[PHOTO: Julio Aguilar]
Rose Zhang is a day away from finishing her 20-unit winter quarter at Stanford University. Unfortunately for her sleep schedule, finals coincide with her return to the LPGA Tour this week. An LPGA media official had to end Zhang’s press conference early on Tuesday afternoon so she could drive the 70 kilometres in Los Angeles traffic home to Irvine for an open-book media psych final exam.
“The lack of sleep and the constant grinding in school hasn’t been easy,” Zhang said. “I would argue that it’s tested me in ways that golf couldn’t test me.”
Before Zhang, who won the Mizuho Americas Open last June in her pro debut, can think about the Fir Hills Se Ri Pak Championship that begins on Thursday at Rancho Palos Verdes Golf Club, she will have one last late night to finish four pages of a 15-page research paper for a political science class. In another finals tradition, she caught the flu that has gone around Stanford’s campus, which kept her bedridden for the past few days. The 20-year-old joked that her energy level coming into the week is less than 50 percent. The amount of schoolwork required is giving Zhang pause to consider whether or not she should take online classes going forward, though it’s a decision she can make later on in the year.
That’s just the academic side of Zhang’s pursuits. She still played in two tournaments while juggling her studies. In January, she finished T-7 at the LPGA’s Tournament of Champions. In February, Zhang played in the primetime, made-for-TV The Match with established stars Rory McIlroy, Lexi Thompson and Max Homa, where she relished the opportunity to put women’s golf on a bigger stage.
“When Charles Barkley is in your ear, it’s a little bit different,” Zhang joked.
Like her academics, Zhang crammed both events into an already packed schedule. Professors voiced concern that she would miss class time during her LPGA event. To not miss university again after The Match, Zhang took a redeye flight back from Florida to get back to Stanford for a 9am class.
While Zhang views her academic pursuits as a break from the demands of being a professional golfer, her on-and-off-campus, helter-skelter schedule has not let her fully recharge. Her packed calendar continues teaching Zhang the valuable lesson of time management, recognising she may have over-extended herself in the past few months.
“I think I do appreciate a lot of obstacles that come my way where I can be tested,” Zhang said. “But I do see the [busy] trend quite a bit.”
Rose Zhang will miss LPGA time while taking full load of classes at Stanford University
While Zhang sacrificed practising golf to spend time with her friends on campus, arriving at Palos Verdes with less preparation than usual, this week isn’t her first time at the course. In February last year, she won the Therese Hession Regional while playing for Stanford – her fourth of an NCAA record eight titles. Practising on Monday and Tuesday reminded Zhang of her collegiate-tournament-winning game plan, lessening the requisite practice time to learn the track.
The tournament starts her next test of changing her mindset from a Stanford student to refocusing herself as a professional golfer, a challenge she looks forward to.
“I’m pretty excited to come back out here, to be fair,” Zhang said. “Actually, school stresses me out a little bit more than golf does.”
