You don’t think about professional golfers being nervous, you assume the calm exterior you see on the tee is a true reflection of what is going on inside.

But there is a plaque on the signature par-3 16th at the Port Royal Golf Course in Bermuda commemorating the moment Lucas Glover, the 2009 US Open winner, stood on the tee 235 yards from a pencil thin green hugging a cliff face with the Atlantic Ocean on the left and declared he had, “never been so nervous about a golf shot in my life”.

Of course the difference between the amateur shaking on the tee and praying they don’t duff the shot, and the professional, is the latter “trusts the process”.

“Of course there are nerves,” MacLaren said, “but you trust muscle memory, the hours of practice, the routine.”

Garcia’s take is that nerves are something you learn to overcome and if you are not nervous, “that’s when you know it doesn’t mean enough to you any more”.

The South African has already won twice on the ATS, in the UK and Saudi Arabia last year, and after an injury plagued 2022 has a different approach to life which involves “embracing your flaws”.

“At the end of the day, it’s just a game of golf, it doesn’t define who you are,” Garcia said. “So I try to smile as much as I can out there, hopefully inspiring others to do the same.”

George Twyman, who was caddying for Garcia at Laguna National, said the South African’s relaxed attitude to the game “made her dangerous”, because the pressure to win was not there. The smile certainly seemed to be a permanent fixture for most of the week.

Twyman, a professional golfer in his own right, knows something about what it takes to come out on top at these events, after working with Whitney Hillier during her victory in the team event in Bangkok last year.

What success looks like for an amateur depends on the handicap. For me, crashing a ball or two down the fairway and contributing on a few holes over the course of two rounds was something to remember.

Less enjoyable were the water balls, the duffed iron shots and the mishits, all of which felt magnified by the talent of those alongside. And in the back of the mind is the constant thought of being a distraction.

Except professionals have their process. And amid the talk of Newcastle United – MacLaren’s family are diehard fans – and discussing the 13-hour layover in San Francisco that Telfer faced on her way home, there is a switch that flips when it comes to hitting the ball.

All of the top players have that, but it is still something to see as they and their caddies enter work mode, focused on the slope, the wind, the landing zone. With the course lying directly under the final approach for Singapore Changi Airport there was even discussion as to whether a plane passing low overhead might affect the flight of the ball.

The noise alone meant we waited for them to go past, but it was an example of the “attention to detail” that MacLaren’s caddie, Rob Ellis, said separated the best from the rest.

Still, even with the right preparation there are some things on the golf course that defy explanation.

I had a football coach who was incensed by us saying “bad luck” when a shot just missed, or a pass went slightly astray. His point, he would tell us while trying to keep his temper, was that it was not about luck, we just weren’t doing something well enough.

It was not normally put that politely, still, I could see his view to a degree, but then there is what happened to MacLaren on the par-5 7th in Friday’s round and you do wonder.

The English professional’s drive had split the fairway and with another 250-odd yards to go she sent her second sailing through the air towards the left side of the green. It was, in every respect, the ideal shot, right up until it landed on one of the only open drain grates on the course and went flying off at a right angle into the bushes.

Most of the other grates had furry fake-grass hats to stop that happening.

Bad break No 1 was followed minutes later by bad break No 2 when she had the misfortune to find the ball and was forced to discard her provisional and return to the spot of the initial shot to play again. From a potential birdie to a double bogey.

Gary Player once suggested the more he practised the luckier he got, but you suspect even he would have had some choice words to say about that series of events.

The amateur of course will blame all manner of things on bad luck, but in most of those cases it very much comes down to not doing something well enough. Like leaving a putt hanging on the edge of the cup, or seeing one that was tracking all the way to the middle of the hole until the last possible moment and then diving away to the left and finishing an inch outside.

Hands up if that happened to you on Friday when a couple of points here or there could have changed everything. Three shots back on 13-under after the first round, we eventually finished on 21-under and in a tie for 15th.

Christine Wolf’s team, which included Casandra Alexander, Eleanor Givens and amateur Katsuko Blalock, came out on top at 29-under.

Sometimes, as Ellis muttered darkly when one of MacLaren’s putts lipped out later in the round and a missed cut beckoned, “when it’s not your day, it’s not your day”.

While MacLaren was working her way to a two-day total of 13-over, Garcia was quietly building a head of steam, and one point she and fellow South African Telfer were first and second on the leader board on Friday.

Garcia went into Saturday’s final round in a tie for first at seven-under alongside eventual winner Pauline Roussin-Bouchard and Danielle Kang. She was still in contention at eight-under, a shot behind Roussin at the par-4 ninth, but dropped a stroke while the Frenchwoman birdied.

Roussin then went on a tear, firing off six birdies on the back nine to finish on 15-under, five shots ahead of Kang. Garcia’s game went the other way, and she eventually finished the day at three-over and in a tie for 11th.

Emotion almost got the better of the 32-year-old towards the end, which she put down to the frustration of falling away over the closing stretch.

“I was keeping it together right until the end and then … but it’s OK, it’s just golf at the end of the day,” Garcia said. “Probably after like 12 holes I realised there was no way I was catching her anyway, so I was more looking at keeping myself at the top of the leaderboard.

“I still put myself in that position [to win]. It’s a lot better than not being in the last three-ball at the start of the day. I’m still happy with the week, I’ll probably just go back and learn something from this for the next time. I’m pretty sure there will be more this year, I’m playing pretty solid.”