Coastal Carolina golfer battles through MS diagnosis to achieve No. 3 national ranking
In May 2018, Tiffany Arafi was preparing to graduate from Montverde Academy in Florida, her sights set on a collegiate golf career at Coastal Carolina University the following fall.
The next morning, she was unsure if she would be able to walk through her graduation ceremony, much less ever be able to walk another 18 holes.
“One day I woke up and I was not feeling my legs. Basically I could not stand up from the bed because I had no feeling, it was numb,” Arafi said.
At the hospital, doctors initially suggested she may have taken too much medication for allergies. But scans of her brain revealed a white mass, she said. Doctors gave her the diagnosis: Multiple sclerosis, a potentially debilitating disease impacting the central nervous system.
“I thought I could never play golf again because it took a couple days to get back the feeling in my legs and the doctor was very negative, telling me . . . I would never be able to walk again so I could not play,” Arafi said. “And I was like, ‘No, that’s not possible. That’s not going to happen.’ ”
It didn’t.
Arafi is now a senior at CCU, and despite the effects of MS, she has become perhaps the best player in program history on the strength of a tremendous fall season.
The Switzerland native set several school scoring records while winning two tournaments this fall, finishing second and fourth in the team’s other two events, and rising to No. 3 in Golfstat’s national college women’s golf rankings entering the spring season.
“She has had to completely rebuild every bit of confidence in her physical self,” CCU women’s golf coach Katie Quinney said. “It is incredible. It really is.”
Rebuilding her game
Arafi was feeling weak and had mild pain in her right leg in the days leading up to her physical collapse. She suspected it was related to stress since she was nearing the completion of a hectic academic and golf schedule while simultaneously attending Montverde and the Gary Gilchrist Golf Academy.
After the diagnosis, she visited multiple doctors to get additional opinions.
One said she would have difficulty walking.
Another said she would walk but would likely struggle with more taxing physical activity.
The final opinion was much more positive.
“The last one told me it’s how you believe about it — if you think you can play golf again one day and if you tell yourself you’re not sick, it will be fine. And that’s the one I tried to believe,” Arafi said. “And his wife had MS, so he knew what he was talking about.”
The return to near physical normalcy was slow. Arafi could not stand for three days, and did nothing golf-related for several weeks.
“I remember the first couple of months I couldn’t even walk around the house,” she said. “It was too tiring.”
She got to work on physical rehabilitation, and gradually began putting, chipping, hitting irons and then her driver. The MS caused weight and muscle loss which meant a loss of distance with her clubs.
She had to rebuild and alter her golf swing.
“Once I was swinging it was bad,” Arafi said. “. . . Then I had to get used to a new golf swing because the feelings were not the same anymore. I had to get used to swinging more in rhythm and use more of my whole body instead of just using the big muscles because I didn’t have them anymore.
“It took a lot of practice, a lot of patience.”
Arafi played decent golf in her first two seasons at CCU, recording a pair of top 10s and scoring averages of 74.46 and 73.87.
“My freshman year when that happened I was like, ‘I’m never going to find my way back to the way I was playing,’ ” Arafi said, “and I wanted to prove to (Quinney) that I deserved the scholarship.”
MS and its impact on Arafi
In multiple sclerosis, white blood cells enter the brain and spinal cord and cause inflammation that strips the protective sheath — myelin — that covers nerve fibers. That causes communication problems between the brain and parts of the body. Eventually, the disease can cause permanent damage or deterioration of the nerves.
There are myriad of symptoms and they can recur or progressively worsen.
Among them are impacts on mobility, vision, speech, endurance and bodily functions. In severe cases, it can take away the ability to walk. There is no cure, but there are medications to help control the disease.
Arafi said a new medication in Switzerland has stabilized her MS.
Her most common symptoms are fatigue, and numbness in her hands and right side.
There are small indications that let Quinney know Arafi is feeling the MS more on certain days, like when her right hip turns less.
“I’d say the most difficult one is being tired because we work hard here,” Arafi said. “So that’s definitely hard, and sometimes I have numbness in the fingers which can be annoying on the course, but you get used to it.
“I usually don’t like to think about it because I don’t want to give myself excuses like ‘Oh that was because of my MS,’ she said. “I don’t consider myself sick. So when I have good results, I expect it.
