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13-Year Old Meghna Mazumdar Is a Better Golfer Than You—And a Better Investor, Too

Meghna Mazumdar has exchanged letters with Warren Buffett and played golf with Rory McIlroy, all before getting her driver's license.
Courtesy Wells Fargo

Look, of course Meghna Mazumdar was a bit nervous, teeing up for her first shot of the day.

The golfer and investor was playing in the Pro-Am event of the Wells Fargo Championship, and her group that spring day in Charlotte included none other than Rory McIlroy, the event's defending champ. The biting azure of McIlroy's hat and pants was echoed by the sky over Quail Hollow Club.

"It was just a little overwhelming," Mazumdar said two days after taking the course with McIlroy. "Playing in front of hundreds, thousands of people, it was absolutely crazy. I actually didn't hit too bad of a shot! My parents told me it was a great shot. I was very proud of myself for that shot, it was pretty much like, straight down the fairway."

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Mazumdar, by the way, is 13 years old.

Read More: We Played Nine Holes of Miniature Golf in the Basement of a Funeral Home

Mazumdar got to tee off with the pro of her choice as the winner of this year's Wells Fargo "Succeeding Together" essay contest. In keeping with the titular spirit of the contest, Mazumdar's winning essay detailed the advantages of having what she calls her "Board of Directors"—her family, friends, teachers, and coaches at home in Connecticut. Without them, she knows, she would not be able to be the back-to-back Nutmeg State Games golfing champion in her age group, and run an investment portfolio, and get good grades, and have almost perfect school attendance (hold on, that absence was worth it, promise).

"Depending on the teenage crisis of the day," she wrote, "I may go to an individual or a sub-set of them. I trust that they will always be in my corner, offer me sound advice, and sometimes even lend me a shoulder or a shake, depending on what I may need."

The contest was run in conjunction with The First Tee, a youth development program.

"The context of The First Tee is golf," said Mark Moriarty, the Connecticut chapter's Program Director and Coach. Moriarty caddied Mazumdar in Carolina. "But equally important, and in a lot of cases more important, is … becoming more confident, having good judgment, being capable of going out and doing something like [Mazumdar] just did."

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"They literally teach us life lessons there," Mazumdar said. "Like honesty, integrity. We're learning all that, and I have taken that into home and school. I've used so many of the things that they teach."

A particular favorite concept of hers is the goal ladder, a strategy wherein individual, achievable "rungs" are scaled to meet a goal. Mazumdar used the goal ladder to get into finance at age 11, with the assistance of her parents (her dad works in the industry) and a stock market class.

"My mom is the chairperson of my Board of Directors, but my Dad is my CEO and also my investment idol," she said. "Through this experience, it's given my dad and a chance to bond. Watching CNBC together and tracking stocks, it's just given us a whole other level of bonding time."

After Mazumdar had opened her own fund, she wrote to another investment idol, Warren Buffett (Omaha perhaps being the only place left where the conflation of "integrity" and "finance" is not deemed a joke). Buffett, surprisingly, responded with a handwritten note inviting Mazumdar to join him at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' meeting.

"We flew out to Omaha," Mazumdar said. "I actually was really sad because I had to miss one day of school and mess up my perfect attendance, but we kept saying, 'If Warren Buffet calls, we should probably answer.'"

Mazumdar's letter from Warren Buffett. Courtesy Wells Fargo

Warren, if he is reading, will be happy to hear that Mazumdar has re-invested most of her prize money from the Wells Fargo contest. Unsurprisingly, she also had a plan for her golfing partner at Quail River.

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"I had a top five list when we found out that I had won," she said. "Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, or one of two lefties—being a left-handed player myself—either Phil Mickelson or Bubba Watson."

In the end, McIlroy got the nod. "I guess I picked Rory because he is one of the top players in the world," Mazumdar said. "He holds the longest drive on the PGA Tour [per the PGA, McIlroy is currently tied for 33rd in the stat, with a drive he hit at Wells Fargo], and my drive is one of the aspects of my game I'd like to work on." Seeing such a swing up close was illuminating and even a bit intimidating; the sound alone, the sudden, violent displacement of air, was thrilling for Mazumdar. A pragmatic pairing selection!

"Plus, he's just such a gentleman," she said. "He was very nice and kind, and very fun to play with, too. He had a lot of patience, because I had some shots that took me a while to figure out," she laughed. "And he just kind of sat there patiently and helped me along the way as well."

Aside from the mental adjustment she had to make teeing off with a pro—it took two or three holes just to settle in—the most difficult adjustment came in the short game. The Quail River greens were much faster than what she was used to playing in Connecticut. With her coach Moriarty caddying, however, she eventually made the adjustment, with her best shot of the day coming close to the pin.

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"Right before the eighth green, I made this chip," Mazumdar said. "It just kind of went and landed on the top of a hill on the green. And I just kind of turned around thinking that was the end of the shot, but because the greens are so fast, it just started trickling back down the hill and getting closer and closer to the hole!" Her words sped up now, rolling downhill as well. "The crowd just started roaring, and I was like 'oh, I wonder why they're clapping?' And then I turn around and I see they're clapping for my shot, and my ball is just rolling down the hill, and it ended up like five inches from the hole … Rory picked up his ball, and it was just—it was just amazing."

Meghna's mother, Ruki Mazumdar, had her own challenges.

"Literally, I could not breathe for that first tee," she said via phone. "There's rows and rows of people, obviously there to see Rory McIlroy, and I just didn't want her … as a mom, I didn't want that drive to dribble off the tee. If you could've heard it and seen it, I just thought, that's my baby. When she made that noise, and that arch, and I was just like OK, now we are off to the races. I try to teach her about humbleness on literally a daily basis, but I was a proud mama, let me tell you."

"My mom is always opening those doors, and I just stride right through them," Mazumdar says. "She props the door open for me, she's really always there for me."

The Mazumdars are Indian, and during Meghna's Annaprashana, a rice-eating ceremony marking a baby's first meal other than milk, they placed on the back of her card a simple but powerful message: dreams do come true.