MAHA HADDIOUI
AGE 33 • AGADIR, MOROCCO
Picture the ultimate golf destination and you probably visualise one of the usual photogenic suspects—Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, St. Andrews or maybe Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand.
Morocco’s golf landscape has all of those features—linksland, oceanside cliffs, mature forests and even snowcapped mountain ranges—all within a few hours drive. The North African country is the ShangriLa you didn’t know existed, and for the second-consecutive Olympics, the country will send one of its players to compete. “Close your eyes and you don’t know if you’re in Arizona or Morocco,” says Maha Haddioui, who played for Morocco in Rio and qualified again for Tokyo. “One of the royal courses in Dar Essalam, you could be in a forest in Georgia. My course in Agadir, Taghazout Bay, is a links course. You could be in Ireland.”
But even with all that natural landscape, the game in Morocco has traditionally been one played by the wealthy—or the royal. Claude Harmon (Butch’s father) gained some notoriety in the 1970s for spending his off-seasons coaching King Hassan II in Rabat, and Butch was the head professional at Dar Essalam golf club in the 1980s. When Haddioui was growing up in Agadir, a coastal city at the base of the Anti-Atlas Mountains, the golf course near her home was the curiosity where the tourists came to play. “I thought it was something boring, for the old people,” Haddioui says. “But my mom said I should give it a try. I loved it, and my sister and I started.”
It wasn’t long before Haddioui outgrew the sparse competition at home—“It was kids’ tournaments and social golf, and I was playing with the boys by the time I turned 15,” Haddioui says—so her parents sent her to Marseilles, in the south of France, to compete in European junior amateur events. From there, she traveled to the United States and played at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., where she was the top-ranked golfer in Division II.
“I loved it. It was the best thing I ever did,” says Haddioui, who became fluent in her fourth language, earned a degree in international business and was offered a job in the school’s statistics department after graduation. “My choices were to take that job or to go back home to Morocco and take a risk and turn pro. When I came back, it was a controversial decision. My family loves sports, but they wondered when I was going to get a real job.”
Ten years later, Haddioui has developed into an established professional athlete who not only won the 2012 Moroccan Ladies Professional Championship but finished third in the men’s version of the same tournament that year. She has been a regular on the Ladies European Tour since 2013 and remains the only Arab woman with status on a major professional golf tour.
Haddioui’s trailblazing status at home made her first Olympic experience an overwhelming one.
“To represent your country, it’s a different feeling, and you have to be prepared for it,” she says. “I played in a lot of tournaments, but I had never represented Morocco. Players in other parts of the world can do Junior Ryder Cup or Junior Solheim Cup. I didn’t have that chance. You know all the eyes are on you, and I wasn’t prepared for that.”
Haddioui spent two weeks in Rio almost shell-shocked, keeping mostly to her room except for one foray to watch eventual bronze medalist Mohammed Rabii box. Haddioui finished last but resolved to come back in four years a different player.
“I swore to myself, next time I come, I’ll come as an athlete— not a spectator or a golfer,” says Haddioui, who regularly posts her Olympic-caliber workouts on Instagram. “I didn’t work out much before. I went to the gym, but I didn’t know what to do. Now I’m stronger in the swing, and I can be stable through the shot. I’m ready this time.”
‘[TURNING PRO] WAS A CONTROVERSIAL DECISION. MY FAMILY LOVES SPORTS, BUT THEY WONDERED WHEN I WAS GOING TO GET A REAL JOB.’