Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Fried Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: I am joined here by Garrett Morrison, editor managing editor
Speaker 1: of The Frida Egg.
Speaker 2: Not just an editor managing I'm a manager of editors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you manage my ass, you know. So we got
Speaker 1: a new podcast format here. Pretty exciting, you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this episode is going to take the form
Speaker 2: of a documentary podcast. We're basically telling the story of
Speaker 2: Megan McLaren, Ladies European Tour player at Q School and
Speaker 2: then getting some of her thoughts about the state of
Speaker 2: the women's game and some other things. But instead of
Speaker 2: presenting it just as the traditional interview, we are telling
Speaker 2: it as a story with voiceovers for me, excerpts from
Speaker 2: my interview with her, a little bit of music to
Speaker 2: go along with the story. It's you know, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a documentary format that we're trying out here just
Speaker 2: to see how it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna call them Frida Egg Stories for now,
Speaker 1: unless we come up with a better name.
Speaker 3: If you've got a better name, let us open to suggestions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I'll hate you with some swag if we
Speaker 1: use it.
Speaker 2: That's what we can offer.
Speaker 1: And then you got another one next week. So it
Speaker 1: should be exciting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I can put it together, there'll be something
Speaker 2: that is President's Cup themed, something about Australia, and that
Speaker 2: should be pretty interesting. But I've got a massive tape
Speaker 2: to work through first, and we'll see what I can assemble.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let us know what you think of the
Speaker 1: new format and if you like it, let us know.
Speaker 1: If you hate it, let us know and we'll get better.
Speaker 2: That's the idea.
Speaker 1: I think this is pretty good though, So without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's Megan McLaren.
Speaker 2: Frid Egg requires a different technique. What you need to
Speaker 2: do is actually square the face so it'll dig down
Speaker 2: underneath that bad.
Speaker 3: Lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Playing out of a buried lion of bunker is completely
Speaker 1: different than playing out of a nice clean lion a
Speaker 1: greenside bunker.
Speaker 2: You need to be aggressive on any shop, whether it's
Speaker 2: sitting cleanly. For it's Friday Egg, well we've all faiked it.
Speaker 2: The dreaded Frida Egg not to be feared though.
Speaker 3: It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit.
Speaker 2: Megan McLaren was a standout golfer in college. She turned
Speaker 2: pro after graduating and now she's one of the top
Speaker 2: players on the Ladies European Tour. But before all that,
Speaker 2: Meg was a Harry Potter geek.
Speaker 3: I remember I must have been I don't know how old.
Speaker 3: I was pretty young, like seven or eight or nine
Speaker 3: or something like that, and like this Harry Potter grace
Speaker 3: was taken over the whole of England. And this was
Speaker 3: somebody who absolutely loved reading. And for whatever reason, I
Speaker 3: had this like, I'm not gonna like Harry Potter. Harry
Speaker 3: Potter's not for me. Harry Potter's for like, you know,
Speaker 3: weird people who were into things that can never ever
Speaker 3: happen in real life, you know. So I was like
Speaker 3: completely refused, point blank to even try it. And I
Speaker 3: remember one night, I think my mum had put like
Speaker 3: some clean washing on my bed or something, and on
Speaker 3: top was the Harry Potter book, like the first one.
Speaker 3: So I was like, okay, fine, you know I'm gonna
Speaker 3: hate this, but whatever, I'll try it. And I could
Speaker 3: not put it down. I was like, you're stereotypical, like
Speaker 3: falling over myself reading a book. I took it to school,
Speaker 3: I read it in the cars. Even if I like
Speaker 3: felt sick, I just you know, and that was it.
Speaker 2: I was hooked, and the magical adventure may have extended
Speaker 2: a bit beyond childhood.
