Pencils down for Rose Zhang.
The 21-year-old, who is the world’s 17th-ranked player, just finished a “heavy” yet “ fulfilling” winter quarter at Stanford University. Now, she’s set to for the heart of her third LPGA season.
After playing the season-opening Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions in January, where she placed T10, Zhang opted not to defend her Founders Cup title due to schoolwork. Focusing on her studies, she didn’t play the LPGA’s Asian swing, either. Therefore, Zhang is No. 50 in the season-long Race to the CME Globe standings with the year’s first major, the Chevron Championship, less than a month away.
But she has no regrets about how she started the 2025 season.
“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 in her pre-tournament presser at this week’s Ford Championship. “... I would say for the most part, very satisfied with the way that I approached the entire season from the 10 weeks. I feel like there is a lot of things I look back on and I think there is necessary steps to improve on to stay more stable and not completely burn out towards the end.”
Very few—if any—players had expectations like Zhang entering their pro career. Arguably the greatest female amateur player ever, she won her pro debut in June 2023, becoming the first woman to accomplish that feat since Beverly Hanson in 1951. With only one victory in a little under two years since then, Zhang isn’t putting much pressure on herself to return to the winner’s circle.
“I think there needs to be a little bit of a learning curve,” she said. “I’d say I give myself a little bit of time to adjust. There is a lot of events this year, so it allows me to have an opportunity to have an open mind.
“I think I need a lot of technique work, 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. Because I think if you take care of your game in the process, then that will set you up for opportunities.”
Zhang doesn’t suspect it’ll take long to get the itch to hoist a trophy.
“So I feel like it wouldn’t take too much time to put the competitive hat back on,” she said. “I will say that it will take a little bit of time to get acclimated with going back to the structure of Mondays through Sundays, what are we doing to prepare for golf. But I do think that this year will be a little bit different in that I have a lot of different perspectives of how I’m approaching this game entirely.”
Though Zhang hasn’t teed it up alongside the world’s best in nearly two months, that could be a positive. During her time away from the course, she took a class on sleep, which may help her inside the ropes.
“I had a big problem with time zone changes,” she said, “and the LPGA Tour is a global sport … so the time change affected me a lot off the golf course, and I had a lot of racing mind during that time.
“So creating a routine that helps you wind down a little bit and then redoing that until you actually fall asleep has been like a little bit of an eye-opener. And they had us track our sleep as well, so I was looking at how much sleep I was getting. I was averaging six hours, so that’s not great.”
After the bulk of the LPGA season ends, a well-rested Zhang will pick up the pencil again in the fall. She’ll take 20 units, followed by another 20-unit winter quarter with the goal of graduating in 2026.
Maybe by then, she’ll have a few more victories and possibly even a major championship title to go with her diploma.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rose Zhang's Books are Shelved (for Now), but One Class May Help Her LPGA Career .
