LPGA golf instructor, YouTuber, businesswoman, entrepreneur – Coach Shayain is a young woman making a big mark in golf. As a minority golfer, born in Pakistan into a family who immigrated to Canada when she was a child, she experienced, first-hand, the barriers that were in place as a young female player with a different skin colour, trying to learn the game in her teens.
Family financial constraints meant that the only sports she was exposed to were the free ones played at school. With good sporting genes (her grandfather was the wicket keeper for the Pakistan cricket team) and amazing hand-eye-ball coordination skills, she flourished in several, including volleyball, but an injury forced her to step back from the sport and led her to golf.
A chance outing to watch her brother hitting balls at a driving range introduced her to coach TJ. She put a golf club in her hands and instantly saw her potential. “Golf had never even crossed my radar as a kid, so at first I felt completely out of place. Golf wasn’t a sport I saw people like me playing. The sport seemed expensive, exclusive, and totally out of reach.”
Coach Shayain with her parents and brothers in Pakistan
(Image credit: Coach Shayain)
Shayain describes her time spent at the range as done in ‘secret’ because she felt too embarrassed to tell the kids at school that she played. Nevertheless she fell in love with the challenge of golf. “Every round, every swing, every putt is an opportunity to improve. It teaches resilience. The game humbles you, but it also builds you up.”
Coach TJ convinced Shayain’s parents that golf was her opportunity to open the door to a good education. A golf scholarship would give her the chance to attend a university they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford – it was the route to virtually a free education.
Changing Sports
“I ended up at a division II college in Florida on a golf scholarship but within a week of being there, a tennis coach spotted me playing a casual game of tennis and told me he had one space free on his team and poached me, so I switched sports.”
After four years Shayain graduated with a sports management degree and started forging a successful career, working for teams like Arsenal and Orlando Magic. It was in the business world that she was reintroduced to golf.
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