“I’m not going to be prouder because I have MS. But deep inside it feels great and it’s a cool thing.”
She eats something early every morning to avoid mild side effects from her medication, which she takes twice daily. She has also cut back on cardio training to conserve energy.
She has had to learn to trust that her body will hold up through play and practice.
Still, there’s an eerie uncertainty about the future.
“You just never know,” Arafi said. “It needs just one more attack and it can always leave something behind. The numbness was from the first time. So it depends if I have a second or third time. Maybe I will never have a second time so I will be fine for sure. But if I have a second time I might have other problems.
“The less I think about it the better, because if you don’t give it time, the numbness gets just normal. You don’t even feel it anymore.”
How CCU entered the picture
Long before Arafi’s MS diagnosis, Quinney watched her play in a tournament in Portugal in January 2017 during inclement weather.
“And I’m like, ‘This is the kid. This is the kid,’ “ Quinney said. “I just loved her energy. I loved that she looked like she loved being out there competing, and it was cold and it was raining.”
When Quinney traveled to a tournament in Finland in July 2017 to see Arafi again, she learned she had left Switzerland and enrolled at a school in Florida, which accelerated her high school graduation by a year and put her in the next incoming class in 2018.
Quinney saw that as a stroke of luck since she had an available scholarship and Arafi would have been on more schools’ radars had she remained in the class of 2019.
When MS struck, Quinney could have reconsidered the scholarship offer.
“With everything that happened in between it was like, ‘Well, you’re still the kid I know I wanted to recruit, so nothing of that has changed, now let’s just see what happens,” Quinney said.
Arafi was thankful her opportunity was still there.
“I had to call her and let her know and . . . I was like, ‘Please still take me,’ “ Arafi said. “I couldn’t promise her anything. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play just for awhile and then maybe go down again. I didn’t know so I couldn’t promise her anything, except I will be here practicing hard until I can [play well].”
But Quinney knew she had a special player.
“She is literally one of those players as a coach you sort of dream of from the ability, without being forced, to have so much autonomy out there for the love and passion for the game,” Quinney said. “She has the drive and motivation and is not afraid to put herself in uncomfortable situations (to improve).
“She does not just practice what she’s good at . . . . We are constantly looking for uncomfortable ways to make sure she’s improving all the time.”
COVID presents another hurdle
The coronavirus pandemic created another setback.
Like some of her teammates on a very international team, Arafi returned to her home country in March 2020 after that spring season was canceled following just two events.
She did not return to the team in the fall of 2020 for several reasons. Her family was concerned about COVID and the availability of international travel was uncertain, and both her medication and medical appointments were in Switzerland.
So she did not hit a ball off grass for more than six months because courses were closed due to coronavirus policies and winter weather.
She returned to campus last February after nearly a year away and had to essentially re-learn her swing in a short amount of time. She posted a 74.52 stroke average for the spring season, with top finishes of third and sixth.
“I was missing golf so much so I had to come back, and I was missing the team, coach and everyone, and I was missing just having a routine, so we just took the risk, basically,” Arafi said.
Arafi battled through a case of COVID in January and was in isolation for six days. The virus was thought to be potentially more dangerous to her because the medication she takes decreases her antibodies.
Doctors advised her to take the vaccines and booster shots, which she did. Her COVID symptoms were a migraine headache, a sore throat and excess fatigue, which persisted for weeks.
“But it could have been worse,” she said.
A record-setting fall
Her COVID case came after a historic fall season.
Arafi set school records for the low 18-hole score (8-under 64), 36-hole score (12-under 132) and 54-hole score (15-under 201), and she holds or shares the second-best scores in each category.
She had a 69.6 scoring average and an individual record of 274-4, including 7-0 against players ranked in Golfstat’s top 100.
She shot par or better in 10 of her 12 rounds, including a pair of 64s – a 6-under round at Princess Anne Country Club in Virginia in an event hosted by Old Dominion and 8-under at Kiawah Island’s Oak Point Golf Club in an event hosted by Charleston Southern.
Her season scoring average of 71.2 would break the school record of 71.75 held by Malene Krolboll Hansen, who has spent the past three seasons on the LPGA Tour’s feeder circuit, the Symetra (now Epson) Tour.
