Gabriella DeGasperis is a force of nature.
Gabriella is a golfer, of course. She’s also a student. She’s a social media sensation. She’s a teacher, sharing tips on how to play better golf. And she’s a savvy marketer, constantly crunching numbers to increase her social media reach. Her daily schedule would make a high-powered New York trial lawyer blush.
Did we mention that Gabriella is only 16 years old?
Her golf journey started at the age of 2, when her parents gave her a set of pink clubs.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said.
In no time, Gabriella was busting drivers and wowing family and friends with her trick shots. Over time, she took her love of golf to social media, with the goal of helping fellow golfers get more joy out of the game.
“I love the game so much,” Gabriella said. “I love that I have to put in a lot of work to get better. I love a challenge, and I love sharing that with others.”
Gabriella, better known on social media as Gabby Golf Girl, might be only 16 years old, but she has the discipline of a veteran CEO.
Consider her typical daily schedule. Gabriella gets the first tee time at her south Florida club and plays 18 holes in 90 minutes. After that, it’s home to eat and do schoolwork, then back to the golf course to practice and film social media spots. Then it’s home to edit her newest video before doing more homework from 9 to 11 p.m.
“I’d love to tell you that I’m there really managing her time,” said her dad, Ron, who Gabriella calls “my best coach.” “The fact is that she really is managing her time on her own. … She’s super mature. She’s super responsible.”
Gabriella doesn’t just post new content and forget about it. She manages her social media content like a seasoned marketing executive. She studies YouTube analytics and creates spreadsheets so that she can identify which videos generated the most followers and comments. Then she’ll create similar new content. Her biggest video to date was when she introduced her mom, who noted that she and her husband used to write motivational quotes on Gabriella’s golf gloves.
These days Gabriella is self-motivated by her desire to share her love of golf with her social media followers and help them improve their games. She scours comments and especially loves those who thank her for shaving strokes off their scores.
“Helping someone else play well makes me feel just as good as playing well myself,” Gabriella said.
Gabriella’s unusual maturity and her desire to share her love of golf with her sizable online platform caught the attention of Charles Schwab, a company with deep roots in the game. Charles Schwab has been the official investment firm of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions for more than two decades and, since 2019, has been the title sponsor of the PGA Tour’s Charles Schwab Challenge.
The sport of golf always has permeated Charles Schwab’s culture, filtering down from the company’s namesake founder, an avid lifelong player who was a high school teammate of future PGA Tour great Al Geiberger, perhaps better known as “Mr. 59.” In recent years, golf has become a vehicle to showcase Schwab’s “Challengers Series,” a celebration of people such as Gabriella whose passion for the game and relentless drive to innovate aligns with the company’s mission.
As one might imagine of someone as driven as Gabriella, she has big plans, possibly including eventually playing on the LPGA Tour. She’s already given some thought to what it might mean to join the Tour with a massive social media following already in place. Her thinking on the subject is far more nuanced than someone simply looking to generate a few more clicks.
“A fan base for any player, I think, is extremely valuable,” she said. “But women apply a lot of stress to themselves. Whether it’s in sports or in just regular life. And sports even heighten it more. I do it. So do a lot of the girls I play with. And so do a lot of women on the LPGA Tour. And I think that if women can make themselves a little bit more relatable in those tough times, people would sympathize and understand.”
