Talented Freshmen Arrive on the Links

If you’ve stepped into the Admissions Visitor Center at the Agassiz House lately, maybe you’ve heard an admissions officers explain that to get into Harvard, you don’t have to win a Nobel Prize in the fourth grade.

That accomplishment, they quip, comes in the fifth grade.

Jokes aside, however, few would contest that Crimson applicants do put together very impressive resumes. In fact, to understand this, we need to look no further than the brand new class of 2014.

Enter Bonnie Hu and Seiji Liu. In addition to graduating at the top of their respective classes, both students are listed in Golfweek magazine as a “Freshman to Watch.” With only 20 male and 20 female athletes named in the article, Hu and Liu’s titles are undoubtedly a sign of good things to come for the Harvard men’s and women’s golf teams.

Strangely enough, tennis served as a springboard for both Hu and Liu in beginning their golf careers.

“I had burned out from tennis,” Liu explains. “I played too much when I was growing up, and I got too into it, so my dad switched me over to golf. It was a way for me to spend more time with him and my siblings, and it was a fun game to play.”

Hu’s father, like Liu’s, seemed to have the same idea.

“I had to stop playing tennis, and my dad thought I should get into golf,” Hu says. “One of my best friends at the time was also playing golf, so I thought it would be fun.”

The “fun” sport hooked both Hu and Liu, and by the time high school arrived, both were deeply invested in the game.

Liu, for his part, transferred at the start of 10th grade to The Pendleton School of the IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla., to focus more closely on honing his skills.

“It was kind of half school, half intensive golf training,” he says. “That escalated my game.”

And escalate, his game certainly did.

Over the next three years, Liu picked up seven AJGA top-10 finishes as well as 12 top-15 finishes. In perhaps his finest golf moment, Liu nabbed second place at the 2008 AJGA Mayakoba Classic.

When Liu graduated from The Pendleton School, he was ranked 38th overall in the Golfweek/Titlest National Rankings, and within his high school class, he was ranked 12th. Academically, the Crimson golfer was just as strong. A two-time HP Junior Academic All-American, Liu was valedictorian and an AP Scholar with Honors.

Harvard, then, was a simpler transition than one would expect for the typical incoming freshman.

“[Balancing golf] taught me time management and how to be more independent,” Liu explains. “So, the transition here is not as difficult as it would be had I not been at IMG.”

Hopefully, Hu will likewise find that her high school experiences have prepared her well for the rigors of college life.

From her freshman year onward, Hu dedicated much of her free time to the sport.

“It took up a lot of time because I practiced every day after school and played on weekends,” she says. “There wasn’t much time for extracurriculars.”

But clearly, this busy schedule did little to deter Hu. In 2008, Hu was part of an eight-person team representing the US in the US-China Junior Championship in Beijing. The following year, the Crimson athlete collected two AJGA victories as well as the women’s championship trophy at the San Francisco City Championship.

To wrap up her high school career, Hu, like Liu, twice nabbed HP Junior Academic All-American honors, and she graduated valedictorian from Mission San Jose High School. Her ranking within the class of 2010 on the National Junior Golf Scoreboard? Ninth in the country.

Clearly, then, Hu and Liu’s arrival marks no small addition to the men’s and women’s golf teams. Both teams and their coaching staff have, consequently, been “phenomenal” in welcoming the new freshmen to the squads and showing them the ropes.

Already, in the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Tri-Meet this past weekend, Liu proved that he’s ready for some collegiate competition. He captured a team-best two victories in the Crimson’s second-place finish.

“Because I’ve played so many events over my high school career, I treated it like any other event,” Liu says. “I don’t worry about my opponents.”

Hu, likewise, seems unaffected by the idea of new competition. With her first taste of college-level competition arriving this Saturday at the Princeton Invitational, she seems calm and ready.

“I came here,” she says, “to play on a team.”

With this team emphasis in mind, hopefully, these budding stars will help their squads claim the Ancient Eight crown for Harvard golf.

—Staff writer Molly E. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@college.harvard.edu.