meghanmaclaren

None of us really knew.

The fans and the haters; the believers and the skeptics. United in the underlying truth of our defence and attacks on someone who transcended the sport he changed forever – can the man rediscover the athlete? Can the athlete, that athlete, exist again, now he is only a man?

None of us really knew. Including him.

Whether sport forgives I don’t know… but what sport does is remember. And yet for golf fans, for so long, remembering has felt so hard. We all saw the greatness back then. We were inspired by it, transfixed by it, enthralled by it. And that was regardless of whether you liked him or not. Because his greatness was unquestionable; unshakeable. The greatest ever? Debatable, depending on who you asked. Debatable, despite the dominance. Debatable, despite the inspiration of a generation. Debatable always, until he overhauled Jack’s formidable, magic eighteen. But an answer that would inevitably come, as Claret Jugs and Green Jackets were swept into the cloak of mental invincibility as year after year ticked past.

The inevitably is perhaps where we all fell down. Including him. Somehow, we normalised the greatness. Maybe he did too. The fist pumps and the roars were a staple, but they were him, they were Sundays, they were majors… they were all just routine. We spent a decade witnessing something in real time that only history would protect with the legacy it deserved. And none of us were ready for it to be history. None of us were ready for the legacy to be sealed. Worse still, none of us were ready for the legacy to be tainted by the man himself. Could it even be a legacy once its very foundations had been ripped out of the ground? What were we allowed to believe?

And so the questions changed.

How could an athlete built with no weaknesses, be a man of such weakness?
How could a personal life so delicately, dangerously stashed away for so long, thrust into the world’s unforgiving spotlight, co-exist with an impenetrable armoury of athletic and psychological ability?
Could he ever play again?
Could he ever contend again?
Should he walk away before our golden memories were frayed at the edges, colours blurred into painful shades of grey splashed over an uncontrollable fragility permeating his game? Giving the ones who wanted an excuse for the brilliance gleeful in their condemnation?
Was he doing anything but leaving us wondering if we imagined it all? Glorified it all?

Human flaws are one thing. Morally acceptable or not is another debate. But this debate was about an aura; one that was the intertwining of a man and an athlete, definable only by its indestructibility. When that was stripped away, was any of it real at all? That’s what we’ve been craving all along. A sign that it was real. A chance to remember.
Craving a chance to be proved to that greatness doesn’t have to be built on a lie. Greatness doesn’t have to be built on being one or the other; it doesn’t have to be built on unbreachable barriers or exposed vulnerabilities. Greatness can be all-conquering and it can be humbling.
Greatness can be built by a man, and not just a machine.
Greatness can stay.
Greatness can grow.

Most importantly… the greatness we saw; the greatness we knew. It was real.

Sport defines and it reveals, whether it is at the highest level with the world watching, or the lowest with only our conscience keeping score. Our flaws make us, they break us, and if we are willing, they make us again. Tiger was willing. His greatness defined him, broke him, and made him again. It doesn’t have to be a comeback story, but maybe we love it more because it is. This though is bigger than a comeback story; it is a story of greatness that needed a different ending. None of us wanted to write the ending ourselves, even though many of us tried. The ending was only ever in one person’s hands… we just needed him to pick up the pen and keep writing.
And that, he has.
Thanks Tiger.

The world has a funny way of showing us the best and the worst of each other in almost precisely the same moments.

Sport is a sphere that demands differences, divisions, discord. Allegiance to one side necessitates animosity to the other. Even when there is no defined opposition, there are competing schools of thought, competing theories, competing beliefs. It is impossible to write or say anything, whether fact or opinion, without it being torpedoed back to you with some kind of grenade attached. Perhaps everyone just has an underlying need to feel right about things, perhaps social media gives a platform to people who just shouldn’t have it. We’re in the age where instant access to information is our best and our worst friend. Quite simply it seems, people don’t like to agree. Which is fine; debate can be engaging and productive. Going on Twitter to watch incomprehensible arguments ignite appears to be a primary source of entertainment in 2018. There are many times I want to continue a ‘conversation’ with somebody online, only in the effort to enlighten them (or, grudgingly, be enlightened myself), and yet the responsible mini-me sitting on my shoulder desperately jumps on the lock button to force me into a better use of my time. Some people don’t want their minds changed, no matter what you present them with.