Speaker 3: And I would even I remember like, I'm probably going
Speaker 3: to get myself into I'm going to get abuse for
Speaker 3: this now. But I remember coming back from college and
Speaker 3: I saw, I really want to read something, but I've
Speaker 3: got nothing to read. And I remember reading all of
Speaker 3: the Harry Potter books from start to finish that summer,
Speaker 3: like it just it's one of those things that once,
Speaker 3: once you're in it, you're in it.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Meg had a passion for reading, and over time,
Speaker 2: as it often does, that turned into a passion for writing.
Speaker 2: Four years ago, the age of twenty, she started a
Speaker 2: blog at megmaclaren dot com. She's kept it up to
Speaker 2: this day, and it's it's great. It's this lovely account
Speaker 2: of a young golfer coming of age. She's not afraid
Speaker 2: to take on big issues like the gender gap in
Speaker 2: professional sports, but mostly she writes about a very personal subject,
Speaker 2: the inner life of an athlete who's fighting to get better,
Speaker 2: and she does that really vividly and movingly. More and
Speaker 2: more people have been discovering Meg's blog, and she's happy
Speaker 2: about that, But the basic motivation of her writing is
Speaker 2: the same as it always has been.
Speaker 3: It's just me trying to make sense of things, and
Speaker 3: in its simplest form, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2: Part two Q School. On David Verity's TV show, Phil
Speaker 2: Nicholson said that in golf, to be successful, you have
Speaker 2: to be either really smart or really dumb. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's true, but it should be clear at
Speaker 2: this point that Meg McLaren is in the really smart camp.
Speaker 2: That's part of why I wanted to talk to her.
Speaker 2: I was curious about how such an introspective person went
Speaker 2: about the job of a professional golfer. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: got to be exhausting, right in golf often helps not
Speaker 2: to think, not to be too in your head. At
Speaker 2: the same time, golf is a complex game. If you
Speaker 2: want to understand it, it helps to be bright. A
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, Meg put her mental skills to the test.
Speaker 2: She spent most of October in the United States for
Speaker 2: LPGA Qualifying School. Right now, Meg makes her living on
Speaker 2: the Ladies European Tour or LT and she's doing well,
Speaker 2: but she's looking for more.
Speaker 3: You know, at the end of the day, I want
Speaker 3: to test myself against the best players in the world,
Speaker 3: so that would mean playing on the LPGA.
Speaker 2: In women's golf, the LPGA Tour is where big time
Speaker 2: careers are made. The lt just can't offer the same
Speaker 2: degree of security. So Q School was a major moment
Speaker 2: in Meg's career, potentially a turning point. What made it
Speaker 2: even more exciting was that she was on a role
Speaker 2: coming into Q School. She had just gotten a solo
Speaker 2: third at the Hero Women's Indian Open and her game
Speaker 2: felt strong.
Speaker 3: You go from thinking I've got to try and figure
Speaker 3: out what the number is going to be and just
Speaker 3: you know, get by on that to thinking, actually, you
Speaker 3: know what, this is just like another tournament that I
Speaker 3: can try and win or try and see what the
Speaker 3: lowest score I can I can have each day.
Speaker 2: Is that confidence got Meg through Stage two of Q
Speaker 2: School in Florida and into the final Q Series tournament.
Speaker 2: The Q Series format is a recent innovation, actually just
Speaker 2: introduced last year. Basically, instead of a regular seventy two
Speaker 2: whole event LPGAQ School now finishes with Q Series two weeks,
Speaker 2: eight rounds, one hundred and forty four holes. Top forty
Speaker 2: five and ties receive LPGA cards, So yeah, it's a grind.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly hard, Like there's nothing I've ever played like
Speaker 3: that before, you know, like can golf. Obviously every shot counts,
Speaker 3: but this just feels like every counts to an even
Speaker 3: greater extent because it's just there's so many players around
Speaker 3: you and everybody's just out for themselves. Like it's the
Speaker 3: atmosphere is quite hard to describe because you know that
Speaker 3: your entire year is dependent on it, So it's not
Speaker 3: you know, it's not a case of Okay, we can
Speaker 3: pick ourselves up and we can go again next week
Speaker 3: or the week after or the week after that. It's
Speaker 3: just like the here and the now is so important.
