Some people relax with their friends while sipping boba. Some play video games together. Raj Patel (12) winds down with his friends on the golf course while slinging shots through a clear blue sky. More often than not, Raj engages in banter with his friends while frolicking around the course, but whether he is playing around or competing in a tournament match, Raj always enjoys golf as a pastime, a sport and an art.

Raj first discovered golf through his family. As free time to spend with family grew sparse throughout his middle and high school years, he realized that golfing offered a way to stay close and spend quality time with his family.

“My older brother was a member of the [Harker boys golf] team, and he and my mom got me into [golf],” Raj said. “As a middle schooler, I found it both boring and also frustrating. But at the time, I didn’t know I was spending quality time with my family. It was a way that [we] could hang out.”

In addition to playing casually, Raj also joined the Harker boys golf team in his freshman year, where he met fellow golfers, including Frederick “Freddy” Hoch (11).

“From freshman year to now, [Raj has] always been upbeat, happy-going at practice, a good energy,” Freddy said. “He never says anything bad about anyone. He’s always bringing people up and always [has] a positive energy for the team.”

Despite his initial competitive, driven approach to golf, Raj acknowledges that he began to appreciate the opportunities that golf offered to become closer with and talk more with his friends, his more relaxed nature shining through on the course.

“For me, [golf] used to be more of a very competitive [game],” Raj said. “I took the game so seriously that I would be frustrated with myself, even when I would mess up a shot. But recently, as I played more, I’ve realized it’s more of a place for me to relax and wind down and spend time with friends, because there is a lot of downtime in golf as you’re walking to your ball.”

Nowadays, Raj often visits the course with his friends on weekends. He smiles as he describes the jokes and shenanigans that fill a typical golfing day with his friends, whether it be striking the ball at an incorrect angle or betting with his friends that they’ll hit the ball off the ground without a tee.

“We take the first three or four holes seriously, and then the last four or five, once we’ve gotten a little fatigued, we act a little bit like some hooligans, messing around, hitting our five iron [club] on the green or betting each other we won’t hit a slice, maybe hitting a driver off of a par three,” Raj said. “It’s all in good fun, but a lot of our most memorable times come from those holes where we were out there having fun.”

According to long-time friend and golf teammate Arvin Nidadavolu (12), although Raj can be found simply having fun with his friends at times, he also concentrates and gets in the zone during intense, competitive situations.

“When I play with him, it’s usually not for anything professional, so he’s very lighthearted,” Arvin said. “But whenever we play together in tournaments, he always loses that side and becomes a professional.”

Not only does golf allow Raj to spend quality time with his friends, family and teammates, but he also sees golf as an avenue of relaxation.

“I found that golf was something that I could do … to relax a little [and] take my mind off of work I had to do,” Raj said. “Whether that would be with my older brother, or by myself, I would go to the range and hit some balls and de-stress.”

Just as Raj finds joy in socializing with teammates, friends and family in golf, he also enjoys the collaboration aspect in the fields of biology and medicine. An avid participant of the Harker Medical Club, Raj regularly attends speaker events and involves himself in the club’s mentorship program.

“Through the mentorship program of the medical club, I learned about the ethics of stem cells, [but] I wanted to learn a little more about the science research-based aspect of that,” Raj said.

Pursuing his interest in stem cells, Raj recently worked with a graduate student to study the process of modeling hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease in which one’s heart muscles become abnormally thick, using stem cells.

The Medical Club gave Raj a deep insight into the life and work of professional physicians. Raj began to appreciate his own physician, Dr. Hemal Parekh. Even though Raj had been interested in biology since before high school, it was through the mentorship of Dr. Parekh that Raj confirmed his passion for medicine.

“The mentorship was the most important experience in terms of helping me decide I wanted to go into medicine, because I was able to ask my physician, Dr. Parekh, about her work and her path to medicine,” Raj said. “It allowed me the ability to talk to her … and get to know her personally.”

In the future, Raj plans to pursue his passions in medicine with the structured, analytical thinking skills that golf has nurtured in him.

“Golf takes a lot of methodical thinking and calculations,” Raj said. “Various factors, like the slope of a hill or the green or the wind or your current lie [angle], everything plays a factor in golf. As you’re walking up to your ball, you have to think about all those factors as you take that shot. That’s something that resonates with me; I like to think things through before I do [them].”