St. Johns standout golfer poised to take shot at pro career

He’s got the drive for success. Peicheng Chen first visited Long Island from his home in Beijing as a tween who spoke no English and knew little about America.His father, an incredibly successful skydiver on China’s national team, brought Chen over to fulfill his high aspirations of turning his boy into a golfing elite. “My dad wanted me to play an Olympic sport,” Chen, now a 22-year-old senior standout golfer for St.

John’s University who shot a record 62 on Bethpage Yellow, told The Post. “We tried tennis when I was 6, but the ball knocked the racket out of my hand, and he said, ‘OK, we move on,’ and took me to a driving range.” After a fallout with Chen’s former golf instructor, a family friend referred them to Michael Jacobs, a golf pro consistently ranked as one of the top 100 nationwide.At age 12, Chen went to Jacobs’ Rock Hill Golf Club in Manorville, where his mom had to explain the situation using limited English. Jacobs was happy to help — only Chen didn’t exactly look like a future star golfer. “All of a sudden, this little, skinny, Urkel-looking kid with glasses came in the door,” the golf pro said, adding that Chen was known to wear vibrant red clothes with the word “China” all over them at first. He found the cultural differences tastefully amusing and quickly recognized the important things: Chen had the heart and the ambition to get better every day — despite the difficult language barrier. “Back then, he would give me very simple words to demonstrate the motion I needed to do or use body language,” said Chen, who won the Big East individual title last year. “He would even open up Google Translate to find a word that he wanted to say.

… He’s been taking care of me since I was 12.” That first summer turned into a decade of blossoming friendship between the two, as Chen loved returning to LI from China during the warm weather months each year until fully attending St.John’s at age 18. “A...