China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Education to the fore
Talented golfer tees off for doctorate in politics as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford
Wang Ziyi still remembers the day when she first picked up her golf club — it was May 2, 2004. She was only 6 years old at the time and the “whoosh” and “ping” of a club hitting that little white ball has been the soundtrack of her life ever since.
Wang, who majored in history — concentrating on military history — for her bachelor’s degree at Stanford University in the United States, and minored in French, is pursuing a master’s in international policy and will graduate in June.
She once planned to become a professional golfer after finishing at Stanford, planning every detail — from what competitions to attend and which sponsors to look for, to how to set her training schedule and how to improve her skills.
Yet, last year, the 21-year-old decided to put that childhood dream aside and, instead, pursue a doctorate in politics at the University of Oxford in England.
That new goal just came true — she was selected with three other students as the sixth cohort of Rhodes scholars from the Chinese mainland in December. They will arrive at Rhodes House in Oxford in October.
The Rhodes scholarship, founded in 1903 and one of the world’s preeminent and oldest graduate fellowships, provides all expenses for up to three years of study at Oxford.
According to Diana Fu, national co-secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship for China, this year’s pool was among the largest and most competitive to date. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s interviews were held online.
Wang learned about her Rhodes scholarship success via a Sunday morning email from the national secretary of Rhodes China.
“I’m really excited for this new chapter in my life because there have been multiple things that I have wanted to pursue, but now it seems like doing a DPhil (the Oxford equivalent of a PhD) in politics is what I really want to do at the moment,” Wang says.
“This global pandemic convinced me that the ever-diverging SinoAmerican intellectual groundwork demands construction of strategic cooperation through a historical perspective,” Wang explains, adding she plans to deliver the lacking research thereof as part of her doctorate program.
If there was no pandemic, last summer, Wang could have been marveling at the sunset by Lake Leman in Geneva, while interning for the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Initiative.
“Alternatively, I could also have been competing in the world’s most prestigious women’s amateur golf tournament, indulging in the bittersweet dilemma of whether to pursue professional golf,” she says.
Instead, in June, Wang joined the Hoover Institution’s COVID-19 project as a research assistant. She helped in drafting the white paper Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Mobilizing and Integrating Responses Across the Government and the Private Sector, published by Hoover Press on Oct 14.
From June to October, Wang did research in many fields, including innovation in private-public partnerships, legal challenges in datasharing and private sector engagement, testing types, contact tracing and therapeutics. She also conducted interviews with epidemiologists, virologists, economists and politicians.
“I learned so much by doing the research. For example, I could learn more from a 30-minute phone interview with the policymakers than I would by spending three to four hours online reading papers and policies,” she says.
According to The Stanford Daily, Condoleezza Rice, former US secretary of state and the Hoover Institution director, who is a golf buddy of Wang’s, uses the word “determined” to characterize her.
“I keep telling Ziyi that I want to have a golf swing like hers and she tells me she wants to have a career like mine,” Rice says.
Career dogleg
Wang is on the Stanford Women’s Golf Team. After a couple of competitions last January and February, due to the pandemic, the whole season of last year was canceled. She says she hopes to be able to compete in some tournaments this spring.
Wang, a Beijing native, previously competed for the Chinese national golf team. She was the youngest champion of China LPGA Tour — at the age of 16, she won the 2014 China LPGA Xiamen challenge.
In June 2016, Wang’s journey at Stanford as a student-athlete started. Each week, she needs to practice for around 25 to 30 hours alongside her already heavy school workload.
She has a tight schedule — on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she gets up just after 6 am and starts her morning exercise at 6:30. An hour later, she returns to her dorm to have a quick shower and breakfast before her morning classes.
During the tournaments, she sometimes has to communicate with her professor to arrange assignment extensions as their deadlines can sometimes fall between competition rounds, when she has no time to open her laptop.
The schedule at Stanford for Wang is not a strange one — during her time at the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, from 2010 to 2016, her timetable was no less packed.
“It was my childhood dream to become a pro golfer and I’ve competed at the world’s top-level competitions,” she says.
A year ago, before Wang started her master’s, she had no plan on continuing her study beyond that, but was convinced that she would go professional in golf after her graduation in 2021.
All of her plans changed when her master’s course began — in her program there were only 29 students and Wang was among the youngest.
“There were seven serving military officers, with abundant work experience and many of my classmates have worked at institutions like the World Bank, the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,” Wang recalls.
Wang remembers during a class pertaining to the global financial market, she realized that she has a deeper interest and passion for politics than for sport, that’s when she decided to change direction on her path to becoming a professional golfer.
“I realized that I must get more professional knowledge before I can solve a real-world problem, even though my master’s aims to train people to solve actual problems in the world. To have a long career, I must study for a doctoral degree.”
Wang says her parents support her decision on giving up the golf career. “My parents and I are pretty close, like friends. When I asked them if I will regret giving up on my golf career now when I’m 40 or 50 years old, my father told me that if I was worrying about regret then I’ll be fine, because there will be many regrets in one’s life,” Wang says.
She adds that while she was dreaming of being a professional golfer, she still planned to hang up the clubs in five years to start another career, as she believes that golf isn’t a forever job.
“My friends and coaches say that it’s a huge pity that I gave up the golf career as I’ve practiced so hard for so many years, but I think I’ve learned a lot from practicing golf,” she says. “I’ve met many people by playing golf including Condoleezza Rice because we have the same hobby, and some of them became my mentors who gave me many pertinent suggestions.”
“Golf is a sport that gives you constant feedback, because for every single shot, if you have a slight absence of mind, it will show you,” she says. “Sometimes people may never tell me their real thoughts, but in golf, a single, slight tremble in my muscle can give me feedback right away,” she says.
Wang thinks another thing that makes golf special is that, in golf, she is always facing loss.
“The number of failures I face is always more than the success I have, and the shots I don’t hit well always outnumber the ones I do.
“So I’m always in the situation of facing failure, which I think helps me to maintain a stable mental state when facing important issues, such as my application for the Rhodes scholars.”
I’m really excited for this new chapter in my life ... now it seems like doing a DPhil in politics is what I really want to do at the moment.”
Wang Ziyi, selected Rhodes scholar