I’m alway interested in what are the peak ages for different careers. Because it’s complicated, emotionally stressful, and not too demanding physically, golf, for example, has always peaked relatively late. Recently, a number of bery young players like Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy have done very well. Still, the current dominant player, Dustin Johnson, is 32, the same age when Jack Nicklaus peaked. Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours might be more like 15,000 Hours for men golfers.

Among women golfers, however, the age of stardom has dropped sharply ever since the South Korean conveyor belt got started at the end of the 1990s. Partly that’s due to more scientific tutelage, partly due to adult women increasingly losing interest in golf. Thus, it’s newsworthy when a girl champion decides to go to college for a few years.

From the NYT:

Top Amateur Picks College Over L.P.G.A. Qualifying School

By KAREN CROUSE MARCH 29, 2017 … In a climate where the women’s top player, Ko, first reached No. 1 at age 17 and the average age of the players in the top 10 is 24, [Hannah] O’Sullivan’s refusal to put a full-time golf career ahead of a college experience sets her apart. It is as distinctive as her historic Symetra Tour victory a few months before her 17th birthday and her United States Women’s Amateur championship a few months later. “There’s so many people out on tour right now who are obviously doing super well at 17 or 18 years old,” said O’Sullivan, whose first name is pronounced HAH-nah. “But I realized for me a college experience is really important, and I didn’t really see the reason to push past that.” … Her mother recalled a conversation in which O’Sullivan said, “I dreamed of being in college and making lifelong friendships, and now because of my success in golf I’m losing that dream?”

I suspect being on college golf team at a wealthy college like Duke or Stanford is a lot like college baseball: a blast. In contrast, the pro golf tours are a grind. Phil Mickelson spent four years at Arizona State and got his diploma, even though it cost him a huge payday because to keep his amateur status he had to turn down the check for winning a PGA tournament. My vague hunch is that Tiger Woods recalls his two years on Stanford’s golf team, with Notah Begay (a Navajo who is the top designer of casino tribe golf courses) and Casey Martin (who won a famous lawsuit to be allowed to use a golf cart on tour due to his congenital illness), as more fun than any two years on the pro tour.

In February, they traveled to South Korea, where O’Sullivan’s mother’s family is from, a trip they had put off repeatedly because they could not wedge it into O’Sullivan’s golf and school schedule.

So Miss O’Sullivan is half Korean.