Push that mindset to its horrendous extremes, and we see some of the tragedies that have devastated this world lately. This past weekend has been horrific, for the sports world and the world at large, for both inhumane acts by humans, and natural, but no less devastating, events. A beloved football figure suffered a heart attack, while the British sports world and beyond collectively crosses it fingers that he will pull through. I don’t need to go into detail about the Leicester helicopter crash, or the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Circumstances obviously horrifically different, but both resulting in incomprehensible loss of life and a depth of mourning that crosses lines of football, religion, politics, race, gender and wealth.

This weekend is far from the only time the world has watched the news and taken a mutual intake of breath that cuts at the soul. It’s not even the first time I’ve written about these kinds of feelings. Sometimes it feels like it’s a relentless cycle, one that leaves you struggling to find a light in all of the darkness. When Celia Barquina Arozamena was killed on a golf course only a few weeks ago, it shook the golf world to its core. Almost every single golfer knows the blissful solitude that can arise from playing alone, from being by yourself with the golf course, remembering why you fell in love with the game; for its demands of mental strength versus physical skill. Not one of us has turned down golf for fear of death. But now, sometimes, we hear the noises. We see the shadows. And we stop and wonder. We worry. We lose the moment, in worrying whether we should fear losing our life. It’s not supposed to be like that.

I didn’t know Celia, but I did. I do. Every golfer does. Ever college athlete does. Just as every sports person knows Glenn Hoddle, knows the Leicester pain. Just as every Jew will know the 11 people killed in the synagogue in Pittsburgh. We might crush each other’s fingers in our desire to stay true to our own side, our own beliefs, ourselves – but in times of darkness, we reach out and hold each other’s hands. We pull each other to the light. United.

Write when it hurts. Then write till it doesn’t.

I don’t know if I write because things hurt, or if I write just because it helps me make sense of things. Most of the time I think it can’t possibly makes sense to other people. I also don’t know whether it’s better to write about anything when it’s still raw, or if it’s better to wait until I’ve had time to put things into perspective a little bit. It seems to be the pattern that the things that hurt tend to spill out quicker, and the things that feel more like achievements, or that are significant, come slower, more deliberately. For whatever reason, it seems to be easier to write about the things that are painful. Maybe that’s just because it feels real.

Which is better to read? The pain? Or the perspective? Maybe it depends who’s answering.

Maybe we all need the pain to find the perspective. Most things I write, most things I feel – that anyone feels – they change with time. The immediate emotion of a situation or an outcome is a wall impossible for rationality to push through, but a bit of time forces the issue. And the more experiences we have, the quicker the rationality comes. We understand the bigger picture a bit more. And I think the rationality breeds good things: it gives us a focus; a plan of action. Pain breeds change. So don’t ever let anyone tell you pain is weakness. Caring causes pain. But caring is also what can make you great.

While more experiences might bring greater rationality, I think the emotional residue lasts longer too. The thing I think I find the hardest is feeling like you’ve lived this scene before. You’ve felt this emotion before, you’ve seen these patterns. You felt some pain, you made your rational plan and tried to address it, and yet… here you are again. Seeing the same patterns. You probably feel like you’ve read this blog before. Sorry.

If you’ve cared enough to read this, you probably know that I’ve just finished second stage of LPGA Q School. From which I haven’t advanced to the next stage… so well short of getting actual LPGA status for next year. That in itself feels like a failure. Last year I attempted the same thing, and failed too. But I came 3rd at second stage… this year I came 67th. So in my immediate non-rational-but-emotional-residue-making-it-feel-like-kind-of-rational state, that doesn’t just feel like a failure, that feels like a step back. In a year where all I’ve done is tried to get better.

