Rose Zhang lost FM Championship — but found something she’d been missing

Rose Zhang’s season has been difficult for the 22-year-old star to navigate, but this week at the FM Championship at TPC Boston, the Stanford product finally started to find what she’s been looking for.

Zhang is working on finishing her degree at Stanford, opted to pare down her winter schedule to focus on school. She had it all mapped out, believing she knew how many tournaments she needed to play, and which ones, to be properly prepared for the major championships. But taking 22 credits during the winter term took a toll on her body, and she suffered neck spasms on both sides, which left her unable to practice or play for two months. She returned at the Mizhuo Americas Open and missed the cut. Her next four starts were at major championships, with a T35 at the Evian being her best showing.

The constant haymakers delivered by the golf gods tested Zhang mentally and physically.

“The only events that I really played in were majors this year and majors obviously test all skills of your game,” Zhang said on Saturday after finishing up her second round after Friday’s weather suspension. “I just didn’t have the intuition that I felt like I had last year in the previous years. I really had to keep my mindset very simple, stick to the process. Sometimes it gets discouraging, but I feel like with tough stretches there is still a lot of positivity that goes on.”

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Zhang was one of the most decorated amateur golfers in history, winning 12 times at Stanford, including back-to-back NCAA Individual championships. She also won the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Augusta National Women’s Amateur. She turned pro and became the first player in 72 years to win in her pro debut at the 2023 Mizuho Americas Open.

Zhang was seemingly on a rocket ship to stardom, but juggling a full LPGA schedule and her academic course load was tough, so she opted for a different approach this year as she closes in on her degree. It has been a challenge for Zhang not to be as sharp on the golf course as she is used to. The competitor in her has had a hard time facing this temporary reality despite the understanding that it will, eventually, pass.

“I think at the end of the day it’s something I want to do, it’s something that I want to gain for myself,” Zhang said of her Stanford degree. “So I am going back this fall just to go back to school; then I’ll finish up next winter, which is really exciting. But I would say with all the balance, it requires a lot of patience and dedication, reliance on people around you, but also yourself. So I will say it hasn’t been very easy, but it’s something that I would do all over again, even though it’s quite painful.

“I would say this year is the first time I really hit a hard struggle bus in my entire golf career, but I will say I think the success helps in that you know that it’s in you, but it also might hinder your look to the present and the future just because you expect way too much out of yourself in your circumstance. So I think I’m navigating that, and it’s helped me grow as a person and even as a player.”

But that pain might be ending. Zhang missed the cut last week in Canada but started to find something this week at TPC Boston. She opened with rounds of 70, 64 and 67 to put herself in Sunday’s final group alongside rookie Miranda Wang.

Zhang is used to being in the cauldron. She grew up in it as she stacked trophies during her amateur career. But she hasn’t faced Sunday pressure since last year’s Annika, where she entered the final round three shots back of eventual winner Nelly Korda. So Sunday was both a return to the familiar and an experience in the foreign for Zhang.

It unsurprisingly looked a little of both on Sunday in Norton, Mass. She went out in two-under 34 but missed makable birdie putts on 11 and 12, which would have closed the gap to one. A double bogey at the par-4 14th officially ended her chances, as Wang did just enough to hold off World No. 1 Jeeno Thitikul to win her maiden LPGA title.

Zhang finished in a tie for fifth, but it felt bigger than that.

While her back-nine charge fizzled as her putts skirted past the hole, there was a different feeling around the budding star as she tried to hunt down Wang. You can’t remember how to win if you don’t put yourself in that position. You can’t sharpen your skills outside the cauldron alone.

For Rose Zhang, putting herself in position to win on Sunday was the first step toward returning to the Rose Zhang of old.

“I will say, like I think the patience and the dedication that it takes to come back from all that, and then also I expected myself to play really right out the bat of post-injury. Obviously, that’s very unrealistic and kind of messes with the mental a little bit. That’s kind of the struggle that I endured,” Zhang said, revisiting the mental torment reserved for elite professional golfers. The kind that is now in her rearview mirror.

“I think now it’s, like I said, as simple as it is, sticking to the process and making sure you’re getting little bits of positivity in there. It’s something that’s kind of new to me, but I feel like I’ve been at a really good trajectory and I’ll be able to keep building from there.”

Rose Zhang’s emergence two years ago was a boon to women’s golf. She has the star talent and infectious personality that the LPGA needs.

When she birdied the first hole on Sunday, there was a buzz about what might be her day — a reemergence that would be welcomed by all in the golf world.

She didn’t finish the day holding the trophy. But this week, outside Boston, Rose Zhang found something she has been searching for since returning from her neck injury: momentum and a concrete reminder of what Rose Zhang is capable of.

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