Wang relishes being a team-first player
Christine Wang plays a game that’s an individual sport at the highest level, but right now she’s playing for the team.
That’s why she’s more excited about St John’s collective success than her own.
The incoming senior led the Mavericks — who’d never won a team title in girls golf before 2017 — to their third consecutive SPC team championship, collecting her third straight individual title along the way.
“Christine loves the team aspect and relishes the opportunity to compete with and support her teammates,” St. John’s coach Jack Soliman said. “Her positive and upbeat demeanor is infectious, and her strong play elevates those around her. We know that Christine cannot do it alone.
“Consequently, her teammates work that much harder.”
Still, no one works harder than Wang, a University of Southern California pledge who’s likely to be named a twotime All-American by the American Junior Golf Association later this year. She boasts wins at the AJGA Junior at Lost Springs, and the Greg Norman Champions Golf Academy Junior Championship in South Carolina, and she’s this year’s recipient of the Chronicle’s All-Greater Houston Girls Golfer of the Year.
“Christine is as strong a high school golfer as I have seen in my 21-year coaching career in Houston,” Soliman said. “This season, her tournament stroke average was the best I’ve ever seen (69.6). (And) this may sound crazy, but for an AJGA All-American, Christine is somewhat of a hidden gem.
“As strong a player as she is now, I see tremendous upside in her future, as she is getting longer, and her short game is getting sharper.”
Q: How much do you appreciate the team aspect of high school competition?
A: “Having a team support you makes it a lot more fun, and makes going to practice a lot more fun. It motivates you. My teammates respect me, and look up to me, some of them, like underclassmen who also might want to go play college golf someday, so that also motivates me to work harder and try to set a good example.”
Q: How does playing amateur golf outside of school compare?
A: “Outside of high school, it’s completely individual. You’re not playing for a team, you’re just playing for yourself. So you travel by yourself or with a parent sometimes … and when you’re not playing, you hang out with other players. But when you play school tournaments, you’re playing for your school, so it’s a different way of playing, because you’re not thinking that much about yourself.”
Q: So are AJGA events more business-like and more about preparing you for the next level?
A: “Golf outside of school is more what the college coaches look at, because with in-school golf, it’s like, ‘OK, yes, you play for your school, but your competition is within your own conference and doesn’t represent the best of America.’ So when I play these AJGAs, especially the invitationals … it shows coaches how you compare to other top players in the country.”
Q: You recently gave your verbal commitment to USC. Why go to California? Was it the weather?
A: “I don’t know. When I was younger, I played a few tournaments over there, like the world championships, and I always had this really good idea of California. I just thought it was a nice state, and then as I got older, I thought California had more of the types of schools I was looking at — bigger schools, really good golf, and yes, the weather’s great. So I’ve just really wanted to go ever since I was little.”
Q: So it could have been any school in California?
A: “Yeah, pretty much. Outof-state definitely had to happen, but it was a goal to go to California. And the Pac-12 is the strongest women’s golf conference, so that was also part of it.”
Q: What was your goal going into your junior season at St. John’s?
A: “As a team, we all knew this year it was going to be harder for us to win another SPC state championship because our rival school (Kinkaid) got two really good freshmen. So we were expecting that … and then, before SPC, we lost quite a few (tournaments) to our rival, and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh guys, we really need to step it up.’ And so our team goal was just to play the best we could, and we got really close because of that, and that helped us, in the end, win our third championship.”
Q: How does this one compare to the first two?
A: “This year, I was a captain, so I was more involved in organizing practice and things like that. We used to practice at Memorial Park, but they closed this year, so we couldn’t have a team practice, which also was really hard. It was up to us players to practice on our own, and it took a lot of motivation, so I’m really proud of my teammates.”
Q: Was there something you wanted to work on individually this year?
A: “My scoring average was around a 69 this year. Outside of school, I was always able to break par … but in school tournaments, I had trouble doing that, for whatever reason. I don’t know why. So this year I really wanted to perform to the best of my abilities in all of my school tournaments.”
Q: What is the strength of your game?
A: “Probably my putting. I improved my putting a lot this year. That helped me make more birdies, so I was able to score better. I spent a lot of time on the putting green.”
Q: What are you up to this summer?
A: “I’m going to try to qualify for the (USGA) women’s amateur later this summer. I qualified when I was 14, but after that I haven’t, so I’m going to try to qualify for that again. It’s the biggest amateur tournament in the world. And then I am going to play in a few Texas amateur tournaments and then a few more of the AJGA invitationals.”