Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Brandon Wu Shares Experiences from his First Quarter at Stanford

Freshman year, “the best year of your life,” as some would say. Everyone has encouraged me to take full advantage of it. Although transitioning to living at school can be tough, I have attended boarding school since seventh grade, and that has helped me ease into college life. Through my experience thus far, I have learned that having a great group of people including my friends, family, coaches, and teammates, have helped me adapt to life on the Farm. In fact, one the biggest changes for me has been getting used to the beautiful sunshine of California, which bodes much better for my golf game then snowy New England! Stanford has been great so far, and I wanted to share my favorite moments from this fall.

Playing Great Courses

As members of the golf team we have the opportunity to travel around the Bay Area and play some amazing golf courses. We are fortunate enough to be able to play the Stanford Golf Course as often as we want. On top of this, we’ve played storied clubs this fall such as San Francisco Golf Club and California Golf Club, as well as ones with great views such as Half Moon Bay.

Meeting All Sorts of People

The Stanford Golf Team has a great supporting cast of people that have contributed to our success through their continuous support. I have been fortunate enough to meet some of these people at the Siebel Varsity Golf Training Complex and at the Cardinal Classic. While they all had diverse interests outside of golf, they all exhibit a strong passion for the game. One particular person I met helped build the pool at the middle school I attended out in Massachusetts. I was a big swimmer throughout grade school, and I was very grateful of this beautiful pool during my time there. It was quite a coincidence to meet the people whom it had been named after, and it proved to me how contributions like this are vital to a team’s success.

Taking Down the Big Dogs

Despite being a very close-knit team, a key value of our team is the competitiveness. This is exemplified in practice where the sole purpose of our practice is to beat a teammate is set drills.
Isaiah and I, two of the three freshmen on the team, challenged and then proceeded to successfully take down the big, bad, juniors Mav and V, in a best ball battle at our practice facility. Isaiah showcased his clutch putting rolling in a 15 footer on the last hole, accompanied by a strong fist pump. Big win for the good guys.

Pumpkin Ridge

Playing Pumpkin Ridge was a blast. This historic venue, where Tiger won his third consecutive US Amateur Championship in 1996, served host to my first collegiate tournament.
The third and final day, I had two double bogeys in five holes and was sitting at 4 over, however, I went 7 under from then on out including closing with 5 birdies in a row, something I had never done before.  It was a great way to finish off my first tournament!


The fall season was a blast and I can’t wait for what the spring has in store! Go Card!

by Brandon Wu