Former golf phenom Lucy Li graduates from Ivy League school with 4.0 while playing on LPGA
Former golf phenom Lucy Li graduates from Ivy League school with 4.0 while playing on LPGA
Remember when 11-year-old Lucy Li captivated crowds at Pinehurst more than a decade ago with her ruffled skirts and ice cream? The big-brained phenom is all grown up now and playing her third full season on the LPGA.
While Rose Zhang's academic schedule gets a lot of ink, Li's college career didn't get as much attention, but the end results are extraordinary. Li, 22, recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA. Li now boasts an LPGA card and a degree in data analytics and psychological sciences from an Ivy League institution.
Li started her professional golf career around the same time she started taking online courses at Penn.
"While COVID set me back a few years in my golf career, it also gave me the time and space I needed to really dig into my pursuit of higher education," Li posted on Instagram. "It's a reminder to me that not all bad is bad, and that life will endlessly take you down funny paths and winding roads until you reach where it intended you to be.
"Before anyone asks me why I did any of this to myself while already having a full time job as a pro golfer let me answer: I'm a huge nerd. I've always been driven by curiosity, love of learning, and self-improvement, both on and off the course. It's been an honor and privilege to continue that journey at Penn. I am now armed with a lot of useful information, better leadership and communication skills, but more importantly a lot of really interesting but mostly useless facts about a lot of different things."
Li, who turned professional at age 17, counts Johnny Miller as a mentor and was pen pals with the late great Mickey Wright. Currently No. 78 in the world, Li has yet to contend this season and wasn't in the field at the 80th U.S. Women's Open at Erin Hills. She is playing this week at the ShopRite LPGA Classic, still searching for her first LPGA victory.
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