'My golf suffered because I was working so much'
The road to professional golf has been a long one for Georgia Price.
She has already lived a life packed full of experiences having moved to America with her family at the age of nine.
Price remained in the USA until the completion of her degree at Florida Gulf University, where she read communication and interdisciplinary studies.
Now 24 and having settled on the Cornish coast, where she plays out of Bude & North Cornwall Golf Club, Price has turned her dreams into a reality and turned professional.
We sat down with her to discuss her journey so far among others…
Obvious question to start: You’re now officially a pro golfer – how does that feel?
It feels great! But, in a way, it doesn’t really feel any different.
If anything, it has given me back the motivation that I may have lost over the last year or two.
I’ve been playing amateur golf on the English circuit for a couple of years now, and it’s great but I just got a little bogged down playing the same events so it’s nice to do something new.
What is your plan in terms of where you’ll play this year?
I plan to play on the LET Access Tour. My category should get me into the majority of the events but it will be a case of entering as many tournaments as I can.
The first year will be a bit of a learning curve and I will need to be prepared to go to tournaments at the last minute.
As and when I can, I may play on some of the Santander Tour events.
At the end of the year I might have another look at going back to Tour School for the LET and see how that goes.
Your golf club is very supportive, how do you feel about the fundraisers that are organised for you?
It’s amazing. The last two years I’ve had a fun golf day, so we put on a competition in a fun format like Texas Scramble.
We have a raffle and I go out onto one of the par 3s to do a competition with all the groups.
The club is really encouraging of that, which is great because it all comes at an expense.
I worked at the golf club for a couple of years, but I work at a local restaurant now.
I’m still working part time at the moment because I have to. Hopefully, when the season comes around this year I’ll be able to stop work altogether.
That was something that I didn’t do last year, I worked all through the season and I feel that my golf suffered because I was working so much.
Over the years, I have become quite involved with the ladies’ section and from working at the club, I got to know lots of the members so I think that has helped quite a lot.
I’m really lucky to have a club that supports me.
Have you ever thought about taking your career in a different direction?
Actually it’s something that crosses my mind a lot. I have tried to think about what I would want to do if I didn’t play golf.
Part of me would want to move away from it completely so that I could just play golf for fun. But, the other part of me thinks that maybe another sort of career in golf would be great.
If playing professionally in the next couple of years doesn’t work out, I’ll figure something out and see where it takes me.
What sort of impact did college golf have on your development
My education was my main focus, so I think that at times I didn’t quite take advantage of the golfing opportunities that I had.
Looking back, I probably could have used those four years a lot better than I did.
I didn’t have an actual coach out there, it was just a team coach, so I don’t really feel that I made a massive amount of progress out there in terms of my golf.
Coming home after graduation and deciding that I wanted to play golf full time, it gave me a bit of a push.
Would you consider going back to the USA full time?
Ultimately, that is a goal, I’m not one to put a limit on how far I can go. If it becomes more of a realistic goal then I would definitely go for it.
At the minute, I’m aware that I’m not at that level, but you never know what will happen in the next few years.
If it was more of an option then I would definitely consider it, but on the other hand I am quite happy here at home.
Meghan MacLaren has recently spoken about the gulf between men’s and women’s golf, what are your views on this?
It’s a really difficult topic. Being a woman in sport, I’m all for equal pay and opportunity, but I think it’s just a vicious cycle.
The sponsorship isn’t there, so the prize money isn’t there, and there’s no coverage of women’s sport so those things all feed into each other.
It’s just going to be something that will takes a long time [gaining equality]. I don’t really know what the solution would be, to be honest.
It’s going to need someone to take a risk, invest into women’s golf and give the tour the opportunity to get the coverage that it needs to get the sponsorship.
I follow Meg on Twitter and I have seen a lot of things that she’s posted and I think it’s great that there are women in sport getting their opinions out there.
We just need to constantly raise awareness of the issues that we have.