Wednesday 17 August 2022
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,...
Friday 29 July 2022
Analysing your game can be productive. Over-analysing it can be a recipe for disaster. In her exclusive Today’s Golfer column, LET star Meghan MacLaren says playing with a free mind will lead to better results – and a better time. One of the most difficult parts of being a professional golfer – from a mental perspective – is not getting sucked...
Friday 17 June 2022
In her exclusive Today’s Golfer Column, LET star Meghan MacLaren discusses why winning a Major isn’t necessarily the best barometer of success. From the moment I started taking my future in golf seriously, the ultimate, overarching goal has always been to be the best player in the world. Hopefully, it goes without saying that winning a Major would be a dream,...
Tuesday 26 April 2022
As Tiger Woods’ career begins to wind down, LET star Meghan MacLaren discusses the influence the 15-time Major winner has had on golf and analyses who else can move the needle. How lucky are we to have lived in the era of Tiger Woods? When I was a kid, I don’t think I ever truly appreciated the greatness that I got...
Friday 4 March 2022
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren on why the Phoenix Open’s party hole is benefitting the game. How often does non-Major (or Major, for that matter) professional golf make it into the mainstream media? For all of us obsessive golf fans, it sometimes seems alien that other people might not be as captivated as us by a silky short-sided lob shot,...
Monday 17 January 2022
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren takes a trip to LPGA Q School, where golf dreams go to die. What do you think you would do if your future came down to a two-week examination? What would you do if a whole year’s – or career’s – worth of work was either signed off or thrown out the window, based on...
Thursday 9 December 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren talks about how the theraputic nature of golf has something to offer everyone. On one of my trips to the US, I was practising at a quiet and relatively exclusive course one Friday evening. That particular week was a family holiday in the US, so the golf course was even more deserted than usual. (Perhaps...
Tuesday 19 October 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren asks: ‘What really constitutes success for a golfer?’ Sometimes I wonder what non-golfers’ perspectives are on golf. How do they view our game through the lens of other sports? The people who have never really tried golf, apart from a one-off foray to the driving range where they’re just as likely to try to tee...
Monday 27 September 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren asks: ‘Are professional golfers really there to entertain us?’ Are you someone who watches golf on television? Chances are, if you are reading this, you probably are. Do you watch any golf tournament – no matter what event it is, what course it’s being played on, which players are involved? However much you love golf,...
Wednesday 1 September 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren explains why attitude and adaptability are the golfer’s key traits. Midway through a recent tournament, one of my playing partners and I realised we were telling the exact same story. The third player in our group had asked a question about golf on links courses, and so we started reminiscing about the British Amateur Championships...
Thursday 29 July 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren explains why the pursuit of golfing perfection is a waste of time. Golf is complicated, isn’t it? One day you go out and play and you’re hitting your irons the best you ever have. You think you’ve stumbled upon some great secret to success and you can’t believe it could be so simple – for...
Thursday 17 June 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren explains why mixed male-female tournaments are vital for golf’s future. By the time you read this, the Scandinavian Mixed on the Ladies European Tour and the European Tour will have taken place. You will already know what stories it throws up; who ultimately comes out on top; who shines and who grinds – and, perhaps...
Wednesday 19 May 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren explains that while class may be permanent at the highest levels of golf, it’s never a guarantee of success. So far, 2021 has been the year of the comeback. In the last few months we’ve had Jordan Spieth, Lydia Ko, Ariya Jutanugarn, Brooke Henderson, Hideki Matsuyama – even Rory McIlroy could be included in this...
Friday 7 May 2021
Ladies European Tour star Meghan MacLaren explains what we can learn from professional golfers’ mentalities and how knowing our weaknesses can help limit their impact. How many times have you heard someone say, after a great round or a tournament victory, that they didn’t look at a leaderboard once? Do you believe them? If I’m being honest, I’ve always found it...
Monday 12 April 2021
Meghan MacLaren explains the key part of ‘golf IQ’ is knowing what works for you and sticking to it. There is an old cliché in golf that to be truly successful, you must be one of two things: extremely intelligent or extremely not-intelligent. The truth, like most things in life, is more likely that we all lie somewhere in the middle,...
Monday 15 March 2021
Every one of us is capable of playing bad shots, even the game’s Major-winning greats. But as Ladies European Tour star Meg MacLaren explains in her exclusive column, it’s how you react to them that determines so much. Like a lot of people, particularly over the last year, I’ve been through more than my fair share of Netflix. Whether I’m rewatching...
Monday 15 February 2021
Amid the uncertainty of lockdown, LET star Meghan MacLaren is still in the dark over when the new season will begin again – or how it will look. I vividly remember the December/January off-season that preceded 2020. I’d spent many winter breaks wrestling with the same dilemma – spend the following season on the Symetra Tour, the feeder tour to the...
Monday 1 February 2021
Ladies European Tour golfer Meghan MacLaren is unimpressed that the LPGA failed to find space for Major champions Sophia Popov and A. Lim Kim in their season-ending tour championship. If you are more productive with your time than I am, you might miss the various instances of outrage on ‘Golf Twitter’. The one that amazed – and infuriated – me the most...
Friday 18 December 2020
Meghan MacLaren ponders why, as both golfers and humans, experience gradually erodes the fearlessness of youth. I played a pro-am in the UK recently. My three playing partners were a club captain, a self-made businessman, and the businessman’s 14-year-old son. They were all decent golfers and lovely people, but four hours with the 14-year-old caused me a mixture of intrigue and mild...
Thursday 5 November 2020
Today’s Golfer columnist and LET star Meghan MacLaren admires sports stars who are honest – both with themselves and with fans. I played a practice round recently for an event on the Symetra Tour in Florida. One of my playing partners asked the other to video one of her tee shots. There’s nothing unusual about that. When we are caddie-less, we...