If the only things you know about me are from my blogs, you might be surprised to know I think I’m right a lot of the time. And yet, uncertainty has been the running theme throughout 2018. Analysing things to death might well be a character flaw, because it makes it very difficult to trust a decision in which there are no guarantees. In some ways, it feels like every plan I made has backfired or been rendered useless. I haven’t gained an LPGA card through either the Symetra Tour or through Q School, I haven’t really challenged for the LET Order of Merit. My stoke average has probably gone up. (I have won though. Actual rationality coming through). I wanted all those things at varying points in the year and I thought in meticulous detail about the best way to make them possible. But to be honest, I was never certain that I was following the most effective path. Was I unlucky or lucky to have different paths available? More uncertainty.

One thing I am certain of though is that I want to be honest. I won’t go on about it because I’ve already done that bit enough, but most of us use social media in a way that makes us think it’s hard to show the bad stuff. Whatever the social media version of “putting on a brave face” is… for golfers it’s either total disappearance or “not the result I wanted but the game feels close!”. Does it though? If I’m going to be there, I want to be real about it. And it hurts.

Here’s the thing about golf though. (Pain part done, perspective part incoming). Lots of patterns look very very similar without actually being the same. My results might have had patterns during the year, but the way I have had them is changing every day. A 75 that shows you the potential of a 64 may well be a better indicator for your future than a 70 that could have never been in the 60s. It made me think of that stupid dress that did the rounds on social media a few years ago that some people saw as blue and some people saw as brown. It was exactly the same image. Yet different people saw it as being completely different. And if you looked at it long enough, you might have seen it as both colours yourself. (Don’t google it. It isn’t worth it). Certainty, by its nature, shouldn’t be changeable. And yet it is. The way things look is not always as they are. So maybe really, the only thing that’s actually certain… is uncertainty. Being aware enough to remember that – whether it’s through emotion or analysis or writing blogs as you cross the Atlantic or by simply not giving a fuck – that’s what will make the difference.

The short version of this blog is the tweet that did the rounds after Justin Rose got to world number 1 a couple of weeks ago.

It isn’t anything new (I’ve probably written nearly every blog on this theme.. sorry), because trusting the process is one of the most apt cliches there is for a sportsperson. If you’re trying to push yourself to new levels, or achieve high standards of performance, you’re going to fall. You’re going to have setbacks. It isn’t a straight line to success, however it might look from the outside. But there was something in that tweet about Justin Rose that really got me. Something about it being laid out in black and white, a few simple numbers to condense infinite moments of success and failure. A story that, if it ended now, would have a clearly defined beginning – silver medal as an amateur at the Open – and a clearly defined end – becoming the best player in the world. And yet everything that lies in between those two moments in time is what makes it all worthwhile.

I can’t remember if I was told this at university or when I was six – when you write a story, there are two things to remember. The first is that your story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. The second is that the middle part has to have conflict. There has to be tension, there has to be a challenge that has to be overcome or something that goes wrong that needs resolving. They told us it was to create interest in the story, to make people want to read it. But I’m starting to believe they really told us that because there is no other way. And what none of us realise maybe, is that we’re always in the middle part of our stories. That’s the beauty of it.
Unless I decided to end my professional golf career right now, I’m still in the middle of my story. I’m still in the conflict. Justin Rose might have reached world number one, but I’m 100% certain that isn’t where his goals end. Which means there will still be struggles. He lost the tournament that got him to the top rung and there was probably more pain in that than immediate satisfaction in the achievement that followed it. Angela Stanford just won her first major at the age of 40. You want to tell me there haven’t been times that either of those players had doubts that they would ever achieve what they wanted to?

Being hungry to achieve success isn’t a negative. Being impatient to fulfill what you think you’re capable of isn’t a negative. But comparing your story to that of someone else, or to what you think yours should look like… that’s where you can run yourself into a dead end. I also think it’s worth pointing out that schedules can make a big difference to your perspective on things. I don’t know for a fact, but I would guess that Justin Rose’s first 20 missed cuts came in the timeframe of a year or less. If he’d had to wait three years to accumulate those 20 missed cuts, it would have been a hell of a lot harder for him to put things in context. Likewise, playing your first major in your twenties and questioning why you’re not contending, when players younger than you are doing just that, doesn’t mean you never will. Not winning a tournament in your first few years doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of winning. When your first win is a major, I think you answer that question pretty loudly. Someone else’s snapshot in time tells you absolutely nothing about their story to that point. If you read the last line of a book without reading anything else, it wouldn’t make any sense. And you wouldn’t understand its significance.

