When Natalie Srinivasan retired from professional golf at the end of the 2022 Epson Tour season, she did it cold turkey. Srinivasan, formerly the top female collegian, hasn’t played a round since she left the tour.
For one thing, as a first-year medical student at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, Srinivasan lacks the time to pour into her game. For another, Srinivasan, who grew up in Spartanburg, South Carolina, spent so long at the pinnacle of the sport that now it’s hard to experience it in any other way.
Srinivasan’s 2½-year professional career largely played out on the Epson Tour. She made 14 cuts in 18 events in the 2022 season and finished in the top 10 three times. By July, however, she had decided that she would hang it up in the fall. She played the Epson Tour Championship in October, finished T-56, and hasn’t played a round since.
The few times post-retirement that she has hit golf balls, usually with her brother, she found the experience to be frustrating.
“For me, golf wasn’t a hobby,” she said. “In college, it was a totally different experience. Playing professional golf, it’s your job, and it’s a very different mindset. For me, it was one of those things where I really didn’t love it enough for it to be my profession.”
Srinivasan, now 26, had Epson Tour status locked up when she graduated from Furman in 2020. Despite closing out her college career at the height of the pandemic, she felt she couldn’t have asked for more from her senior season. Srinivasan won three of her six starts and also won, among other accolades, the Annika Award as the top female college golfer and the Juli Inkster Senior Award.
It was the ultimate launching point for a professional career, given the Annika Award came with an exemption into the Evian Championship, an LPGA major event, and Inkster’s award came with a one-on-one weekend with Inkster (including a round at Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, California) and an exemption into the LPGA’s Portland Classic.
When she arrived at Furman, in Greenville, South Carolina, professional golf was a dream that, as her career progressed, became more and more realistic. But Srinivasan didn’t choose Furman just for the athletics. Academics weighed heavily. She had finished the necessary classes for a degree in health sciences by the spring of her junior year.
“Both of my parents are educated, and that’s always been a standard for both my brother and I from them,” Srinivasan said. “It’s not a choice. It’s a ‘what-we’re-going-to-do kind of thing.’”
“I’m so glad for the experiences I had in professional golf and throughout college. It just wasn’t what I wanted for my career.” — Natalie Srinivasan
Srinivasan has no regrets about the time she spent playing professionally. She traveled with her mom, Tammy, for three years and called that the best part of the experience. She made friendships on tour which she still maintains, and she stays in touch with her Furman teammates, as well.
Jeff Hull, Srinivasan’s college coach at Furman, continued to coach Srinivasan after graduation, and she remembers surprising him a little bit with a phone call after the Epson Tour Championship to say, “I’m done.”
Still, Srinivasan’s circle was supportive. Hull was at Srinivasan’s white coat ceremony earlier this year.
“I don’t regret anything that I did at all,” she said. “I’m so glad for the experiences I had in professional golf and throughout college. It just wasn’t what I wanted for my career. It just takes time for you to be out there, to do it every day and get past that rookie stage to figure out what it’s about and how it works. I just realized, it’s just not what I wanted.”
After the 2022 Epson Tour season ended, Srinivasan dove into logistics for her career pivot to medicine. That included preparations for the Medical College Admission Test and med-school applications – neither of which is a minor endeavor.
“It’s never official until it’s official,” Srinivasan said of applying to medical schools and being accepted to MUSC in September 2023. “It’s like golf, you know. The round is not done until you putt in the last.”
The following March, the Srinivasans took a family trip to Italy – the first without golf clubs – and in May, Srinivasan moved to Charleston to assist in a research project in the transplant surgery department.
Srinivasan’s dad, Ajai, attended MUSC and works in Spartanburg as a general surgeon. Though surgery does interest her, Srinivasan said it’s too early to say what specialty she’ll choose.
Srinivasan is among a handful of former players who left professional golf for the medical industry, including Dylan Kim, August Kim, Janet Mao and Jaclyn Lee. The five communicate and compare experiences through a group chat they have named Pro Golf Med School Pen Pals.
Other women with whom Srinivasan competed at the professional level have begun the process to regain their amateur status, but Srinivasan isn’t sure that’s for her. She’s thought about it but hasn’t pursued it.
It isn’t easy to change course so abruptly, as Srinivasan did two years ago. Golf had been her comfort zone for so long that she found it difficult to verbalize her desire to leave the game for something else.
“It was really hard for me to say I don’t want to play anymore,” she said. “That sentence was very hard for me to verbalize for a long time. I think once I kind of said it, it was like, OK, that was very freeing.”
Srinivasan would encourage anyone with the opportunity to play professionally to take it. The experience matured her and gave her a taste of what it’s like to run one’s own business, in a way. On tour, she was her own boss. She gained experiences that she’s not sure any other career could provide, and that extends to the people factor.
“The friends and relationships I made, that’s what I remember more about professional golf.”