This is an abridged transcript of an interview between Sue Anstiss, SMS’ special adviser for women’s sport, and Ladies European Tour player Meghan MacLaren. To listen to the full recording, which forms Episode 7 of Season 11 of The Game Changers podcast, please visit:

Meghan MacLaren: Fighting for gender parity in golf – The Game Changers | Podfollow

Sue Anstiss

Meg, it’s been a pretty momentous last few weeks for women’s golf. I wonder if I can start by asking you about what happened at the most recent European tour event in Sweden?

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah, I mean, we’re recording this at a pretty incredible time actually, because they had, for anybody who doesn’t know, the men’s European Tour or DP World Tour, as it’s known now, had a joint tournament with the Ladies European Tour. So basically the men and the women play the same tournament for one trophy, so the prize money is whoever finishes first, you know, there’s no split between the men and the women. And they just set it up so that there’s a slight difference in tee positions to try and take account for obviously the biological differences, that the men have in terms of being stronger and more powerful. So we play off slightly forward tees. They’ve had maybe three or four of these tournaments over the last couple of years, and this was the first time that a female player has won one of them.

She didn’t just win it either. She won it by I think by nine shots and she was 14 shots ahead of the next female. So it’s a pretty extraordinary moment for, I think for golf as a whole, to be honest, not just for women’s golf.

Sue Anstiss

And you did comment, you went on Twitter that you’d begun to think it was just too hard to make the men /women balance work. So what did you mean by that?

Meghan MacLaren

Like I said, I’ve played a few of them now and I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have to say playing with the men is really, really interesting, but it’s incredible how are you hear some of the men think it’s unfair against them, because obviously we’re playing from forward tees, and then the women think it’s unfair for them because we don’t think maybe there’s enough difference sometimes. And there’s also obviously other subtle differences, like the way the men spin the golf ball is different so they can access different pin positions. And obviously the tournament organisers do a hell of a job to try and to try and account for all those things. But it just, it feels like such a lot of work, you know, when you’re still not gonna make everybody happy and on top of that, which I’m sure will go into, you have the, the kind of negative aspect of social media in a situation like that. So my personal preference would be you have the men and women in the same place, but playing for the same amount of money in an ideal world, but for two different tournaments. But having said all of that, seeing what happened and the reaction to it just made me sit back and go, you know what, this is exactly why we needed something like this and, you know, fair play to the people who have made it happen.

Sue Anstiss:

It’s interesting isn’t it, that feedback on the, where the tee should be?  I saw a chart that showed where there was an advantage more to the females and where there was more for the men. And actually it was very much in favor of the men, it looked.

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah, I think the thing that people seem to forget is we try and work it back from the green. So rather than it being a case of, okay, on average, the men hit it,  I don’t know, 50 yards further than the women, it’s about what club you’re hitting into the green. Because, if we both hit from 150 yards into the green, that’s a completely different club for the men than it is for the woman. So how the golf ball comes off the club face, how you can then access different pin positions is different. So the ideal solution is to have you hitting the same club into the green. So a guy hits a seven iron, then a girl hits a seven iron to try and balance things as much as you can,  but even then, you know, you’ve got different course layouts, it doesn’t always allow for things like that to happen. And that’s where I think you can maybe start to lose the essence of what a tournament should be, because you’re trying to manipulate things too much, but, you know, I would way rather they were trying to do something like this than not trying to do it.

Sue Anstiss

Indeed. And I think as you said, it made so much noise and it certainly was. I saw it across social media and people talking about it say, from that perspective, it certainly had a huge impact.

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah. I’d like to think it kind of cut through the golf barrier a little bit, because there’s not many other sports that could even attempt to do something like that. And obviously there’s been a fair bit of controversy recently with transgender athletes and, and how you kind of define, you know, the lines between what male sport is and what female sport is. And I think golf’s in a really cool position to, to have slightly blurry lines because I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

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This interview has been abridged. To see the full interview, visit Meghan MacLaren: Fighting for gender parity in golf – The Game Changers | Podfollow

Sue Anstiss

You write beautifully and if anyone hasn’t already done, so I would absolutely recommend they find your blog and I’ll share a link to it in the show notes.  That’s actually how I first became aware of you in  a Twitter thread that I later shared, with your permission I think in the opening chapter of my book, and it was about the inequalities of pay and coverage  in women’s golf. So what do you feel are the biggest challenges facing women’s golf?

