In the second instalment of a new series which follows the journey of English pro Meghan MacLaren, the Ladies European Tour rookie discusses her build up to the new season.
In the second instalment of a new series which follows the journey of English pro Meghan MacLaren, the Ladies European Tour rookie discusses her build up to the new season.
February
The balance of practice and competing ...when you have time to practise, eventually all you want is to get out there competing again. And then once you’re out there competing, all you want is time to practise again. That’s where I’ve found myself in the past month or two and I was lucky enough to get out to America at the end of February. I went to Florida in order to achieve some better quality practice. I had been working hard at home with my coaches, but there are definitely
limitations to what you can do in the English weather!
March
The other reason I went to the US was to put some of my practice to the competitive test. I played two warm-up events on the National Women’s Golf Association Tour and finished 2nd and 8th. It was pretty cool to pick up my first couple of cheques!
It was great to get that buzz of competition again - the ups and downs of tournament play are like a drug. But it’s ingrained in my nature to over-analyse, and most rounds leave me questioning things I might be doing in practice, or my course management, or my mindset ... or pretty much anything.
I love quotes and one I’m thinking about at the moment is “be stubborn about your goals, but flexible about your methods.”
Accepting when something isn’t working and being brave enough to try things differently is one of the smartest things you can do. Yet one of the most used phrases for golfers is ‘trust the process’, and rightly so. I’m a pretty patient person (I got through four years of college!), but I want to see instant results on the golf course.
Having the patience to trust what you’re doing is perhaps even more difficult in this world (and sport) of over-complication and too much information. I was asked
recently, “how many things can really go wrong when you’re only moving your putter from there to there?” It holds a lot of truth, especially when you consider how few great putters will tell you they have technical thoughts when they are on the course. But one of the first steps in turning my putting into a strength was to
understand my tendencies in my putting stroke.
I’ve heard people say that coaches should decide what to tell their player, what information to give out and what to leave out. Work on a ‘need to know’ basis.
I can see the benefit, but I also think it reduces the player. The most successful dynamics occur when people feed off each other, not when they have a fixed mindset about what is and isn’t part of their role. In my opinion, understanding yourself - your game, your strengths, your weaknesses - and having people around you that you trust to have the same understanding is a foundation both for success and for learning from failure.
Meghan MacLaren Claims Second LETAS Title. Read More