Speaker 3: It's incredible during that two week stretch, how many girls
Speaker 3: I saw crying at different points. And that's not just
Speaker 3: when it's all over, like that was, you know, in
Speaker 3: the car park after four rounds, or after five rounds,
Speaker 3: or after six rounds. It's just it's just so mentally
Speaker 3: exhausting that you know, people just can't always cope with it.
Speaker 2: This year's edition of Q Series was held at Pinehurst
Speaker 2: Resort between October twenty third and November two. As soon
Speaker 2: as it got underway. Meg knew that she didn't have
Speaker 2: her best game, but she hung in there, right on
Speaker 2: the bubble, hovering just above even par.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of different ways to shoot level par
Speaker 3: or one over par, and sometimes it can be a
Speaker 3: fantastic one over par, and sometimes it can be you know,
Speaker 3: that could be the absolute highest score you could have shot.
Speaker 3: Almost every round, I sort of went to two or
Speaker 3: three over par and somehow found a way to shoot.
Speaker 3: I think I shot one over for the second, third,
Speaker 3: and fourth rounds. That that that in itself was exhausting,
Speaker 3: because every day I was trying to course something back.
Speaker 2: Still, Meg kept telling herself that she didn't have to
Speaker 2: shoot lights out. The goal was just to advance.
Speaker 3: I think the whole Q score process is a bit
Speaker 3: more about avoiding mistakes that are going to be really costly.
Speaker 3: You know, if you can keep doubles and worse off
Speaker 3: your card, then you're never going to be taking yourself
Speaker 3: too far away from from what the number is going
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 2: At the beginning of the second week of play, Meg
Speaker 2: found something. The tournament had moved from the number six
Speaker 2: to the number nine course, and she had a new
Speaker 2: feeling out there, and I.
Speaker 3: Think I shot a couple under the first day, and
Speaker 3: the second day, I was playing the best that I'd
Speaker 3: played the whole time I'd been out in the States,
Speaker 3: you know, and just having that freedom felt so relaxing
Speaker 3: in comparison to the week before.
Speaker 2: During that second round of the week, her sixth round
Speaker 2: of the Q series, she got to three under par
Speaker 2: on the day, plus one for the tournament. Suddenly she
Speaker 2: was very much in the hunt for an LPGA membership.
Speaker 2: But then in her last four holes of the day
Speaker 2: she missed a couple of short cuts. On her seventeenth hole,
Speaker 2: she made her first double bogie of the entire tournament.
Speaker 3: And then you turn around, you have a late finish
Speaker 3: and an early start the next day, and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, yeah, energy is just completely gone, and you're
Speaker 3: trying to process around that you thought was going to
Speaker 3: kind of set you up for the rest of the week,
Speaker 3: and in reality, you've got to go back to grinding again.
Speaker 2: Q school was about avoiding mistakes, and Meg was starting
Speaker 2: to make a few with mental fatigue setting in. She
Speaker 2: shot seventy five in her seventh and second last round,
Speaker 2: but the thing was she was still in it. She
Speaker 2: was seven over and it was looking like the number
Speaker 2: was going to be four or five.
Speaker 3: And to be honest, because of everything that had happened
Speaker 3: the previous two weeks, the one thing I knew was
Speaker 3: that I could find a way to get myself back
Speaker 3: in it, however I felt.
Speaker 2: But the next day, the last day, it didn't start
Speaker 2: how she wanted.
Speaker 3: I played the par fives really well the whole time
Speaker 3: I was out there, because I was knocking my wedges
Speaker 3: in quite close. And I started on a par five
Speaker 3: in the last round, so knocked it to about six foot.
