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The 25-year-old Marine Drive Golf Club product will make be a regular on the top women’s tour this season after a successful stint at Q-School last month
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Published Jan 12, 2026 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read
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Vancouver golfer Leah John graduated from York House School in 2018 and has been playing at the Vision 54 Academy in Arizona. She’s off to the University of Nevada to play NCAA golf. [PNG Merlin Archive] Photo by Submitted /PNGArticle content
Leah John jokes that she was “potty trained on the golf course”.
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The 25-year-old from Vancouver, who earned her LPGA Tour card for this coming season with a strong showing at the Qualifying Series in Mobile, Ala., last month, was about three years old when her dad Jason would pick her up from daycare and have her ride in the cart while he played a round at Greywolf in Panorama.
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She would usually nap until the 13th hole and then follow her father around the fairways and greens the rest of the way, stick handling a ball with a club.
It’s funny to ponder now.
John started playing at five. She started getting serious about golf and competing as a teenager. She was a two-time club champion at Marine Drive and was twice named their most improved junior. John went on to play at the University of Nevada on scholarship, went on to win the B.C. Amateur twice, too.
She turned pro in 2024 playing on the Epson Tour, and her four top-10 finishes in the LPGA feeder loop included winning the Four Winds Invitational in South Bend, Ind., last August. She tied for 10th in Mobile last month with an eight-under par for the event. There were 115 competitors in that final qualifying stage, and the top 25 placings (including ties) earned full-time LPGA status for this coming season.
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John’s debut as a tour regular will likely be the Blue Bay LPGA tournament in China on March 5-8.
“It’s still taking some time to become real,” John, a York House graduate, said recently. “I honestly think it won’t set in until I take my first tee shot at my first event. And maybe even then I might feel like I’m just a sponsor’s exemption and it’s not real yet either.
“I put in a lot of work building up to Q-School. I really love where my game is at. I just need to keep sharpening my pencil. I’m working a lot on my wedges and distance control. I think I’m in a good spot.”
Maude-Aimée Leblanc, 36, of Sherbooke, Que., earned her tour card through Q-School in Mobile as well, and she and John join Brooke Henderson, 28, of the Smiths Falls, Ont., as regulars on the LPGA this season. The first tournament starts Jan. 29 in Orlando.
John is known for her long game, and readily admits, “I like to hit it far.”
She played as an amateur in the 2024 CPKC Women’s Open in Calgary and at last season’s U.S. Women’s Open in Erin, Wisc., so she does have firsthand knowledge about what competing against the best in the world is like.
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“Playing in the U.S. Open, that was a moment where I was thinking ‘OK, I kind of belong out here,’” recalled John. “When I looked at what the girls do, I thought, ‘I can do this. I need to work at it, but I can do this.’”
Another boost to her psyche came with her strong start at Q-School. She fired off an eight-under 64 to take the first-round lead.
“I really believed that I could crush it out there, but once I did it on my first round, I thought to myself, ‘I can do that. I got this,’” John said.
The weather was messy in Mobile, and qualifying was chopped from 90 holes to 72 because of various issues with Mother Nature. The final round took two days to play, with John getting in eight holes before having to return to finish action the following morning.
“It was the worst, most gruelling, challenging week that I’ve ever had — truly,” John explained. “It was great and it was awful. I loved that the weather was similar to Vancouver in the winter. It was a familiar place and I knew that I could grind that out and have it be a disadvantage to the other girls. I felt I was step ahead.
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“The pressure was a lot. I knew I would struggle with that, but I was surprised by hard how hard it was. I deal with anxiety on a daily basis. That part for myself was another battle. Just staying patient and present … it was supposed to be five days and then it became four, and then we had all those rain delays. Everything was getting postponed and delayed, so you never felt like you could just deal with the tournament.
“It’s about having a good perspective and liking yourself as a person. I can’t play golf today — so what am I going to do? I’m going to hang out with my buddies. I’m going to have a good time and make the most out of it all. I’m going to work out and keep my body prepped. And you have to remember to rely on the work that you’ve already done, but that’s what really determines how that week is going to go.”
Her phone, as you’d expect, went bonkers after she clinched her tour card. She revelled in that, saying that “it’s only special if you have people to share it with. Otherwise, it’s a really empty thing.”
Among the calls she made was to the clubhouse at Marine Drive. As she said, “they’ve been with you since the beginning.”
“I said, ‘Hey … it’s Leah,’ and then I yelled, ‘I made the LPGA,’ and they were all so happy and excited,” John added.
She also FaceTimed Jason and mom Lynn Furlotte. It’s a safe bet that memories of a little kid fast asleep in a golf cart at Greywolf flashed through their minds.
“They were so cute. My parents were both crying. I was crying. They both were saying that they had been trying to work all day, but couldn’t,” John said.
@steve-ewen.bsky.social
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