Meghan MacLaren: “Every round of golf feels like a mental battle”

Meghan MacLaren discusses the mental pressures of life as a pro.

Meghan MacLaren discusses the mental pressures that come with being a professional golfer.

Some things seem to get clearer with age, and with experience. Others seem to get blurrier. I remember overhearing a professional golfer, a couple of years ago, describe the majority of our profession as “highly functioning depressives”, and without wanting to make light of real mental health issues, I don’t think that’s too far off the mark.

Of course, the customary asterisk fits here. A lot of professional golfers have a very privileged lifestyle, and I don’t take for granted for a second the fact I get to do what I love for a living. Regardless of how my writing comes across, I wouldn’t change it. But hanging on to the vision sometimes feels like trying to hang on to a cliff face.

Players who miss cuts or shoot over par on the weekends don’t tend to get interviewed all that often, so we don’t get to hear the best players in the world talk about how difficult it is, even for them, so much of the time. The questions we hear more often are directed to the leaders, or the winners, and are usually along the lines of “How great does it feel to shoot 64?” “How does it feel to win this tournament?” Or “How does it feel to go home with $5 million?” 

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The thing is, in those moments, it really does just feel great. The darkness is irrelevant. In those moments, the unprompted voice crackling over a FaceTime call while explaining a final-round 75; the dejected pressing of refresh for three hours to see just how close to 60th place you can wind up; the disorientating smallness of not being able to control the putter face over a two-footer – none of those things matter anymore. The lonely drives across three different US states to catch a Saturday flight instead of a Monday one, the well-meaning but insincere texts and social media posts about enjoying a week but not getting the result you wanted, the desperate acceptance of silently feigning an injury if it means a break in the cycle.

When you have a microphone thrust in your face and you’re handed a trophy so big that you can barely hold it, none of that matters at all. They are all just fragments that make up the HD picture of the leaderboard by the 18th green; numbers and letters and emotions that spell out something resembling satisfaction… once you check with your walking scorers that you’re reading it correctly.

I’m happy to say that I haven’t had a ‘dark’ year or career by any stretch of the imagination – not even with my negatively-biased unconscious mind that won’t fully buy into the nightly meditation app I feed it.

I’ve so far won seven professional events – in a still relatively small number of total events – and I’ve been 
in contention on a good number of occasions. I’ve got some great backing from sponsors and incredible coaches. I’ve got people who will love and support me whether I win 10 tournaments a year or decide to quit tomorrow. 

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t felt dark moments. Everyone’s definition of darkness is relative, of course. But as more and more public figures open up about their mental health, it’s important to recognise that everyone’s feelings are real and valid.

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Of course, there are thousands of people that would give anything to swap their nine-to-five office jobs for shooting 75 on beautiful golf courses every week of the year. I get that. But knowing that won’t necessarily get rid of the searing emptiness that a player feels every night as they walk down to hotel reception again to ask for a plastic knife and fork to eat their takeaway food with. Those dark corners, they do matter. How could they not? We all experience them along the way, even if we don’t always want to acknowledge them. 

I also have a brain that never seems to want to sleep and play a sport that can never be mastered, which creates a motivating but confused cocktail of thoughts I try to decipher by writing. If it didn’t dictate so much of my mental, emotional and financial stability, I’d be infinitely fascinated by the game of golf. As it is, golf is just really annoying. But I’m still here, and I still love it.

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