Speaker 3: I missed that plat for Birdie. I boged the next
Speaker 3: after hitting a bad drive, and then the next I
Speaker 3: was a part three and I hit it into about
Speaker 3: fifty foot, fancied the put for Birdie, knocked it a
Speaker 3: couple of feet past, and missed the put coming back.
Speaker 3: So to start like that in the final round, where
Speaker 3: you know you need to shoot underpa and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden you're two over having hit one bad drive,
Speaker 3: that was you know, it was tough to kind of
Speaker 3: care my way back from that.
Speaker 2: She tried, though, as she had done all week, Meg
Speaker 2: kept herself afloat, hacked my.
Speaker 3: Way up one hole, hold a fifteen foot of the pass,
Speaker 3: I was like, you know, got three holes left. If
Speaker 3: I can find two birdies, I might have a chance.
Speaker 3: And on my sixteenth hole, I think it was I
Speaker 3: hit my drive into trouble, had to chip out and
Speaker 3: ended up making double. And that was finally the moment
Speaker 3: where I knew I couldn't do it. You know, so
Speaker 3: you're you're there for however many holes, one hundred and
Speaker 3: something holes, and there's finally a moment with only kind
Speaker 3: of half an hour left, where you know it's gone.
Speaker 3: So whenever that hits you, it's kind of like a
Speaker 3: that's a pretty tough one to describe. It hits you
Speaker 3: all at once, that all of that energy that you've
Speaker 3: spent trying desperately to keep yourself in it, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just gone, and it's like you can feel all
Speaker 3: of that rushing out of your body kind of you know,
Speaker 3: it's the most flattening experience. And yet I think I
Speaker 3: think I birdied the next and it's just like it's
Speaker 3: one of those moments where you walk off the green
Speaker 3: and it's like, what, you know, what even is this
Speaker 3: game that we play? Sometimes I remember my Caddy turned
Speaker 3: to me after so I made double on sixteen, birdied
Speaker 3: seventeen and I probably had barely said a word in
Speaker 3: that space of time, and he turned to me and
Speaker 3: he just looked at me, and he was like, please
Speaker 3: just say something, like say anything so I know where
Speaker 3: you are. You know you've got you got so much
Speaker 3: running around your mind, but the reality is you're just exhausted.
Speaker 3: It's just like you completely spent because you've given so
Speaker 3: much and you know that it's there hasn't been enough.
Speaker 2: In that moment, Meg ended up with her second straight
Speaker 2: seventy five. She finished ten over five shots away from
Speaker 2: getting her LPGA card. Now that a couple of weeks
Speaker 2: have passed, Meg has had some time first not to
Speaker 2: think about it and then to reflect on what went
Speaker 2: right and what went wrong. Ultimately, it came down to
Speaker 2: something pretty simple, missing short cuts.
Speaker 3: And it's not something that I would kind of do
Speaker 3: in my game in general, but it's just something that
Speaker 3: crept in. Whether it was like a mental thing or
Speaker 3: the kind of toll of the whole year finally kind
Speaker 3: of caught up with me, and that's where it showed itself.
Speaker 2: Maybe it would have helped to be really dumb as
Speaker 2: Phil says, or at least to be able to just
Speaker 2: empty the thoughts from her head. Maybe. But if Meg's
Speaker 2: active mind got her into a bit of a hole
Speaker 2: at Pinehurst, it could help her get out too.
Speaker 3: Those two, well three weeks, including second stage, probably taught
Speaker 3: me more about the game that I have right now
Speaker 3: and where that can get me than any other stretch
Speaker 3: of tournaments I've ever played, because sort of, in the
Speaker 3: reality of it, those courses out in America don't suit
Speaker 3: me because they're long and it's it was soft, and
Speaker 3: it was wet and it was cold, and that's not
Speaker 3: really the game that I play. But I kind of
Speaker 3: I coped with that far better than I thought I could.
