Her Aim Is True

CNN’s Asha Rangappa, an ex-FBI agent, uncovers a new challenge: golf

- PETER FINCH

THERE’S A CERTAIN ZEN QUALITY TO IT,” says Asha Rangappa. “You have to detach. You have to trust that if you perform all the elements without trying to control the outcome, you will get the outcome you want.” The former FBI counterintelligence agent is talking about learning to shoot firearms at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. But it turns out that experience is a lot like golf, a game she took up five years ago. “If you can just let go and trust the physics of the golf swing, that’s when it works for you,” says Rangappa, now a CNN contributor and senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

Rangappa, 45, first tried golf at a women’s clinic promoted by the Connecticut Bar Association, and she loved it. She signed up for more lessons, then joined a women’s league for beginners, competed in a tournament with other fellow former special agents and helped organise an FBI golf outing in New Haven, Conn.