RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — In 2019 at a senior tour event in California, Billy Mayfair was disqualified after two separate rules violations in the same round. He was frustrated, naturally, but also a little confused. He felt like he wasn’t following the questions he was being asked by rules officials, which doubled the frustration and confusion.
His wife, Tami, felt like the incident was a continuation of unusual, and in some ways, erratic behavior by Mayfair so she suggested he visit a doctor to see if there might be something more there.
“My wife Tami noticed things first, in particular my attitude, the way I would look at people, the way I was sometimes getting confused,” said Mayfair, who is in Rancho Mirage, California, this week for the inaugural Galleri Classic PGA Tour Champions event. “She felt that I needed to be tested, and I was fighting against it all the way. But I’m glad I did finally. … And I wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis.”
The diagnosis was that Mayfair has autism spectrum disorder or ASD. The news that he had, what they call high-functioning autism, actually came as a relief to Mayfair. It explained so much about his life, both the good and the bad.
“For me, what’s always been difficult is reading people’s facial expressions or not understanding if someone was kidding when they were saying something to me,” Mayfair said. “Now I realize why I had a hard time at school, and why it just took me a longer time to figure things out. Once I realized that, I felt better about myself. It explained, like, why would I get so upset at times, it’s just the way my brain worked and the way that I solve things.”
Now that he’s done the research and knows more about ASD, Mayfair is also sure that it helped him become a professional golfer. A hallmark of having ASD is often the ability to hyperfocus on certain activities. Mayfair has five PGA Tour wins and most famously is the only golfer to beat Tiger Woods in a playoff, besting Woods at the 1998 Nissan Open.
“I know it’s helped my game, and it explains why sometimes I am that athlete that can really focus better than other people and other golfers did,” Mayfair said. “Of course, I used to think that was normal, but I know now that this helped me in that way.”
Since the diagnosis in 2019, Tami and Billy jumped into learning about ASD and Billy also started seeing a psychologist during COVID to help him understand even more about autism. He was diagnosed in…
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