Rose Zhang just took a class at Stanford that could come in pretty handy on the LPGA Tour in 2025

Rose Zhang is back competing on the LPGA Tour this week at the Ford Championship after a break to get in another quarter of classes at Stanford. This year, she had a different strategy for sharing time with her books—continuing to pursue her degree despite turning pro after her sophomore year—and her clubs. She actually shelved the clubs.

The 21-year-old Zhang took “a heavy load but nonetheless fulfilling” of course, giving her undivided attention to political and communication classes and fun ones like a sleep and dreams class and a Hebrew and Jewish literature short stories. She sat through eight-hour lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays and student presentations about politics. And she wrote. A lot.

What she didn’t do over the last two months—since she finished in a tie for 10th at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Championship—was play golf.

“Last quarter, I felt how difficult it was going through the season and maintaining my energy and my stability and the things I was doing,” Zhang said in a news conference from Whirlwind Golf Club in Chandler, Ariz. “I decided to use this winter quarter to just be a student. It was more so the objective of bringing balance back into my life. Last quarter, I both took 20 units and played a lot of golf on top of it. This year, I hosted an AJGA event, which was super cool, and I was out there the entire time … For the most part, I’m very satisfied with the way I’ve approached the entire season [when thinking about the last] 10 weeks. I think there’s a lot I look back on. There’s necessary steps to improve on to stay more stable and not completely burn out toward the end.”

Zhang, No. 17 in the current Rolex Women’s Rankings, is obviously an overachiever so it’s no surprise she’s on a fast track to graduate in 2026. She said she will take classes in the fall this year, too, to meet that goal. She’s grateful for her time as a student at Stanford.

“I enjoyed it for sure,” Zhang said of focusing on being a college student. “That was the first quarter I felt somewhat normal, where I was going through all of the struggles of being a college student … I had pop quizzes for some of my classes and I thought, ‘this was terrible.’ If I was a student athlete, I would be missing all these classes and I’d probably have zeroes on all my pop quizzes. It was a lot of being attentive in the school aspect. I also learned a lot about the outside world with AI, politics and societal interactions. It helps widen my horizons a little bit like I anticipated.”

Zhang said her sleep and dreams class was the most fun. She and her class partner outlined a routine for perfect sleep in the morning and evening, explaining the neurological side of that and she thought that was cool. She’s now armed with new information about her sleeping schedule that she hopes can help, especially with international travel.

“Part of the learning process was understanding sleep optimization. It was talking about the emphasis of sleep,” Zhang said. “The class mantra was ‘drowsiness is red alert.’ This pertains to driving in particular, but it applies to every aspect of your life, especially at Stanford where students are pulling all-nighters to finish practice sets and they’re finishing schoolwork, studying and cramming for exams. At the end of the day, they were showing levels of how much sleep you should get and if you lack that amount of sleep by the day, then your awareness and ability to obtain information will decrease significantly.”

She’s now armed with new information about her sleeping schedule that she hopes can help, especially with international travel when the tour heads to Europe in July for three events, including two majors—the Amundi Evian Championship and the AIG Women’s Open.

“The time changes have affected me a lot off the golf course,” Zhang said. “I had a lot of racing mind during that time. Creating a routine that helps you wind down a little bit and re-doing that until you actually fall asleep has been a little bit of an eye-opener. They had us track our sleep as well and I was averaging six hours, so that’s not great.” Her ideal amount of sleep is a minimum of seven hours but she said eight hours would be optimal for an athlete.

Zhang hopes to be on high alert this week in the Arizona. In an event where she missed the cut a year ago, she’s competing against a stacked field with World No. 1 Nelly Korda defending her title this week. All top 10-ranked players are here and 19 of the top 20 in the Rolex Rankings.

Fresh off a two-month break, Zhang believes it will take some time to get back to the structure of the tour and get her game—and sleep schedule—in sync, but she’s ready and armed with a new perspective.