Rose Zhang spent her teenage years becoming one of the greatest amateur golfers — male or female — ever. Today, after three rounds at the MizuhoLPGA, Rose leads by two. BFQuinn shares Zhang's journey leading up to the LPGA tour:
But here, she stops. No, Rose says. She is not like them. She’s just like everyone else. “I don’t think players on tour know who I am,” she tells me. “I’m just going to be a newbie out there.”
“For the troubled may you find peace ~ For the despairing may you find hope ~ For the lonely may you find love ~ For the skeptical may you find faith ~”There, in the middle, one can speak and hear something no one else can.Where did Rose Zhang come from? Depends on where you want to start. Or you can start in Irvine, about 50 miles south of Arcadia, where the Zhang family moved to a new home around 2008. The house was walking distance from a sprawling dirt pasture, cleared for new development. Around 9, Rose picked up one of her father’s golf clubs. He was right-handed. She was left-handed. Didn’t matter. She held that club and the forces of fate or brilliance or a greater power took over. Anne Walker, Rose’s coach at Stanford, has long wondered about this moment.
What really makes Rose different, though, is control. Self-control. Not too long ago, she sat on a range bucket at her old training facility talking to a group of junior girls. They were in awe of Rose, all perched forward, hanging on every word. Then Rose told them something they didn’t see coming: There have been other AJGA and NCAA players who’ve been better than her.
That’s when the camera zoomed tight. Earlier in the week, Rose planned to use her father as caddie for the opening two rounds at Champions Retreat, then rely on an Augusta National caddie with local knowledge for the final round. Instead, after stretching her lead to five going into that Saturday, Haibin was back on the bag. And there, in the middle of the 15th fairway, the two burst into a long, animated conversation.
The next day, Rose shot a bogey-free 5-under 67 and won, joining Jordan Spieth as the only two-time Ping Invitational champion. Bill is the bridge between eras. He’s 10 years Rose’s senior and was 8 when the family moved to the U.S. “The mix between my generation and my parents’ generation,” Rose says. He went to Cal State Fullerton on an academic scholarship, not quite understanding that his sister was on her way to stardom. “It was like, oh, that’s nice for you. Maybe you’ll win a trophy,” Bill remembers.
In another world or at another time, Rose might’ve simply transferred that high school world into professional life. Turn pro, hit the road with dad, do what he says.The windows are open in the second-floor classroom of Lane Hall, letting in the sounds of a late Friday afternoon in Palo Alto. It’s perfect out there. Eighty degrees. Sun-drenched. Slight breeze. Every fountain on campus is filled with frolicking half-naked students.
“I find Chinese to be very interesting,” she says. “It’s a very beautiful language. Especially when you learn to write. It’s very pretty — the characters. But it is very hard, requires a lot of brain work. You have to be proactive in your learning or you’ll forget everything. It’s like math, except I hate math.”
Rose is signed with Excel Sports Management, a firm that reps Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie West, Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Andrea Lee, Bronte Law, and Rose’s teammate, Rachel Heck, among others. While everyone was busy making a fuss over name, image and likeness deals signed by big-time college football and basketball players this past year, Rose was quietly inking deals that dwarfed most of them. Now turning pro, those deals are expanding massively.
“When you’re in college, you have the option to make your own schedule,” Rose says. “So I started to be like, Oh, well I have this time. I should try to go to church and really like, I don’t know, develop my faith.”
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