CHANDLER, ARIZONA | After a two-month break from the LPGA Tour, Rose Zhang once again exchanged her student hat for her professional athlete lid. Following a winter quarter taking classes at Stanford University, she found it difficult to shake off the rust. In the first round of the Ford Championship at Whirlwind Golf Club, she shot 73 (+1), leaving her 10 shots behind the leader, Charley Hull.
“I think I need a lot of technique work,” Zhang said. “[There are] a lot of things that I need to work on in terms of my game from the long game to the short, so it’s a lot more focused on that rather than just trying to go for a score, go for wins, all that stuff.”
For the second consecutive year, the two-time LPGA winner and former world-beating amateur took a winter sabbatical from professional golf to focus entirely on her schoolwork at Stanford, where she is pursuing a degree in communications. Zhang turned pro in 2023 after winning two NCAA individual titles at Stanford but committed to graduating, following a trail blazed by her friend and mentor Michelle Wie West, who earned a Stanford degree in 2012 while playing professionally.
On Thursday, Zhang made her first LPGA start since the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January. During her time on campus in Palo Alto, California, she took 22 units worth of classes. Zhang says sitting through hours of lectures and taking pop quizzes made her feel like a normal student. This is in stark contrast to the fall quarter, when she tried to balance taking classes while playing.
“Last quarter I felt how difficult it was going through the season and maintaining just my energy and my stability in the things that I was doing,” Zhang said. “So I decided to use this winter quarter to just be a student.”
Zhang says one course in particular she took last quarter may be helpful for her career: Sleep and Dreams. In this class, Zhang learned about sleep optimization and the importance of sleep to function.
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