Natalie Srinivasan’s greatest strength as a golfer was her mind. She had an uncanny ability to block things out, to the point that Furman coach Jeff Hull would come up and ask, “Are you alive? Can I check your pulse?”
Srinivasan, a former college golf player of the year, had a gut check about her future last year on the Epson Tour in French Lick, Indiana.
“When I started to lose that mind control,” she said, “that’s when I knew I couldn’t do this. The passion wasn’t there.”
Srinivasan finished out the 2022 season on the Epson Tour in October and began studying for the Medical College Admission Test in November. Her clubs still haven’t made it out of the travel case, but she was recently accepted into the Medical University of South Carolina College of Medicine, where she will start school next fall.
Srinivasan follows the footsteps of not only her father, but of two other former Epson Tour players who are already in medical school: August Kim and Janet Mao.
“I think the three of us will always have a special bond,” said Srinivasan.
The pipeline continues on with Dylan Kim (no relation), a former standout at Baylor and Arkansas, who is currently in the process of studying for the MCAT, and Jaclyn Lee, an Ohio State grad and LPGA player who is in the process of making the switch to med school.
Kim, a former Big Ten conference champion who played for Purdue, has already been president of her class at Vanderbilt School of Medicine. The 28-year-old wants to study orthopedic surgery so that she can work with athletes. Kim’s younger sister, Auston, recently graduated from the Epson Tour and earned an LPGA card. The pair spent five months together as touring pros before August shifted gears to medicine, which has always been her long-term goal.
Mao, a neuroscience major at Northwestern who won NCAA regionals in 2016, quit playing golf competitively in 2021 so that she could begin the 18-month process of getting into medical school. The average applicant applies to 20 schools, Mao said, and Northwestern graduates average around 25 applications. That’s about where Mao landed, who pumped out essays for two months straight.
Mao was accepted to Emory, where her father is a research scientist, last fall and began an intense week of shadowing, “Week on the Wards,” in mid-July. Mao isn’t quite sure what kind of medicine she wants to specialize in, but she does plan to graduate in 2028 with an M.D. and a master’s degree in public health.
Mao said of the 141 people in her class, 90 percent are non-traditional students, or people like her who have taken time to do different things after undergrad. Mao hopes that young golfers with a dream of studying medicine will see that it’s possible to keep that dream alive – and study in the sciences – while playing Division I college golf.
“Don’t shy away from it,” Mao said.
Janet Mao poses with her family at Emory’s White Coat Ceremony. (courtesy photo)
All three of these elite college players had med school in mind when they were recruited to play college golf. Kim knew she’d found a good fit when she walked into the science wing at Purdue and saw the copper bust of a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
“It was the perfect mix,” said Kim, who studied biochemistry.
Mao went to Northwestern as a premed major and developed a desire to play golf professionally while in college. As a child, her father would fuel her curiosity in the sciences with questions like “Why do you think the leaves are changing colors?” He’d also take her to work.
“He’d put me in the MRI scanner,” said Mao of her early interest in medicine.
While Mao was competing on the Epson Tour, she took advantage of a service that was offered called Next Play Coaching. The one-hour sessions were designed to help players reassess their values and goals and release anxiety about the future.
Mao found a deeper passion for the game in college than she’d felt in junior golf and thought she should give the professional ranks a try. While she did enjoy aspects of tour life, Mao realized that she was playing to prove something to herself and to others, and that pressure was weighing her down.
“I wasn’t playing to become the best in the world one day,” she said. “I wasn’t driven in the same way some of the other ladies are on tour.”
Srinivasan’s father, Ajai, graduated from MUSC in 1996, and Natalie is proud to follow his lead. Ajai, a general surgeon in Spartanburg, South Carolina, played high-level tennis in India before moving to the U.S. for college.
Juli Inkster, Taylor Totland, Natalie Srinivasan and Pat Hurst during the Inkster Senior Award retreat. (Photo: Natalie Srinivasan)
Natalie was the kid in the seventh grade who enjoyed dissecting the frog while many of her friends were grossed out. Like Mao, it wasn’t until college that Srinivasan decided to give professional golf a shot, especially after a senior year that, while cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, saw her win the 2020 ANNIKA Award, PING WGCA National Player of the Year and the inaugural Juli Inkster Senior Award, which comes with a two-day retreat with the Hall of Famer player.
“Juli has taken me in like one of her own,” said Srinivasan of the down-to-earth legend who helped with caddies, courses and her transition to life after golf.
“She just wanted me to be happy.”
It took Srinivasan some time before she could admit out loud that she didn’t want to play golf anymore. The solitary life of professional golf, which demands the athlete put herself first to succeed, didn’t mesh with Srinivasan’s personality. She missed her Furman teammates and the idea of playing for something bigger than herself.
“I lost my why,” she said.
Consider it found.