Photos: Stephen Barker
Just 18 months ago, Nadine Uerata had only played golf once before – and she didn’t like it at all.
These days, it’s a completely different story. She tries to play every day and has devoted herself to encouraging other women to give it a try in a bid to make golf accessible to everyone.
To this purpose, Nadine shares the highs and lows of her journey through her Instagram page @thewahinegolfer, facilitates in-person meet-ups for women to play together, has started a golf podcast – and recently quit her job in part to focus on golf and her dream of one day joining a professional tour.
Nadine, 30, smiles as she describes her first real encounter with the game.
“It was almost feeling like there was a sense of potential for me in the sport,” she shares. “I’ve always been competitive within myself. If I know I can do something well, I’ll keep doing it until I can’t or don’t want to get any better.”
That was late 2022 and Nadine was celebrating finishing a year of te reo Māori language studies with her classmates. The plan was for the men to play golf and the women to go to high tea.
“I didn’t like the sound of high tea at all, so I asked to join golf,” she recalls. “Now they all crack up because I’m fully addicted.”
Nadine had played once before as a teenager. However at the time, she didn’t understand the appeal, so her newfound love of golf caught her by surprise.
“It was never on the radar,” she laughs. “Growing up in Te Aroha, I played just about every other sport. There was a golf course. I only knew about it because I drove past it to go to my cousin’s place, though.
“Before this, I always felt like I needed to be doing something in order to be purposeful or moving forward with my life. Now I have golf as a way to reel myself back in to what’s important to me.”
It has had such an impact on her, Nadine decided to share the journey through her Instagram page in the hope of inspiring other women to pick up the clubs.
“It doesn’t matter what you look like, where you’re from, how old or young you are, or what clothes you wear,” she explains. “None of those things matter – if you can swing a club, then you can play. It’s much more about mentality than physicality and that’s one of the things that’s so intriguing about it.”
While she’s a complete devotee now, Nadine readily admits not so long ago she thought it was a sport reserved mostly for the wealthy, retirees and middle-aged men.
“There have been experiences at some courses where I’ve felt out of place,” she admits. “But that isn’t because anyone made me feel like that. It was just because the narrative I had told myself was I wasn’t the dominant type of person there. I am Māori and a wahine [woman].
“I pretty much just want to break the stigma that it’s only for certain people. My key focus is to encourage wāhine into golf, whether they’re Māori or non-Māori. It’s for wāhine katoa [all women].”
And it’s working. Nadine says women are reacting incredibly positively to her content and an offshoot Facebook group she’s founded to organise women’s-only rounds.
“The feedback is they’ve loved the experience. They felt safe and seen at their level with no judgement,” says Nadine. She’s down to an impressive 13.7 handicap after starting at 40 less than two years ago. A golf handicap is a numerical measure of skill, where the lower the number, the better the player.
After recently quitting her job in education policy, Nadine has her sights on making the Waikato women’s representative team, with ambitions to eventually play golf professionally.
She knows it’s aiming high, but she has never been one to let a challenge stand in her way.
“When I set a goal, it’s okay if I don’t actually achieve it – as long as I’m working towards it.
“My big, scary goal is I would love to make a professional tour. As much as it’s scary for me and I know people may be like, ‘That will probably never happen,’ I can still set it for myself and potentially prove I can do it.
“At the end of the day, thinking that way – not just in golf, but in my life – could bring me better outcomes and I know if I didn’t try, then I’d be really gutted about it later.”
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