a million times along the way. Definitely slowly at times, but stick with it. Because golf is beautiful in its brutality. And that’s worth watching.

The process of getting better is really really hard.
Because the things that make you great can often be your downfall.

Golf gives you little cuts almost every day; every round; every tournament. They vary in size and severity, but they come often. The tap in you missed after doing all the hard work to get back in play. The drive you hit into the hazard right because you were trying too hard to avoid the OB left. The lag putt you left 10ft short because you forgot to factor in the sudden downfall of rain on the speed of the greens. All the little moments that individually, don’t mean much; don’t highlight anything. Like most cuts, if you leave them alone, they’ll heal. They might hurt for a while, might sting a bit, might add up to a missed cut or two and cause you a few sleepless nights or extra beers, but they’ll heal. You’ll get on with it. Until you want to get better.

When you want to get better, you’ll not know whether to leave the cuts alone or whether to pick at them until they bleed. Are they hiding something you’re missing?

The 3 wood you hit a couple of yards off line into thick rough that you didn’t know was there which cost you shots you never had enough time to recover from – that’ll still be in your mind as you’re grinding on the range on Saturday at the course you desperately wanted to be climbing the leaderboard on. But it’ll fade; you’ll be rational. You’ll know it was just one shot, a shot that wasn’t even that bad; just a case of horrible timing; a split-second of poor course strategy, a split-second of a clubface being a split-degree more closed that you wanted it to be. It’ll hurt, but it won’t make you question everything. Keep trusting. You’re good at course strategy. It’s just golf.

But what about that little cut the week before that? When you hit your first tee shot six inches from a fairway bunker which gave you a shot you could never get close enough to the green to have a good chance of par, meaning you were fighting from minute one of three hundred in the amphitheatre of a major, where there was no fairway bunker to cause you any damage on the opposite side of the fairway? You tried to keep trusting. But was that poor course strategy too? Are you missing something? Are you kidding yourself?

And what about that little cut the week before that? When you put yourself in a great position after round one with some of the best golf you’ve played all year in the biggest event of it so far, but then failed to adjust your shot visualisation to the fractionally lower standard of golf you were playing in round two, leading to just a few too many short-sided misses? You tried to keep trusting. But was that poor course strategy too? Are you missing something? Are you kidding yourself?

Because remember that little cut today? In the round that effectively puts you out of the tournament before it’s even begun? When you hit that drive a yard through the fairway into the cut between the semi and the rough, where the saturated, heavy grass twisted the clubface of your 9 iron and sent the ball arrowing towards a spot that you were only ever going to make double from? Both your playing partners hit 3 wood. You tried to keep trusting. But was that poor course strategy too? Are you missing something? Are you kidding yourself?

Because remember that tournament you should have won earlier this year? When you were cruising, until you made double from the middle of the fairway on a hole where the wind was off the right and the ball was above your feet and there was water on the left and your shot pattern is a draw? After you let that one heal, you knew it wasn’t anything other than golf exposing a bad shot with the worst possible outcome. It happens; it didn’t have to mean anything more than that. You tried to keep trusting. But was that poor course strategy too? Are you missing something? Are you kidding yourself?

Finding a pattern without creating the illusion of one is possibly the most difficult thing to do in golf. Commentators will fall into that trap, media will fall into that trap, coaches will fall into that trap. But so will players themselves. When you want to get better, you want reasons; you want answers. You have to pick at the cut and sometimes you’ll make it bleed for no reason. But what if it’s something real? Self diagnosis as a golfer is really hard, but more often that not you’re the only one that knows enough about your game – and your thoughts and your actions – to truly do it. You might hurt yourself as you make yourself better. Knowing which cuts to leave alone to heal and which ones to pick at is almost impossibly hard. But it’s the process of getting better.
Knowing what’s bleeding and what’s healing.

And then trusting.

White trousers and a white shirt with a pink stripe down the back. White shoes, pink belt, and a pink hat that could barely sit atop the bouncing, possibly highlighted curls beneath it. If any kid rocked up at a prestigious amateur (or professional) event like that now they’d be side-eyed off the course. The cliques of established, well-rounded elite amateurs would be scoffing their disapproval to each other with raised eyebrows and sneering smiles that say it all.

“Who does he think he is?”

Rory McIlroy.

That’s who.

It takes a carefree recklessness to act like the man before people recognise you as actually being the man. But I think Rory knew. And that carefree recklessness – alongside supreme ability and a probably underrated work ethic – would have been one of the main contributors into propelling that boy into “the man”, and Portrush folklore at the same time. But 14 years on from that record breaking 61, the carefree recklessness is the thing I think Rory has lost some of. It doesn’t have to be arrogance, or cockiness; even if those with less ability and self-belief call it that. I don’t think Rory has ever not had self-belief, and the number of tournaments he’s won since that day are hardly going to knock that. It’s, as he described himself in the latest Nike ad, an “obliviousness”. And it’s the thing that he so desperately needs.

That ad shows video footage of his 16 year old obliviousness being unknowingly channeled into greatness. It shows his signature bounce down the fairways that reflected the concrete optimism of his belief that he could do anything. Alongside those grainy shots are clips of him now. The same powerful rotation through the ball, the same effortlessly balanced poise in his finish, the same eyeing up and down of the ball as it rockets towards its target. But this Rory is leaner, stronger, wiser. And yet, this Rory stares out over the Antrim coast, wondering how to be that 16 year old again.
He’s undoubtedly a better golfer now. This Rory has four majors in his locker with eight margin victories in two of them, and countless scoring records in the intervening years. This Rory has proven time and time again that he is the man, as the 16 year old was that day at Portrush. But it comes with a burden now.

The margins in golf are so incredibly fine, particularly at the highest end of the game. That’s why picking a winner on any given week is so difficult. So to consistently put yourself in contention in major championships, to constantly be one of the best players in the world, you have to understand those margins. You have to understand yourself. (Or you have to have people around you that do). We all know, as Rory does, that he has the ability and the skill to be one of the best players to have ever played the game. But that isn’t enough. To capitalise on that, he’s had to learn more. And I think it’s in his nature to want to do that; to travel down the irresistibly relentless path of golfing excellence. He, as others, has had to understand every corner of his game and his tendencies. So that they don’t breakdown when the pressure is at its peak. When he’s in the pack on a Sunday of a major and he knows he’s got the game to win but he’s not operating at his destructive best, and there are half a dozen others with game and mental strength on the day to win too. There are a million and one factors that can stop a golfer from winning a tournament that they are good enough to win. I think people sometimes forget that. Figuring out as many of those things as you can is a pretty good strategy to learning to control them. Figuring them out can give you the edge when it matters the most – but they are the same things that can stop you from having the edge. Knowledge is only power when you know how to use it. Knowledge sometimes, can stop you from being oblivious.

Maturity, intelligence, depth… call it what you want: it is an asset and a burden. It can carry you. But you also have to carry it. When he was 16, Rory didn’t have to.