It involves a wide playing field, this golf business does, and those who excel at the game tend to have an innate ability to narrow their focus and see only the next shot.

Then there are those truly unique competitors who bring to the game not only a spirited ability to shoot numbers, but a noble conscience to widen the horizon and see the golf course as part of life’s arena.

Rebecca Skoler, for instance.

“I ask of my players to extend the scope of their world, to know it’s not just all about us,” said Ria Scott, the women’s golf coach at the University of Virginia. “Then you look at Rebecca. When she gets to speak her passions for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, everyone listens. There’s no stopping this kid.”

Skoler can smile at that, because wrist surgery in the winter of 2020 pretty much stopped her freshman golf season, but the coach’s point resonates.

“Honestly, my passion for social justice is unrelated to my golf,” said Skoler, who grew up in Needham and graduated from the Beaver Country Day School. “But as student-athletes, we do have the space to make change, we do have a platform that is important to use.”

Though her freshman year at UVA was the ultimate mixed bag – she was recovering from surgery, COVID protocols were in effect so students were taking classes remotely, and Skoler never got to embrace the true college experience – the spirited young woman created opportunities and did not sit still.

Skoler, who embraces the ethnicity of her family – Michael, her father, is Jewish; Jennifer, her mother, is of Chinese heritage – and flourished within the innovative framework of a Beaver Country Day curriculum, joined in an effort to form a student-athlete advisory committee at UVA.

“She wants to help bridge the gap between the administration, the NCAA, and student-athletes. She wants to give the students a voice,” said Scott, who envisions Skoler as an advocate for women golfers at a perfect time.

During the pandemic, golf’s impressive growth numbers are especially eye-popping with women, an eight percent surge in 2020, according to the National Golf Foundation. Now making up nearly one-quarter of the country’s 24.8 million golfers, women golfers command respect and it’s into that landscape that young, confident athletes such as Skoler are stepping forth.

“I’m so proud of how she has taken action to make an impact,” said Scott. “She knows there are so many ways to use golf; there are so many branches.”

Impressively, Skoler has maintained a firm competitive edge while widening her horizons. Given the latitude to study remotely, she recuperated in Florida where she could practice and take virtual classes. Fully healed from surgery, Skoler polished her game well enough to join good friend Sophie Simon for a strong effort in the recent U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-ball Championship.

They comfortably made the cut and while they were eliminated in the first round of match play, it was a positive step forward for Skoler, whose junior resume shined. She was the Mass Golf Girls’ Junior Amateur champion in 2018 and 2020 and a formidable AJGA record included a dramatic win last summer in her finale when Skoler drained a 45-foot putt to end a three-way playoff.

That stunning win came in public view at Chicopee Country Club, but it was another scene in a more solitary and sedate setting that brought Skoler some viral attention.

“It was just a bummer, all the remote classes, and I was in Florida and it was raining,” said Skoler. She could have sat indoors, but that’s not her style. She went to the range to hit balls and hit and hit and hit.

Unbeknownst to her, someone caught the session on video, and tweeted it with this: “Whoever this is on UVA Women’s golf is a trooper.”

Julie Williams, a respected golf writer who has her pulse on the women’s scene, recognized immediately. Williams had praised Skoler and Miller for their integrity back in 2019 when the duo were disqualified after notifying USGA officials that they had signed for an incorrect scorecard in Round 1 of the Four-ball Championship. (“It was a really great lesson for us,” said Skoler.)

Williams identified Skoler to her followers and wrote “this range session says something about her toughness.”

That toughness resonates with Scott, who appreciates the determination women golfers need in a landscape that has not always been welcoming.

Born in the Philippines, Scott emigrated to the Northern California area with her family and fell in love with golf. Like Skoler and so many other girls, she had to play on a boys’ team, but she developed quite a skill set and blazed some trails herself.

Scott played at the University of California, then professionally throughout the world. The first woman to play in an Asian PGA Tour tournament, she also took part in the 2006 World Cup, teed it up for the Philippines National Team six straight years, and qualified for six U.S. Golf Association tournaments.

She has, as they say, “creds,” and Scott appreciates not only Skoler’s passion to improve (“She is someone who has fallen in love with the process.”), but her commitment to a greater view at a time when young women are showing great pride in their athleticism and social responsibility.

“Rebecca embodies that,” said Scott. “She helps give us perspective.”