Chloe Royston Looks to Find Success in Her First Season with Harvard Golf

“I wanted to come to America to swim. That was my plan.”

Growing up in South Africa, freshman golfer Chloe Royston was always a tremendous competitor. In the classroom, she excelled as a student. In the pool, she aspired to become a Division I swimmer. Halfway through high school, however, she hit a major health roadblock and her athletic career was thrown into jeopardy.

Persistent ear infections and complications from Type I Diabetes forced her to give up her swimming career as doctors advised her to stay out of the pool. Under such conditions, one would probably assume that Division I sports were out of the picture — but not for Chloe.

“I always wanted to come to a Division I school for sports,” Chloe said. “[I] just changed sports in the middle of high school.”

Determined to reach the pinnacle of college athletics, she pivoted her focus to golf, a sport she had played all her life, but not yet at top competitive levels. Fortunately, she did have a mentor to help her through this daunting process: her brother, Greg Royston ‘18, 2017 Ivy League Player of the year in golf.

Golf runs in the family for the Roystons, so Chloe has always had experience. Over holidays growing up, she had gotten out on the course with her brother and picked up a strong repertoire of skills even before she transitioned away from swimming. That being said, the Division I pursuit presented a whole new set of challenges, and the learning curve was steep. As a swimmer, Chloe had reached the top of South Africa’s competitive ranks — she had made a name for herself as a prolific swimmer and earned a level of comfort with her craft that every athlete hopes to achieve after enough years of experience. With swimming now out of the question, Chloe had to return to square one.

“I had a bit of humbling experience having to go back to the beginning,” Royston said. “Having really been high up in competitive swimming, and then now having to start in the B-division again, was interesting, but I loved it. Now, looking back, I prefer golf to swimming.”

Coach Kevin Rhoads, coach of both the Harvard men’s and women’s golf teams, reflected on the rarity of Chloe in being able to achieve the swimming to golf transition so quickly and completely.

“That, in it of itself, is such an outlier — people don’t do that,” Rhoads said. “The fact that she was able to excel really speaks for, yes her physical talent level, but just what she’s like. She’s fearless and basically just sets her mind on stuff that she’s going to do and goes after it really hard.”

In the second half of high school, now fully committed to golf, Chloe had to push her game to the next level. Royston had a tremendous foundation from playing throughout her childhood, but she still needed that next level of precision in shot-making.

“Because I started so late, I didn’t have all the shots to start with, and I’m still learning,” Chloe said. “He would say, ‘Oh, just try this, just try that,’ and that really [helped] me develop as a player.”

Greg stressed that the key to helping someone learn new skills in golf is to take a trial-and-error approach. Because different players’ games can be very different, he felt that it was crucial to present Chloe with the range of different shots possible and allow her to find her own niche.

“I played more golf growing up; I was very passionate about it from a very young age,” Greg said. “I developed the feel and ability to see the shots, so maybe more than teaching specific skills, I encouraged her to try stuff. Golf is a game where different people achieve things in slightly different ways.”

Similarly, Rhoads emphasized that something he saw in Greg’s time at Harvard was his attention for detail and shot-making precision. According to Rhoads, in golf teaching circles in the last few years, there has been a huge increase in attention on standardized technique. Over the last few years, golf swings have generally grown to become more similar amongst players, which on one hand has brought new efficiency to the game. On the other hand, the trend has led to a decrease in crafty shot-making. Greg, however, was able to reconcile the efficiency with creativity.

“Greg really was able to work both of those big values,” Rhoads said. “He continued to get more efficient with his big technique, but he’s also a really, really creative player. He’s able to see shots and put those into physical manifestations better than most people of this newer, younger generation…[Chloe] is definitely able to bring some of that to the table, and if she continues to develop her game, I think she’ll just have more and more access to that.”

One specific area of the game that Greg tried to highlight to Chloe was the difference in short game approaches. Compared to other elements of golf, chipping and putting may be the most dependent on course and grass conditions. In South Africa, the tropical kikuyu grass, a tropical species is the norm, and the ball will generally sit relatively nicely on the grass for a solid lie. Conditions in the Northeast, however, can be significantly less temperate. The rough can be gnarly, and the ball can sink deep.

“The grass is very different in the U.S. compared to South Africa, so I struggled with my short game and chipping,” Greg said. “The ball would sit in the grass a little more than in South Africa.”

Chloe conveyed a similar thought, describing short game conditions as “particularly quite different compared to home.” Nonetheless, she mentioned that she values the opportunity to broaden her game to new conditions.

Realizing that Chloe would probably (and did) experience this challenge, Greg made sure to highlight it to her. That being said, he tried to make the lesson a more universal one than just a golf tip, hoping to remind her that challenges are not a reflection on ability.

“I told her to expect finding it difficult at the start and not to be too hard on herself,” Greg said. “If you’re more attuned to the change, you’ll know it’s not just that you’re all of the sudden struggling with chipping.”

More broadly, a lot of the advice Greg did strive to impart did in fact go beyond golf, addressing topics like positive mindset on the course and the transition to college in the States.

“I had no idea what Harvard was going to be like,” Greg said. “The whole experience was learning what Harvard was about. The Northeast can be very different from South Africa.”

In learning what Harvard was about, Greg reflected that one of the most important lessons he learned was a new mindset: an ability to to truly analyze practice and the game in a way that he hadn’t been exposed to before. He credits the coaches with teaching him this skill, one that can also be universalized to academics and broader life at Harvard. Chloe has seen this skill manifest in her life at Harvard in many areas of the transition to college, but especially on the course.

Although Greg and Chloe never did overlap at Harvard, she stressed that that didn’t mean he wasn’t a resource, as he always was just one phone call away. While she would have loved to overlap with him at least for a year, the fact that Greg had already graduated also gave a certain retrospect to his advice.

“I think this has allowed him to give even more advice looking back over his experiences,” Chloe said.

In giving advice, Greg too explained that he strayed away from incredibly specific details in order to avoid forcing his vision of Harvard onto her. Echoing a similar trend, Rhoads also noted that, from a coaching perspective, the staff will highlight the older sibling as resource but make sure that the experience is completely individualized.

“We also have a huge value for treating this as its own experience,” Rhoads said. “We try not to reference the older sibling on a regular basis.”

Reflecting on Greg’s advice about trying new approaches, staying resilient, and keeping a positive, focused mindset, Chloe appreciates that the words of wisdom have always been very applicable to her own experiences. In no way did she ever feel that Greg tried to force his four years onto her.

“He’s been very careful not to push his experience on me, which has been amazing, but at the same time been able to give me a lot of advice about everything,” Chloe said.

Outside of advice and guidance, friendly competition has contributed to both siblings’ respective successes. In fact, the siblings both mentioned how competition between them drives them to their bests. As Greg said, “golf can be anonymous,” and the bond between them helped to break down that anonymity. They haven’t been able to play together in a while living on different continents, but they both made sure to emphasize that they can’t wait for their next competition over the semester break.