“I’m glad I got first, and I made good teammates and made new friends,” Bayleigh said in a video call, mostly quiet but beaming when she talked about golf.
Bayleigh also helped her school win the team title last week, the first AIMS team to win any game for her school since 2008. For the second round, Bayleigh scored 25 points for nine holes, and for the last hole, Bayleigh came within inches of an eagle (taking the ball to the hole two strokes under par) — remarkable feats for someone who started playing six months ago but practiced less than 50 hours combined.
“Bayleigh is unbelievable and has natural talent,” said Mickey Huriwaka, a veteran player who found himself rooting for Bayleigh even though he was coaching for a rival team. “To put everything in perspective, it’s like he’s on the PGA Tour. That’s how good he is.”
Taneatua School, where Bayleigh attends, has not sent a team to the AIMS Games for more than a decade due to budget constraints. This year, a grant from the school’s board of trustees arrived at the last minute, allowing three golfers, including Bayleigh, and an 11-member netball team to compete in the games. (Three other golfers failed to make the cut due to lack of funds.)
Whetu Wiremu, a teacher who is Bayleigh’s assistant golf coach and served as her caddy during AIMS, said she took up golf herself 10 months ago. After he was told that Bayleigh always carried a golf stick everywhere he went when he was little, Whetu, on a “whim,” decided to recruit the quiet child to his newly formed team of golf at school.
Bayleigh said: “Okay.”
The children took group lessons for about six months, Wiremu said, “but because there were so many of them, these boys never got their individual type of help.”
With a tight budget for tournament training, Wiremu borrowed golf clubs from his brother-in-law and golf friends for Bayleigh and some teammates. Wiremu drives the kids in a school van to a golf course 15 minutes away for three full rounds of practice, each lasting about three hours.
“Obviously, Bayleigh doesn’t know the technical stuff about playing golf. Her game is to step up and hit the ball. So that’s what she does,” Wiremu said. “She doesn’t worry if did he make a bad shot or a good shot or did it take too much time to get the shot. He just loved the sport, and I think that love alone drove him to play good golf.
A more difficult task for Wiremu is to gain Bayleigh’s trust and “bring her out of her shell.”
When he first met Bayleigh in 2021, Wiremu “didn’t notice” the boy, who rarely spoke in class. “He’s kind of standoffish to me,” Wiremu said, adding that he’s really started to open up and smile more this year “because I got him in the game at the end.”
“I just treat him like a normal kid. So I just … talk to Bayleigh and treat her like her friends.
Bayleigh’s autism may have played a role in her staying calm and unfazed by bad shots, Wiremu said.
“He never gets nervous with whatever he does. He was the only one who did it to have fun. And if he wins or does a good job at it, then that’s just a bonus,” Wiremu said.
The whole family – his parents, younger brother and grandparents, who live in Taneatua, a working-class town of less than 1,000 on the north coast of the North Island – shows up at AIMS golf games and follows the a cart to cheer. for Bayleigh. Her parents – Hemi Tarau and Pare Teepa – and the teachers and staff at Bayleigh’s school who watched the games were “super emotional and very proud” of the boy, Wiremu said.
Bayleigh became a local celebrity after the AIMS win, her coach and friends said. A local business said it would buy Bayleigh and her friends their own set of golf clubs. Golf New Zealand, the country’s governing body for golf, has reached out to the school and is offering golf equipment and clothing for the students.
To celebrate their success, Wiremu took Bayleigh and her friends out to eat sushi, Bayleigh’s favorite food. After that, Bayleigh suggested they go to a driving range to play more golf.
“I love to play golf, and I always play golf,” Bayleigh said when asked about her dream job. “I want to be like Tiger Woods.”