Speaker 3: And the thing that let me down, that really the
Speaker 3: only thing that stopped me from performing how I could have,
Speaker 3: was an area of my game that's usually a strength.
Speaker 2: Part three. What's next? Despite the disappointment, there are a
Speaker 2: lot of positives for Meg right now. Just by advancing
Speaker 2: into Q Series, she earned status on the Symetra Tour,
Speaker 2: the feeder tour for the LPGA, so she has options
Speaker 2: Next year. She's likely to play a few tournaments in
Speaker 2: the States while staying busy on the lt AS I
Speaker 2: mentioned before, Meg has found success on the Ladies European Tour.
Speaker 2: This past season, she was fifth on the Order of Merit.
Speaker 2: She also won the Women's New South Wales Open in
Speaker 2: Australia for the second year in a row. For Meg,
Speaker 2: the lat is starting to feel.
Speaker 3: Like home once you find your feet in Europe. You know,
Speaker 3: it's such a place of belonging and of kind of
Speaker 3: growing together with other players. You can kind of push
Speaker 3: each other and compete with each other and not feel
Speaker 3: like you're all enemies at the same time. I think
Speaker 3: because a lot of girls are in similar positions. So
Speaker 3: you've got a base in Europe somewhere. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of girls probably still living at home or with
Speaker 3: their partners. You're looking for ways to keep the costs
Speaker 3: down because you're not playing for that much money, so
Speaker 3: you spend a lot of time on the same flights
Speaker 3: or getting airbnbs together, and cooking together and traveling together
Speaker 3: and going out to the you know, like the welcome
Speaker 3: receptions for tournaments together. So you just get used to
Speaker 3: spending time together. So it does, you know a bit
Speaker 3: of a cliche to say it's like a family, but
Speaker 3: that's who you spend most of your time with so
Speaker 3: you better get on with each other or it's not
Speaker 3: going to be that much fun.
Speaker 2: One reason the LAT feels like a family is that
Speaker 2: the players fight for each other, and one reason they
Speaker 2: fight for each other is that they have to. In
Speaker 2: recent years, playing opportunities on the LAT have dwindled, the
Speaker 2: schedule has gotten shorter, and since there's not much TV
Speaker 2: coverage of the events, sponsorships for the players have been
Speaker 2: few and far between.
Speaker 3: I'd say the biggest difference in what I've seen anyway
Speaker 3: in America versus Europe, or in the men's game versus
Speaker 3: the women's game, it's the level of swanship there is.
Speaker 3: You know, it depends who you are and who you meet,
Speaker 3: but it's a lot more based on that in the
Speaker 3: women's game than it is with the big companies or
Speaker 3: equipment manufacturers kind of just paying you to play their equipment.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen in the women's game in Europe. There
Speaker 3: will be a fraction of girls in Europe that get
Speaker 3: paid to play equipment.
Speaker 2: In addition to that, there are big disparities between men's
Speaker 2: and women's prize funds. On the men's European Tour, the
Speaker 2: average tournament perse is around three million euro, and that
Speaker 2: excludes majors and wgc's. On the Ladies' European Tour, the
Speaker 2: average non major purse is about eleven percent that size,
Speaker 2: a bit above three hundred thousand euro. To put this
Speaker 2: in more personal terms, for winning the Women's New South
Speaker 2: Wales Open, Meg MacLaren earned about the same amount of
Speaker 2: money as burn Rithammer did when he tied for twenty
Speaker 2: seventh place at the Portugal Masters in October. What all
Speaker 2: of this means is that it can be tough for
Speaker 2: players on the LT to break.
Speaker 3: Even, but you're probably looking at you know, maybe about
Speaker 3: fifteen fifteen thousand for the year, just in in traveling costs.
Speaker 3: If you want to earn that back, you're probably looking
Speaker 3: at coming top twenty in good events or top ten
Speaker 3: in the smaller events. So I mean, it's like anything.