Sometimes bad results can make you feel like you’re falling off a cliff. But unless you decide it’s the end of your story, you’re not just going to freefall, you’re going to hit a ledge. And then, you’re going to find another way up.

If I manage to write this before I fall asleep it’ll be an accomplishment in itself. I’m on a flight back to Heathrow from Geneva, more ready than I can describe for two weeks at home. I haven’t had more than two weeks at home this year since January… and I probably won’t until December… at which point I’ll probably decide to leave again as the reality of winter in England hits me. I wouldn’t change the travelling part of professional golf – I wouldn’t be any good at staying in one place for very long anyway – but times like this definitely make me appreciate home comforts. Being constantly on the move makes it difficult to get your thoughts in order, never mind your life… the thing I’m looking forward to most about some time at home is exactly that – I can only describe it as taking my brain out, giving it a massage, and filing all the scattered lessons, fluctuating emotions and burgeoning ideas into their appropriate places.

Being aware enough to learn lessons is one thing, but with the day-to-day demands of getting on with a career, holding onto those lessons is the hardest part. It’s like in school when you think you’ve grasped something while it’s being taught to you. You get given a long-term homework project on it which you inevitably leave until the night before and suddenly discover you can’t remember a single thing. Golf is the same, life is the same. If you don’t carve out time to reflect on the things you’re learning, you’re going to forget them. And fast forward months, years later – you find yourself in a situation that throws those very same lessons you didn’t quite acknowledge all over again.

So anyway… this blog is as much for me as anyone else. Me trying to capture this moment before it gets left behind in the mountains of France and Geneva, left on a podium in Gleneagles, left on an autographed glove at Lytham, left in a pot bunker of Gullane. I came third this week in an event on the Access series, with actually one of my best performances of the year. There’s a multitude of reasons that happened, and I don’t want to diminish the importance of the hard work or analysis I’ve put in. But bit by bit in these few weeks, I’ve been letting go. Letting go of the technical thoughts, of the questions, of the doubt. All of that came from a rational place – being away for a while combined with not great results led some technical issues to come in, which I had to work hard to get rid of. Whether those technical issues crept in from a mental standpoint is another topic… or maybe it’s the exact same one. It’s a fine line between trusting your own ability and being aware of your own tendencies. But this week, I was almost forced to trust my own ability – I didn’t have the physical or mental energy to go and work on things I thought might or might not be there. Or to create as close to a bomb-proof course strategy as possible. Or to do endless putting drills until I was sure I wouldn’t miss any 6 footers. Instead, I slept as much as I possibly could, and tailored my warm up to what I knew might be the difference in this particular tournament (reading the greens properly)… and went out and played. Without really thinking. Without worrying. And found a freedom that brought me within a couple of holes of winning a tournament.

Trying to find that state of mind in tournaments is I guess what every golfer is searching for. We find it in flashes; and as soon as we recognise it, it disappears. Call it being in the zone, flow, Zen, whatever. The point is, trying to find it is the complete opposite way to find it. But when we find it, that’s when the ability takes over. Every hour of effort, of practice, of learning that we’ve ever put in, that’s when all of that shows itself. Not when we’re trying to force it out. But rather than trying to tug on the zip that reveals the best version of ourselves, staying quiet, staying calm, staying patient… brings it out all by itself.
We’ve all got a terrible habit of getting in our own way. There are enough things blocking our paths to success… and yet we’ve all got the power to get rid of the most powerful one. If we could only stop trying so hard.

Pretending things don’t exist usually isn’t a particularly beneficial way of dealing with them.