Meghan MacLaren

I think exposure is still the main one,  which is why I know we touched on it, but events like the mixed events are so important because it just gives a platform that isn’t usually there. I would never argue necessarily that we, as women in golf deserve exactly the same amount of money as the men when it comes to prize money, because I understand that there are a lot of factors that influence it and people aren’t just gonna throw marketing and sponsorship dollars at a sport that doesn’t receive the same amount of TV revenue, for example, as the men’s game. But the bit that I’ve always tried to make the case for is that, that doesn’t just become like that overnight men’s sport, and this is obviously across multiple sports, you know, across the whole world really. They’ve been pushed for years and years,  for decades, and we’re playing catch up in pretty much every area.

And I just think if we are given a chance that eventually it will catch up. So when people make the argument of supply and demand, I think the demand will be there, just as much as it is for the men’s game. Certainly in golf, because women’s golf actually has a lot of things going for it that men’s golf doesn’t always, but it just needs to be given, I think, a similar opportunity to grow as the men’s game has been. And then you can start to see prize funds increase. Whether it has to come from the top down to filter into grassroots or it needs to go from the bottom up, I’m not sure what the answers are, but I think at every single level, if more opportunities are given, then I think the revenue increases across the board.

Sue Anstiss

And you mentioned that kind of pushback that you hear from social media and others in terms of the women’s game, doesn’t deserve that same coverage, cause it doesn’t have the same funding, doesn’t have the coverage in the viewers and so on. But how do you feel we can go about educating people to share what you’ve just stated there, the history that sits behind why women’s golf is where it is in comparison to men’s?

Meghan MacLaren

I guess the easiest way to answer people when they say that, is if you look at one of the biggest men’s events or even to be honest, any men’s event that you watch at the weekend or the past US Open that’s just finished. If you, if you put a woman’s event straight into that production, I think it would be very, very different to what you actually do watch whenever you see it. And there’s a ton of factors that bounce off that as well , in terms of the advertising that comes before or the storylines that are already created going into the event that all drive your interest and all engage you before it actually starts. And if you kind of put that perspective on it, I think it makes people realize that it’s not just as black and white as they think it is because there’s a whole range of factors that aren’t just what the performers do on their stage. You know, it’s about how that stage comes across to the viewer as well.

Sue Anstiss

You shared a very honest tweet at the beginning of the year, explaining how little you actually earn without sponsorship and it certainly created lots of debates, but how much are the women that play on the Ladies European tour, the LET, earning right now?

Meghan MacLaren

That answer’s very varied. So I’ll give you an example, the, the tournament that we were just talking about, the mixed event.  Lynn Grant won it. She’s having an incredible year. So she won just over 300,000 euros for winning that tournament. She won two weeks before that, in another Ladies European Tour event, obviously not a mixed event, just a standard Ladies European Tour event. And she won 30,000 euros. So 10 times less. It’s hard to kind of explain to people that yes, there are opportunities and the opportunities are getting better and better, but it’s still not it’s not like that across the board. So you can have a really good year and earn maybe £70,000 or $70,000, but your expenses are gonna be close to that for a year. And I think that’s also the bit that people don’t always grasp, when you’ve also got your living costs on top of that we have to pay for rent and pay for fuel and groceries the same as everybody else. The actual cost of being a professional golfer is probably a lot more than, than people realize.

Sue Anstiss

Your blog talks very openly about the mental challenges of playing golf and competing at the kinda highest level of sport. What’s the response been to your sharing content like that?

Meghan MacLaren

It’s been amazing to be honest, I, I actually just played a ProAm yesterday and I played with a, a girl who’s at college in America who I didn’t know beforehand and both her and her mum said to me that they’d like read my blog, and sometimes her mum sends her something that she finds because she’s like, you know, look it’s okay. Like, just because you’ve had a bad round or you’re having a bad spell it’s, other people struggle too. And to be honest, that’s the biggest reason that I’ve kept doing it is whenever I get players say things like that, because sometimes I feel like I’m talking to an empty void of like, I’m just sharing my thoughts, which helps me personally. But the reason I started doing it in the first place was because I was pretty sure other people felt the same way. And there isn’t always a space to acknowledge that and just to share some of those struggles. That’s kind of the most positive thing that, that has come out of a it for me.

Sue Anstiss

In early 2020, you took a decision not to take part in an event in Saudi Arabia, a principled and brave choice, but can you tell us about that event and, and why you decided not to take part?

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah, it’s, I mean, I guess it’s still an ongoing thing and it’s kind of come even to more prominence in golf this year, and it’s quite an an odd place to be, and I’m a Newcastle fan…

Sue Anstiss

That was my follow up question, actually!