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, if you play well enough,
Speaker 3: you'll be fine and you can make a good living
Speaker 3: in Europe, just as you can make an amazing living
Speaker 3: in America. But as soon as things take a downward turn,
Speaker 3: or you miss a couple of cuts in a row,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you're watching your back and you're thinking,
Speaker 3: can I afford to go here for a week of practice,
Speaker 3: or can I afford to bring my coach out, or
Speaker 3: can I afford to go and see the physio. That's
Speaker 3: whenever things get tough.
Speaker 2: To be clear, Meg counts herself lucky that she gets
Speaker 2: to play golf for a living, but she also thinks
Speaker 2: it's important to call out the inequalities between the men's
Speaker 2: and women's games. When she does, her Twitter mentions take
Speaker 2: a turn for the unpleasant.
Speaker 3: And I've said that before, and I've been I've been
Speaker 3: quoted as saying something along those lines before. And the
Speaker 3: amount of abuse I've had on social media and stuff
Speaker 3: for just saying something like that that it blows me away.
Speaker 3: You know, people will say it's it's just economics, and
Speaker 3: it's about people paying for what they you know, like marketing,
Speaker 3: exposure and all the rest of it, which which I understand.
Speaker 3: You know, if we're not being shown on TV week in,
Speaker 3: week out, then then why would manufacturers pay us to
Speaker 3: play their equipment if nobody's going to see it? But
Speaker 3: I think it is. I think it runs a lot
Speaker 3: deeper than that.
Speaker 2: Basically, Meg doesn't think it's good enough just to say, well,
Speaker 2: the market has assigned of value to women's golf, and
Speaker 2: that's just how it is. She believes we can change things,
Speaker 2: but she doesn't put the onus solely on manufacturers, or
Speaker 2: is solely onto her leadership, or solely on the media.
Speaker 2: She argues that it needs to be a collective effort
Speaker 2: that we all need to do a little better.
Speaker 3: There's so many different angles that you can look at
Speaker 3: it from that it becomes a hard issue to kind
Speaker 3: of pinpoint a solution. But then at the same time,
Speaker 3: if everybody just did things slightly better. So I'm talking
Speaker 3: about the media, the players themselves. You know, we can
Speaker 3: market ourselves better or push for what we think we
Speaker 3: deserve a bit stronger. You know, if the people who
Speaker 3: run the organizations, if they pushed a bit harder, or
Speaker 3: if equipment manufacturers wanted to put in a little bit money,
Speaker 3: or use some female athletes in some of their marketing campaigns.
Speaker 3: All these things from so many different kind of investors
Speaker 3: in golf, you know, they could all make a difference.
Speaker 3: If everybody did a little bit, it could end up
Speaker 3: having a significant impact. But I think it's got to
Speaker 3: be a sort of combined effort and not just one
Speaker 3: or two different branches trying to push for change at
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, there's reason for hope. Just before Thanksgiving, the LT
Speaker 2: announced that it had formed a joint partnership with the
Speaker 2: LPGA Tour. While the details of that agreement have yet
Speaker 2: to be spelled out exactly, earlier reports suggests that persons
Speaker 2: on the LT will grow, and players are excited about
Speaker 2: all the possibilities. Still, there's plenty left to do. The
Speaker 2: biggest hurdle is that, in general, the golf world tends
Speaker 2: to treat the women's game as secondary. That's an old
Speaker 2: and tenacious mindset, and obviously Meg thinks all of us
Speaker 2: do what we can to combat it. But that's not
Speaker 2: just because it's the virtuous thing to do or something.
Speaker 2: It's more that if we don't follow the women's game,
Speaker 2: we're missing out on a lot of good golf and
Speaker 2: a lot of good stories, really for no good reason.
