meghanmaclaren

“One shot seems so causal, so careless, so unworthy. Plugging in a bunker, hitting your tee shot before the horn sounds for lightning. The difference between no points or a couple more than none. Between being in the red by a lot or a little bit less than a lot. I’ve done both enough times to understand that the weight of both bears almost no significance to your actual ability as a golfer. There are undoubtedly things I have been proud of when I’ve made cuts on the number, perhaps even more than during tournament victories, because handling your stress and emotions and game when they are scattered all over the course is far more difficult than when you are playing well and with a confidence underlying the situational stress.”

“Most professional golfers deal with an unexplainable level of mental stress and fatigue. Obviously this is all in the context of golf being a sport we play for a living, with no significant consequence on the world at large. But it’s significance to each individual is, to varying degrees, defining. And in that context, it is highly unlikely that anyone is going to tell you if and when your workload – be it physical or mental or both – is reaching a potentially damaging level.”

“The world keeps turning whether your golf ball drops or not, whether your heart is a little broken or not, whether Riviera was always the one that felt like your place or not. Reality doesn’t care. It isn’t waiting to welcome you with a cup of coffee and a warm hotel room at the end of a 17 hour day (luckily, that’s what the people that love you are there for).”

“Can you have elite skill without an elite mindset? Can you have an elite mindset without elite skill? Of course you can. But more than that: does mindset have the power to actually create skill? And then, in turn, destroy it? Which of those things is most defining in a professional sportspersons’ career?”

“An opinion on something has a direct bearing on beliefs about something else. The world shouts this at you with mocking disinterest; only willing to listen if you shout something, anything, louder. If you do something better. If you achieve something more. When you’re younger – or maybe just the world was a little softer – it feels as though it cares more.”

“It was all part of the sick, satisfying dissatifaction – what can I do next to be better? Being hurt was always an opportunity, and I think that’s part of why so many of us stay in this sport for such a long time. But then I spent two years being absolutely broken by it.”

“As I was going round in circles with a Virgin Atlantic representative about the £280 flight cancellation fee that they don’t actually charge, I struggled to shake the weight of emptiness tugging at me. But I eventually realised that there are some patterns my brain continues to make, and sitting helpless in a hotel room while a tournament is going on and no longer being part of it was a familiar one.
But that was last year.”

“Every time I play with a relative beginner, I’m struck by the same bewilderment: how on earth can you enjoy the process of getting only marginally less terrible, with glimpses of success so fleeting it’s unsettling rather than satisfying, at something so endlessly complicated? That only gets more complicated the more of it you understand? But then, I realise, they must wonder the exact same thing about me.”