We will get to Maya Palanza Gaudin’s golf shortly. It is a game. It can wait.
Birth, life, health, opportunity. They are not games. They cannot wait. And when they demand attention, it is sometimes left to those with loving hearts, deep souls, and a selflessness to forge a way.
This is the slice of Maya Palanza Gaudin’s story that makes you catch your breath. You know her spot in this year’s Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals Girls 12-13 division at Augusta National Golf Club is owed to an uncanny skillset. But what of the people who created the miracles that put it all in motion? That is the story that has the honor at the tee box.
“The way I see it, Maya’s birth mom gave her life (and) Maya’s birth father saved her life,” said Cassandra Gaudin, who along with her husband, Stephen, adopted Maya right after she was born in Ethiopia 12-plus years ago. “And our job since has been to love, nurture and provide every opportunity to Maya to embrace her life to include this wonderful gift of golf.”
U.S. citizens who presently live in Abu Dhabi, Stephen Gaudin is retired from the FBI, Cassandra works in the American embassy. They deflect any praise for adopting Maya (“To me, it’s a normal way to have a family,” said Cassandra) and instead open their hearts to tell the story of great human spirit that blankets the girl’s arrival into this world.
“(Maya) was born in a poor, remote village in Southern Ethiopia near the Kenyan border,” Cassandra said. “Her birth mom died shortly after childbirth. No one was lactating in the village to feed her.
“The situation became dire (and) her birth father and her uncles saved (Maya’s) life by carrying her on their backs 90 kilometers (approximately 55 miles) to the nearest clinic.”
Absorb the magnitude of love and commitment that had to go into such an ordeal, then try with all your might to understand what came next. “Her birth father made the most selfless choice to give (Maya) up for adoption, which, to me, was the unconditional love,” Cassandra said.
The words flow from her with supreme reverence for the man’s sacrifice. That is why she and Stephen have a tough time accepting praise for initiating adoption and why they shake their heads when Maya offers that “I am blessed they chose me.”
“We are blessed they chose us,” said Cassandra, who is speaking about Maya and a younger daughter, Willa, 8, who was adopted from a family in Abu Dhabi when she was 4.
“Of all the emotions that swell inside me, gratitude rises to the top. I am so grateful Maya and Willa have entered our lives to bless us. They have given us the gift of life. They have given us the gift of love.”
So much has already been packed into Maya Palanza Gaudin’s world. Right after the adoption, she moved with her parents to Yemen, which was Stephen’s assignment. Then came a post in Austria. “Maya walked for the first time in Vienna,” Stephen said.
But with Stephen’s last assignment being Abu Dhabi, a layer of stability entered the picture, and that is when Maya discovered golf. She was 5 and totally smitten with the game. Yas Links is her home course and since it hosts the annual Abu Dhabi Championship on the DP World Tour, the opportunities to meet professional players has been part of her life.
“I hit balls in the players’ lounge with Padraig Harrington,” she said. “And Rory McIlroy presented me with my (Yas Links) club championship trophy one year.”
She has played in DP World Tour pro-ams with McIlroy, Thomas Pieters and Robert MacIntyre. She has hit balls on the range with Gary Player. So comfortable is she around these tour pros that this past winter when Stephen and Cassandra were looking for Maya during the tournament at Yas Links, “Rory saw us and said, ‘I just saw her. She’s inside.’”
But it goes beyond rubbing shoulders with the game’s best players, because Maya has also enjoyed success as a competitor. Several years ago, she won a junior tournament in India, but a big breakthrough came last summer when she shot 72-74-74 to win the U.S. Kids European Championship in Scotland.
Still, there was another box left unchecked. “It’s the Drive, Chip and Putt that started (my love of golf),” said the young girl. “When I first saw this tournament on TV and when I first competed (in the DCP), that is what brought golf to life for me.”
The fact that in her fourth attempt at the Drive, Chip and Putt, Gaudin received her ticket to Augusta National in the regional final at TPC Boston in Norton, Mass., was a bit of serendipity. Massachusetts is where her parents are from – Stephen grew up in Boston’s North End, Cassandra Palanza was born and raised in Mansfield, a bucolic town 35 miles southwest of Boston.
They met at a charity golf tournament on Cape Cod, of all things, so, yes, it only deepens the golf roots for this family.
“What a world for Maya,” laughed Stephen. “She wins a club championship in Abu Dhabi and then another on Cape Cod (during the family’s annual month-long vacation where they spend time with so many Gaudin and Palanza family members). Golf is the only sport that could do that.”
Maya will gush proudly of having ties to three different continents – she was born in Africa, has American citizenship and lives in Western Asia. She uses her summers in Massachusetts to play in New England PGA junior tournaments, and three times she’s tried to qualify for the USGA Junior Girls’ championship.
What a world for Maya. She wins a club championship in Abu Dhabi and then another on Cape Cod. Golf is the only sport that could do that.
Her ties to New England also include her current school, the U.S. Performance Academy, an online school for elite athletes which is based in New Hampshire.
Cassandra concedes she was skeptical at first, “but I’m quite fascinated of the visual learning ... there’s more one-on-one time than she’d receive in the classroom. Had it not been for COVID (when the virtual world exploded), I would not have thought this sort of school would be possible.”
Ah, but if ever a family was proof that all things are possible, it is Stephen and Cassandra Gaudin and their two adopted daughters, both of whom are infatuated with golf. (Willa dreams of following in her sister’s DCP steps.)
Maya’s saga tears at your heart while less is known about Willa’s background.
“But considering the circumstances in which she was found, we can imagine the situation was no less dire,” Cassandra said. “Her birth mom gave her life, and someone saved her life by leaving her at the doorstep of a hospital when she was 2 months old. And our job since she entered our lives is to love, nurture and provide every opportunity to Willa to embrace her life.”
Sharing love, it is a beautiful thing.