I’ve been writing this blog for a while. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not great at getting things done if I don’t see them as immediately necessary. In college I would have a month to write a ten page paper, and I’d genuinely try to get moving on it in plenty of time. But it’s almost as though I couldn’t make my brain function at the capability I needed it to until that deadline was dancing irrevocably in front of me… the number of midnight due deadlines I pressed submit on at 11.59 fills me with a mixture of shamefulness and pride. So maybe because I don’t have an approving (or disapproving) professor to kickstart the gears in my brain anymore, a lot of my blogs hover on the edges of my subconscious until some kind of trigger brings them to life. But waiting for triggers isn’t usually a great recipe for success in this world.

In this instance, I’ve probably been subconsciously waiting for the trigger that shows it’s all worth it. The struggles, the missed cuts, the hurt and confusion when the practice doesn’t translate into results. When the areas you’ve identified, broken down and improved, don’t have an immediate impact. When all the threads that you’ve so carefully, delicately, meticulously woven together start slipping away uncontrollably and however hard you try and grasp them, it’s like trying to catch smoke. When you’re trying to figure out if you should practice more, grind harder, or brush things aside, or be patient, or trust yourself, or look for help, or have a break, or get blind drunk and come back again when the hangover has subsided (surprisingly to some, I haven’t actually tried that option in the last few months… maybe that’s where I’m going wrong). And then, like for me in Australia, something unknowing clicks into place and you get the sign you’ve been waiting for that it is all worth it.

But by waiting for that trigger I’m doing the exact opposite of what I’m trying to write about. The social media world brings with it a complete reluctance to be real; an unwillingness to show weakness and admit struggle. Part of me doesn’t want to show anything at all on social media, and part of me also understands the reality of professional sport… showing any sign of weakness can be an opportunity for your opponents to get ahead of you. It’s part of being an athlete, of wanting to be the best you can be. But the devastating consequences of living in this virtual, partial reality are becoming more and more prevalent. It’s a glittering magnet that sucks you into the black hole it’s hiding; the bright lights, the sunsets, the coffee art, the bikini bodies and perfect couples and the never ending stories of success. We’re hypnotised by it all, endlessly tapping and scrolling on a screen full of people we don’t really know, if at all. Their slices of happiness.

And yet, everybody struggles. Everybody has doubts and indecisions and times when they feel completely and utterly lost. Publicising your flaws might not feel like the way to become stronger, particularly in professional sport, but it’s about perspective as much as anything. Your weaknesses can be the very same things that make you strong if you look at them in a different way. Sport, more than anything, is the perfect example of how that can be the case. There’s a reason we all love a comeback story, a reason why we all care more about the athlete or the team that’s dragged itself up from the dirt over the one who’s on a seemingly unbreakable winning streak. It reminds us that it’s ok to fail, it’s ok not to have everything all figured out. Accepting that is part of making yourself better.

Maybe deleting Twitter and Instagram and all the rest is the better way to deal with things. But if you’re going to show any of the picture, I strongly believe you should show more than just the highlight reel. If we’re going to build things up – the Instagram posts of excited anticipation, the grateful sponsor plugs, the firm belief that the hard work is about to show up in results – then I think we have a responsibility to use social media to reflect too. Or to at the very least be honest that a result hurts, that you’re frustrated, or angry, or disappointed. Because the youngsters growing up following their stars on Instagram; they need to know that that’s all a part of the process too. In a way that’s more than just “learnt a lot, had a great experience” etc. The GB&I Curtis Cup team just lost pretty heavily to the USA, and while the end result won’t be reflective of the standard of golf displayed by every player, it’ll still hurt them. I know every one of those players will have had an incredible week despite the result… but I also know they’ll be disappointed, they’ll be angry when they read comments about a lack of competitiveness between the two teams. And yet that will make every single one of those players better in the long run, if they acknowledge those feelings. Creating strength from weakness.

Giving people glimpses into your world isn’t just about the finished, filtered picture. It’s about the crumpled up drafts, the torn edges and the scribblings out and the colours that don’t really match when you look at them closely. Professional sport, especially golf, is a minefield of pain and doubt and indecision. But navigating all of that is what makes it so rewarding. That’s what makes it real. And should being real really be the thing we’re trying to hide?