NCAA champ Zhang makes winning debut on LPGA Tour
JERSEY CITY, New Jersey — The first words from Rose Zhang after the 20-year-old Californian capped off one of the more remarkable 13-day stretches in golf were telling.
“What is happening?” she said.
More tantalizing is what happens next.
Hype rules the day in a society built around social media, and Zhang is one of the rare athletes who delivered. The Stanford sophomore won her second straight NCAA title and then 13 days later was awash in wonder when she won the Mizuho Americas Open in her professional debut.
Women’s golf has not seen this level of anticipation since Michelle Wie West turned pro at age 15 equipped with blue-chip sponsors like Nike and Sony.
Zhang walked, talked and played like it was any other tournament.
She is so comfortable with who she is that expectations are not part of the equation.
“I honestly didn’t even expect to make the cut,” she said Sunday evening as she sat next to a trophy stuffed with a
bouquet of roses. “And the reason why I say this is because I don’t think about my expectations a lot. I think about playing the golf course. I think about trying to shoot the best score that I can. The expectation for me winning did not even cross my mind.
“I was just playing my game. I was having a good time out there,” she said. “This is the game that I love, and I’m so thankful to be a professional doing it now.”
She became an LPGA Tour member with the win, important because she could not be considered for the Solheim Cup in September otherwise. Now she might as well be penciled in for the American team.
She earned $412,500 US, though the money is not motivation and doesn’t compare to endorsements with the likes of Callaway, Adidas, Delta, Rolex, Beats by Dre.
Besides, Zhang has more pressing issues.
She made an appearance on NBC’s Today show on Monday, then it was back to Stanford to move out of her dorm and get through finals. She will be a fulltime player and still intends to finish a communications degree, just as Wie West eventually did.
“I have no idea what I’m going to do with that,” Zhang said with a laugh, mentioning an essay that was due for one class, another project for computer science that sounded as though it gives her more anxiety than a downhill putt with a foot of break.
“I have a busy week ahead of me, and that’s not golf-related,” she said.
Her next appearance inside the ropes is back in New Jersey on an even bigger stage than Liberty National, the course across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Zhang already was given an invitation to the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship at Baltusrol.
Also on the horizon the first full week of July is Pebble Beach, where the U.S. Women’s Open is being held for the first time. It already was the most anticipated event on the LPGA schedule this year because of the location. Now it has even greater appeal.