Rose Zhang On Her Pro Golf Career & Stanford Graduation

Rose Zhang first picked up a golf club when she was 9 years old. She was playing with her dad in their backyard in Irvine, California, and he handed her a putter from a standard adult men’s golfing set. “I think that thing weighed and was longer than me at the time,” Zhang says, calling in on Zoom from the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Santa Monica. “I could still get the ball up in the air, and that’s the first goal you want to have in the sport.” She had a knack for hitting the bottle caps he set out for her, so they soon made the trip to Roger Dunn Golf Shop to buy a set of kids' clubs she could practice with.

Thirteen years later, it’s safe to say that purchase paid off in spades. Zhang spent three years as the No. 1 women’s amateur golf player in the world, starting in 2020. She’s since won her professional debut while working toward her communications degree at Stanford (where she was also on the golf team during her freshman and sophomore seasons). She’ll graduate this spring, a “lifelong goal” that the 22-year-...