Team success came along with Arafi’s records, as CCU recorded top-four finishes in all four fall events, with a win at Kiawah.
Arafi was in such a zone during her 64s, she didn’t know how far under par she was during either until the rounds were complete.
At the behest of Quinney, she sharpened her mental acuity by creating games for her practice routine that would give her quick goals and keep her focused on the moment. She carried those into her rounds.
“It was just a grind to get her back mentally and get all that trust back,” Quinney said. “So we kind of came up with some different games and some stuff that she really bought into on the mental side. Having the physical part and then the mental part finally click and catch up with each other, I think that was the biggest reason she had the results she had in the fall.”
Arafi opened the spring season on Monday and Tuesday with a tie for 29th at the difficult San Jose Country Club in Jacksonville, Florida with a 20-over 80-79-77–236.
CCU has at least six events remaining this spring including the Golfweek/Any Given Tuesday Intercollegiate from March 28-30 at Caledonia Golf & Fish Club in Pawleys Island.
“I’m not going to try to reproduce what I did,” said Arafi, who works on her game with Quinney and coaches in Switzerland. “I feel confident I can play the same way that I played in the fall. We’ve worked hard . . . so I feel ready. I will go with the same mindset I had last season: go enjoy and play a round of golf and not think about [the score].”
Arafi’s drive to improve is nearly limitless.
After finishing fourth in the season’s first tournament at Furman — her second best collegiate finish at the time — Arafi and Quinney determined she needed to change her swing on shorter approach and pitch shots to take a side spin off the ball. They were even discussing it as Arafi played her final hole of the opening event. So she hit countless balls on the range to make the improvement.
“The next day we get out there and she shanked a million balls, she hit a million wedges and changed her posture,” Quinney said. “In the middle of the season she changed her setup, changed everything. She grinds it out for like two weeks and puts it right into the next tournament. She’s just not afraid to do what’s actually necessary to get uncomfortable to have these breakthroughs. . . . Now she’s so comfortable hitting those. But not many players would have had the wherewithal and courage to actually dive in and do it at that point.”
Arafi has improved across the board since arriving at CCU.
She has gotten a lot stronger in the weight room, has worked on her mental game, and has also performed in the classroom, being named an America Scholar by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association and to the Dean’s List, President’s List and Sun Belt Conference Commissioner’s List.
She earned a Sports Management degree in December with a 3.8 GPA, is in CCU’s MBA program, and is now fluent in English to go along with German and French.
“She’s got a sense of humor and a good personality, but she’s just a very serious, mature person,” Quinney said. “She’s got so much maturity and so much professionalism already at a young age. We have a competitive team, a hard working team. . . . They’re internally motivated, and then she takes that intrinsic motivation to just a whole ’nother level.”
Another go-around at CCU
Arafi plans to return for a fifth season at CCU in the fall and take advantage of the extra year of eligibility afforded athletes by the NCAA because of season interruptions caused by COVID.
She also plans to earn a master’s degree in May 2023.
“We got this fifth COVID year and it’s something special. We should use the opportunity,” Arafi said. “It’s probably a one-time thing. I can go to school, have a Masters and still play on the team and still gain experience. It’s a lot of experiences that I want to have before I turn pro.”
Arafi’s long-term goals in golf include playing on the LPGA Tour, playing on the European Solheim Cup team, and representing Switzerland in the Olympic Games.
“What I’ll really be pushing with her is this is just the belief you needed to know that this could be a reality, and now let’s just keep working on our small goals and keep the big goals in front of us, and keep the daily process goals right there and let’s just keep trying to get better,” Quinney said.
“If we have another three or four months where she sees results like this, then that will just be added belief that this dream can truly be a reality some day.”
Quinney believes Arafi can be an inspiration to others with both MS and other illnesses.
“There could be young girls or guys out there at some point that think their life is over like that doctor told her,” Quinney said. “If she becomes famous one person may have a little more courage or a little more hope because they know they can just go be normal and go out there and do their thing.”
Arafi agrees. She plans to become more active in the fight against MS and research into finding better medications to control it.
“I’m for sure planning to get involved. I think when you’re well-known or you’re getting famous it’s important to talk about things like that because a lot of people have MS,” Arafi said.
This story was originally published February 18, 2022 at 2:37 PM.
