Teed off with Trump
Meghan Maclaren on why she will not play a round with president
As a young collegiate golfer based in Miami, Meghan Maclaren used to occasionally bump into the owner of a local golf resort. The courses were at Doral, frequent host of PGA events, and the proprietor was a certain Donald Trump.
This was in the mid 2010s as Trump was making his political ascent.
Maclaren, despite establishing herself as an activist for gender equality in professional golf, does not mind admitting that the future president held a certain charm.
“I played at Doral,” she says. “I bumped into him a few times before he was president and he came across as really nice in those interactions.”
Yet, due to her strong convictions about women’s rights, she would refuse a round of golf at Trump International at West Palm Beach where the president has previously played with Rory Mcilroy, Tiger Woods and recently the top-ranked American woman Lexi Thompson. What if the hypothetical round could be used as a platform for issues in women’s golf? But the 25-year-old remains resolute.
“It is like with anything, you wouldn’t hang around with people who you strongly disagree with. If people said things you didn’t like and made you feel uncomfortable, you wouldn’t want to spend time with them.
“I want to make sure I always represent what I have said, I just want to be genuine, that is why I think people pay attention.
“If I am in a situation where I feel like I am compromising any of that, I won’t do it.”
Over the past number of years using her personal blog, the Englishwoman, who is a member at Woburn where the AIG Women’s British Open is teeing off today, has tackled many topics in golf from Woods’s comeback to issues specific to the women’s game and even more particular to women’s golf in Europe.
While the LPGA thrives, the Ladies’ European Tour (LET) is stagnating, with a lack of events and investments coupled with top players such as defending Open champion Georgia Hall opting to play in the United States.
As a result, the LET lacks exposure to entice sponsors, and players find it difficult to earn a decent living. “It doesn’t sit right with me that you can have 200 guys in Europe making a comfortable salary, and I am generalising a bit because some do struggle, but there are probably
only five girls making a comfortable living, if they only chose to play in Europe. That is tough.”
Being in Maclaren’s company it is clear she is obsessive about her sport. As a teenager, she was academic, a voracious reader and had considered applying to Oxford
‘Guys will have equipment thrown at them. The girls will struggle to get 10 per cent off ’
or Cambridge. Yet the lure of golf was too much for her. Instead, she took up a golf scholarship at Florida International University and it was during that time – as she, like many young people, often felt “like I was on the outside looking in” – that she discovered her passion for writing.
Despite being easy company,
the Solheim Cup contender describes herself as an introvert and there is something about her reflective and creative nature that is not dissimilar to the up-andcoming Greek tennis star Stefanos Tsitsipas, who uses photography and film-making as an outlet.
It would seem writing became her release valve from a sport with which she happily admits to almost feeling she has an allconsuming love affair.
“Golf is like that [a relationship] for me, as much as you want to walk away at times, you still have that love there. How I think so much about everything, there were a lot of things that were always going around my head and at some point I think I must have realised, writing them down helped.”
As time as has gone by, she has often adopted the voice of an activist. Yet she ponders if she had made the cut at the LPGA qualifying school, would she be taking the stand that she is?
“The LPGA has done amazing stuff. If things had fallen differently for me, I probably wouldn’t be saying a lot of the things I am saying, which is hard to accept as a person because you would want to believe you would always stand up for certain things.”
The other area on which Maclaren, whose father David has held several executive positions in the men’s game including as deputy chief operating officer of the European Tour, is particularly illuminating is how the majority of female golfers on the LET will pay for their clubs. Forget about lucrative endorsement deals where players are paid to play with a certain brand.
“Guys will get thrown equipment and money left, right and centre. The girls will struggle to find somebody who will give them 10 per cent off.
“Some players in Europe will get equipment provided to them, you will get one or two who will get paid to use equipment but that is it. Everybody else will have to scrounge; if you are lucky you might get some free equipment.
“I would say less than one per cent of girls in Europe get paid to use equipment. The numbers on the men’s tour who get paid to use equipment is going to be 70 per cent plus. That is pretty scary. I know if you are an equipment company you are going to throw your product where it can be seen and if we don’t get TV coverage, they don’t have reason to give us products, so the argument goes back.
“So, if people want to make the argument that the level of women’s golf isn’t as good as men’s golf, I don’t think they understand that if you have to pay for your golf clubs that is money that could go to getting a better coach or getting your coach to come out to a tournament with you, all things that are going to effect you in the long run; the standard isn’t going to go up.”
She also believes that many manufacturers would be more keen to use a social media influencer than a LET player to promote clubs.
“As Tour players in Europe we can’t give them that exposure.
“I think the LET needs a massive influx of money, we can’t do what we do as a Tour because of the budget.
“If you look at women’s football and they are in a different place than women’s golf, but it needs a company like Barclays to come along and say ‘we are going to invest in this and help you do things, you can’t on your own’.”
Maclaren seems to have the golf business sussed. Would she consider a career in helping to run the game? She takes time to ponder her answer and responds, “Anybody who wants ideas, I am happy to share.”
Hopefully an invitation those in high places in golf will take up.