From Golf To Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize

When Gary Yohe could no longer hit his teammate’s curveball, he realized his baseball career was over. He was a junior in high school. He then took up golf and pursued it with a singular passion, practicing “like 10 hours a day” and then “playing nine holes,” he said.

“I was good enough to qualify for the United States Amateur twice,” said Yohe, “but never good enough to earn a living at it. (The University of Pennsylvania) was interested in me playing golf for them, but the reason I went to Penn was because I won a full academic scholarship from the same high school that led me to golf.”

Academics took a back seat to golf, at least with regard to scheduling. As Yohe explained, “I only took one economics course as an undergraduate, so I really had no idea where I was going to end up. I changed my major five times: English, philosophy, chemistry, chemical engineering, and finally mathematics primarily because I liked science and math (philosophy is math), but science labs interfered with golf practice. I was el...