Speaker 3: It's not a simple case of saying, well, women's golf
Speaker 3: is boring, or women's golf is less entertaining, or women
Speaker 3: don't hit it as far. The amazing thing about golf
Speaker 3: as well is that there's so many intricacies to golf
Speaker 3: that make it compelling to watch, that make it entertaining,
Speaker 3: that make somebody who plays off twenty five able to
Speaker 3: relate to a professional golfer. It's unlike any other sport
Speaker 3: in that regard, and I think women's golf in particular
Speaker 3: has so much to offer to the casual golf fan.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a shame that it isn't seen more,
Speaker 3: that it isn't exposed more. I think people would be
Speaker 3: amazed at how much they could learn from it.
Speaker 2: Part four in between. Meg didn't set out to become
Speaker 2: a spokesperson for gender issues in pro golf. Just happened
Speaker 2: because she walks through the world as a woman and
Speaker 2: a golfer, and she reflects intensely on her experiences. At
Speaker 2: some point she realized that not everything is as it
Speaker 2: should be. If you look at her blog, you can
Speaker 2: see this realization happening, this growing understanding of her world
Speaker 2: and her place in it. You can also see from
Speaker 2: the very beginning a real desire to figure things out.
Speaker 2: When Meg started the blog, she was at college in Florida,
Speaker 2: far from her home in England, and she was confused,
Speaker 2: but she was determined to try to make sense of
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 3: I think it was just kind of dealing with being
Speaker 3: a college athlete in a country that you're not from,
Speaker 3: and then going back home and kind of dealing with
Speaker 3: more life at home, but also being a golfer as well,
Speaker 3: so competeing all over the world. But it was like
Speaker 3: having all these different lives that kind of intersected but
Speaker 3: then also you know, like collided at the same time.
Speaker 3: Like sometimes they just didn't they didn't add up.
Speaker 2: The different parts of Meg's life still don't add up. Really.
Speaker 2: She's under no illusion that she has it all figured out,
Speaker 2: and often she feels like she's in a permanent state
Speaker 2: of transition. Her very first blog post, for example, was
Speaker 2: about being twenty years old and feeling in between in
Speaker 2: between two countries, in between childhood and adulthood. Then one
Speaker 2: of her most recent pieces is about standing in immigration lines,
Speaker 2: another space of transition. It occurred to me that this
Speaker 2: is what it must be like to live as a
Speaker 2: pro golfer. You're constantly in transition. You're constantly in the
Speaker 2: process of becoming something new and trying to understand more
Speaker 2: and trying to do better. Right now, for instance, Meg
Speaker 2: MacLaren is between the disappointment of Q School and the
Speaker 2: open possibilities of the rest of her career.
Speaker 3: And maybe life is just like that for everybody. You know,
Speaker 3: you never I don't know. Even if people are settled
Speaker 3: and have their routines, I'm not sure everybody is ever
Speaker 3: really completely grounded or completely Yep, this is everything that
Speaker 3: I wanted from life, right here and now in front
Speaker 3: of me. That's kind of the beauty of it as well.
Speaker 3: And I get to do that through golf, and I'm
Speaker 3: incredibly lucky to do that through golf. And I suppose
Speaker 3: golf itself is you know, it's another version of that.
Speaker 3: Every round of golf has those in between moments and
Speaker 3: you're trying to deal with one moment to the next,
Speaker 3: you know, without getting ahead of yourself or without thinking
Speaker 3: too much about what's just happened. You know, there are
Speaker 3: so many similarities with what you go through in daytime
Speaker 3: a life, or as you transitioned from a child to
Speaker 3: a teenager to a college student to an adult, you know,
Speaker 3: and then it's like different levels of being an adult
Speaker 3: as well. So it's I don't know, I guess they
Speaker 3: kind of mirror each other in lots of different ways.
Speaker 2: This episode was a Frida Egg production. It was created
Speaker 2: and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, with editing from Jay Vierick.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Andy Johnson. Thanks for listening. This
Speaker 2: was obviously something new for us, so let us know
Speaker 2: what you think and whether you'd like to hear more