Emi Fujimura (12) surveys the golf ball in the tee, measuring the angle she needs to take with her driver. She sets her driver up with the ball and widens her stance. A deep breath in and out and she swings. With a loud crack, her driver makes contact. Emi’s eyes follow her ball all the way across the fairway. It lands in the green, rolling to a stop just next to the hole. 

Emi began playing golf at age six with encouragement from her father. Initially for her, golf served as a weekend hobby, but freshman year, Emi started playing golf seriously.

Emi enjoys playing an individual sport, and because of that aspect of golf, she learned how to deal with the pressure. She picked up techniques like counting her steps or listening to the wind to help her. However, although golf acts as an individual sport, Emi feels a very close bond with her teammates.

“We very much feel the team aspect of golf during the time that it takes to travel to the courses,” Emi said. “But we also feel it just celebrating each other’s shots on the last hole, and overall being really supportive of each other. During practice we’re always talking and having fun, and if I mess up on the course, I know that my teammates will have my back and probably shoot even better.”

One of Emi’s teammates, Metrica Shi (12), who met Emi in her freshman year during their Principles of Business class, describes how Emi approaches both golf and her academic classes.

“Emi’s very dedicated to golf, and she’s very hardworking,” Metrica said. “She practices every other day for hours, and sometimes in the middle of the night, she’ll text me that she’s going to go play golf. I think golf takes a lot of concentration, just because of how the sport is, and I think she does a good job of staying concentrated. She also puts so much attention to detail into her playing and when she sets up her shots”.

Emi’s dedication to golf let her improve on the physical game, as well as her mental game. Emi grew to use techniques to help herself deal with the pressure of self-reliance, and blow-up holes, which are holes that go worse than usual.

“I used to be really bad at dealing with the mental side of the game, and I would let blow-up holes affect the rest of that round,” Emi said. “But I think over time, especially because I forced myself to play a lot more tournaments, I became more comfortable and also adapted.  Now I’m able to recover within the hole, not just after a blow-up hole or shot.”

Golf Coach Ie-Chen Cheng, who coached Emi since sixth grade, admires her dedication, noting that despite not making the middle school golf team at first, Emi continued to work hard and improve her skills until she made the team.

“Emi’s strength is her positivity, her quiet dedication; she never complains,” Cheng said. “She’s probably one of the most dedicated students I’ve had over the years. Despite all the rigors of Harker academics, she never makes excuses. She’s so committed that she’ll always put the team first. I can always rely on her and her teammates can rely on her to be that rock the team always needs.”

Emi remembers one of her favorite golf memories: getting an eagle on the very first hole — a great start to a two day long individual tournament. An eagle is two hits under the number of hits that is considered standard.

“This summer, when I really started seeing improvement in my game, I had my first eagle,” Emi said. “Having my first eagle was huge because I feel like it’s very monumental, because not everyone can shoot an eagle. Also celebrating it was really nice.”

Golf teammate Ashley Mo (10) highlights Emi’s encouragement and role, not only as a friend, but also as captain of the team. Ashley finds Emi relaxing to hang out with outside of golf because of her easy going personality.

“When she’s playing golf, she’s a really good teammate and captain; she’s always encouraging others to not give up,” Ashley said. “Even if we hit a bad shot, she’ll just keep playing and keep staying focused. And then as a captain, at the end of every match, she gives a speech and say what we did, what we can improve on. And I feel she always brings up really nice points that help us improve a lot.”

Reflecting on her time playing golf, Emi spotlights that striving for improvement in general, proves to be fundamental to her playing. She finds it really rewarding when she plays well, and it makes her always want to continue growing.

“I feel like golf is fun,” Emi said. “When I play really well, it gives me a sense of ‘I want to keep on playing’. I always want to get better. In golf, everything is really dependent on my actions, so it puts a lot of pressure on me, but I always want to get better.”