Meghan MacLaren

It’s all, it’s all quite difficult to process, but yeah, they have a the Ladies European tour had an event in, in Saudi Arabia. I think the first one was maybe 2020.  But Aramco, who are a Saudi based, or a Saudi financed company, I think, they’ve also sponsored quite a few events on the Ladies European Tour now. So when the first event in, in Saudi Arabia took place, I decided not to play because to me, from the information that I sort of read and the things that you see on the news, I felt like they were, you know, it was all part of a sports washing kind of set up and agenda, and I just didn’t feel comfortable being part of it. I didn’t feel like I could kind of be the authentic version of myself that I want to portray and to be through everything I do, whether it’s writing or social media or my golf performance. To me, they’re all connected. And that’s the bit that I struggled with separating. Okay, I can go there and play golf and I know I’m just there to play golf, but I’ve always, you know, that’s the one thing that I’ve always tried to be true to, is, is connecting all of those versions of myself. And it just didn’t make me comfortable to try and separate them.

Sue Anstiss

Did others feel the same?

Meghan MacLaren

Um, I think other people struggled with it. Yeah but I think most people would see it as too big of an opportunity financially to hold them back, which I very much understand and may possibly find myself at a point at some time in my career. And if, you know, if I have to choose between going to a tournament that may affect my chance to get into a Solheim cup or to get onto the LPGA, that’s not gonna be a black and white decision for me. I know other people have struggled with it and other people have the perspective that it is a positive thing, and there’s clinics for young Saudi women and maybe there’s Saudi women attending the tournaments. I understand those perspectives as well, but obviously everybody has their own opinions on what is really happening and what isn’t really happening.

Sue Anstiss

It leads us really into LIV and the new men’s golf tournament exhibition, funded by the Saudis . The first event took place at Hemel Hempstead last week, the players paid hundreds of millions of pounds just to take part. So I’m interested in your thoughts on that as it’s kind of unfurled the story in the last few weeks.

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah, it’s certainly, I mean, it’s certainly a fascinating thing to watch unfold from, I mean, obviously, it’s my sport, but I’m also on the outside, cause it isn’t something that affects me.  So it’s a very strange time, but it’s probably obvious from what I’ve already said that I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it.

I don’t like what’s happening. but that’s probably from a broader sense than just that it’s happening in golf. The whole kind of principle of throwing lots and lots of money at people to promote your image when it doesn’t seem like things are really changing, I don’t like that. I understand that golf probably has things that it can be better at in terms of its top product, which would be the PGA tour.

You know, there’s things that people don’t like and there’s things that can be improved on, but I’m not sure that the purpose of the LIV tour is really to do that. And that would be my main issue with it. And then you can obviously argue whether players should be loyal to how they’ve created their wealth up to now and what’s given them their career and their profession. That’s maybe for each person to decide, but I think I’ve always taken the view that if you leave everybody else to make that decision, then you know, nobody ever does make the decision and nothing ever changes. So at some point you have to decide if you wanna be bigger than just yourself, I think,

Sue Anstiss

But you can understand why a golfer could potentially sacrifice chance to play on future PGA tour events or the Ryder Cup in order, in theory, to make him enough money to, you know, rich for life, for his children’s lives, etcetera.

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something that I find really difficult, and we’ve had conversations about it with, with my friends on tour, like, would you do it if, if an opportunity like that came your way and it’s very hard to look past them. The immediacy of, okay, I know next week I’m gonna take home, whatever it might be, $40 million at a minimum, I completely understand why some people would turn around and go, well, I can’t say no to that whatever happens next, because I dunno if I’m gonna get an opportunity to earn that money again.  And it’s a very, very difficult position to be in regardless of, of whether you question the source of the money or not. Just the whole kind of way that has unfolded with the PGA tour, conflicting with the LIV tour, it’s a tough spot to be in and I don’t envy those players, even though they’re gonna be a lot richer than I am. It’s not a nice thing to have to deal with either.

Sue Anstiss

And it’s interesting that no women were included. I think the organisers said they had spoken some of the female players who didn’t feel it was right for them at the moment. So I dunno what your thoughts are there, or if they had approached you with their 40 million, I guess it’s a different conversation to be had isn’t there?

Meghan MacLaren

It is. Like I said, it’s a difficult one because you know, obviously no, as far as I know, no women were invited to play or no women did play, but equally Saudi money has financed a lot of golf, female golf over the last couple of years, and there’s a lot of players sponsored by Saudi Golf, and you have to look at other companies and go, why are you not doing that? But it’s a very complicated web. And like I said, with football, Newcastle United is a team that I’ve supported since before I could walk. And I am so passionate about (Newcastle United), and we’ve waited a long time to have an injection of energy and positivity in our club. So on the one hand, I think that’s incredibly exciting, but then obviously there’s, there’s conflict there with what I believe. So it’s can you enjoy, enjoy one thing and acknowledge that you’re uncomfortable with another.

Sue Anstiss

It’s a quite big, deep, profound conversation, isn’t it for a Monday evening. Diversity in golf is a long debated issue and it’s been fascinating to see Korean Thai, Japanese players all in the women’s top 10, yet the men’s top 10 feels fa r less diverse. I wonder why there is that disparity between the men’s, women’s game when it comes to diversity?

Meghan MacLaren

Yeah, that’s an interesting question, the LPGA obviously over the last 20 years has become incredibly diverse, and a big part of that is sort of the influx of, of Korean golfers, who a lot of whom were kind of inspired by Suri Pac winning the, I think it was the US open.  Golf just took off massively over there. And the, the kind of pathways I think that have developed have really just produced a wealth of talent and there’s sort of Korean tours as well, that just produce superstar after superstar and funny enough, I think that’s kind of a good parallel to draw with what could happen to women’s golf, if, you know, on the whole, if you kind of have opportunities like that, that all of a sudden, a whole, you know, a whole country got behind golf as a sport and saw it as a viable career.

And it, you know, it creates, creates a generation of, of talent and of wealth as well and I think maybe in, in the men’s game, America has just kind of dominated that those pathways for longer than has maybe happened in the women’s game. And I think you’re gonna start to see over the next 10 years, an influx of players from all over the world on the PGA tour. I think it’s already starting to shift. If you look at the world rankings, there’s a lot of Europeans in the top 10, there’s Australians, you know, it’s, it’s certainly a global game.  and I think as you kind of alluded to diversity, hasn’t been its strongest point, you know, so it can only go forward from here as well.

Sue Anstiss

And the PGA’s worked hard. It seems to be facing the issue in terms of its staff and they published figures about gender and ethnic diversity, those working in golf, just before the pandemic. But do you feel enough is being done in terms of making golf more accessible to those from not just ethnic, different ethnic backgrounds, but socioeconomic backgrounds, whether that’s in Europe or across the world?

Meghan MacLaren

There’s always more that can be done always. I think golf is, is definitely waking up a little bit,  over the past five or so years, and I know Martin Slumbers at the R&A has done a lot to push opening golf’s barriers, really, and trying to build those inclusivity agendas into what he does and not to have people see it as such a rich white man sport, because that probably still is the association with golf. And I still have to take a step back sometimes and go, you know, the, the clause for the PGA Tour membership that that stated it was white only, you know, that that existed until I don’t wanna put a date on it because I might be wrong, but it’s a lot more recent than you would imagine.* (editor’s note – it was only in 1961 that the PGA rescinded a “Caucasian only” rule)

And that’s quite a scary thought that people are listening to that in their lifetime, that clause would’ve still existed, which I think shows that golf has had a lot of catching up to do in terms of changing its image. And I do think it’s starting to get more into schools and kind of trying to pull more people into it from less wealthy backgrounds, especially with COVID, because it really kind of made people appreciate this is a way to be outside and to be safe. So I hope that golf can really draw on the things it does have going for it and pull more people in because it’s a fantastic sport in my opinion.

Sue Anstiss

And you mentioned, whether the change happens from a top down or grassroots up, but great news this year that the Women’s US Open has a new sponsor and a prize purse of $10 million. It has not reached the men’s, but it’s moving in the right direction there. So how excited were you for that news and what does that mean more broadly for, for the game?

Meghan MacLaren

I think it’s brilliant. I, I was shocked in the best possible way at that announcement, but I think seeing things like that just makes you sit back and go, wow, like they’re serious about this. It’s not just saying the right things to please the right people. And that’s always been the kind of balancing act of, you know, the things that get said versus the things that actually get done. And I think as players, it really makes us feel respected and to really go, you know, what, like people are starting to appreciate that we are professional athletes.

We put in exactly the same thing as the men do, as our, you know, male counterparts do. So why should we be valued less, when everything that goes in is the same and everything that comes out is the same in terms of entertainment and skill level. The only thing that’s different is the distance that the men can hit it. There’s a lot more similarities than differences between the men’s and the women’s game. So I think just as players to, to see that recognised will really help push us on, you know, as a profession as well. And like I said before, hopefully that has a knock-on effect to the people who are watching,  the young girls at home who all of a sudden can see you on TV and go, oh my God, she’s just won $2 million. How exciting is that? So I think it’s all a cycle – one thing affects another affects another. So hopefully it’s moving in the right direction.