Vancouver’s Leah John takes a powerful game and magnetic personality to the LPGA Tour
As she fulfills a childhood dream and begins her rookie season on the LPGA Tour, Leah John won’t be doing it alone.
The Vancouver native will have an unofficial fan club of sorts rooting for her every step of the way. And just who are the members of this club? Well, just about everyone who has come into contact with the two-time B.C. Women’s Amateur champion.
John, whose rookie season begins in early March at the Blue Bay LPGA tourney on Hainan Island, China, brings a powerful game and personality to the LPGA Tour. Her ability to bomb it off the tee is a big part of her game and helped John breeze through qualifying school this past December and earn her 2026 LPGA Tour card just 18 months after graduating from college.
But what has really connected John to golf fans, her peers, coaches and just about everyone she meets is a big personality, one that exudes absolute joy. The 25-year-old loves the life she is living, sees sunshine on a cloudy day, and has made many friends on her golf journey.
It was that personality, along with an off-the-charts work ethic, that persuaded Kathleen Takaishi, head coach of the women’s golf team at the University of Nevada, to recruit John to the Reno school. “Leah just brought such great joy to everyone on the team.” Takaishi said in an interview. “We just had so much fun when she was on the team.”
Takaishi provided a couple examples of that fun. “She was just a goofball,” Takairshi said of John. “It was great because sometimes we get all wrapped up in competing and taking care of the details, so some levity is always good. I remember going to the grocery store on the road and Leah would climb in the cart and we’d push her around the store.
“There was another time when she was trying to imitate a scene from some movie and went flying across a coffee table at this Airbnb we were staying at and she broke the coffee table. At the time I was a little annoyed, but now it’s funny.”
John joined Golf Canada’s national amateur squad a few years ago and made an immediate impression. Her fitness level — John majored in kinesiology — and work ethic immediately stood out to Golf Canada coach Jennifer Greggain, who is a former LPGA Tour player. So did John’s personality.
“She carries this sense of joy around her at all times,” Greggain said. “She is always smiling and laughing. In everything she does she wants to find a way to make it fun and I think that is amazing. Other players on tour notice that about her, too. She is really well respected by her peers on tour, they really look up to her and appreciate the energy she brings, the super-positive light that she brings to the other players on tour which is absolutely amazing. For everyone around her, including those who coach her, it is such a pleasure to be around that joyful personality.”
John’s road to the LPGA Tour included a stint on the Epson Tour, where tournament director Patrick O’Connor saw many examples of John making a positive impact on and off the course. “I remember one of our sponsors was looking for a player to come in and do kind of a town-hall type thing,” O’Connor said.
“They gave me some parameters, they wanted someone who is dedicated and hard-working. They didn’t have to be the top player on Tour, they needed to be one of the harder workers. I think that is Leah to a T. I remember the first time I met Leah was at our Tour Championship two seasons ago. It was 125 degrees and she was the only player out there grinding away on the putting green. But that is who Leah is.”
John pleads guilty to the charge of being a good person. “I think a lot of it has to do with how I have been raised,” she said. “My parents (Jason John and Lynn Furlotte) are wonderful people who really value being a good person first.”
The ups and downs of professional golf can at times make that challenging. John’s 2025 season on the Epson Tour began with a string of missed cuts and she found herself getting down. “That’s when I decided that joy really had to be a priority for me,” she said.
“That’s what made me want to live that way more often and then I had some really good results that came with it, too. It’s important because with that mindset everything you do in life becomes better whether things go great or not.”
It turns out things did go great the rest of the way in 2025. John won her first Epson Tour event last summer and carried that momentum into Q- school. She shot an eight-under 64 in the first round of final stage and went on to tie for 10th and clinch her 2026 LPGA Tour card.
John has had some time to kill since then, which has turned out to be a good thing. The first three events on the 2026 LPGA Tour schedule are limited-field events which John did not qualify for. She has used that time to prepare for her rookie season.
“We had three, three-hour rookie meetings giving us the lay of the land,” John said. “It’s a big tour and there’s a lot going on. There’s been lots to do. Getting my visa for China, caddies and that sorted. I recently signed with an agent so he and I have been hammering hard at the sponsorships to help finance my situation, getting clothes lined up so I have all the logos and trying equipment. It has been a lot. The business side of it has taken up a lot of time.”
Leah Poses With Her Nevada Teammates Following An Individual Win In College
That new agent is Jeff Dykeman, who heads Toronto-based One Eleven Management Group. Like so many others, Dykeman found himself taken by John’s personality. “She just has that magnetic personality which is so powerful,” Dykeman said.
“Obviously the results and the power of her game was what first attracted us to Leah, but once we talked to her it was like, wow, her personality is just as powerful as her golf game. That’s a lot of fun for someone in my line of work.”
John recently returned from a Golf Canada training camp in Florida. While at home, she has spent considerable time practising at Vancouver’s Marine Drive Golf Club, which she joined as a 12-year-old junior member. Todd Kuspira, Marine Drive’s director of player development, said staff and many members spent the final day of Q school updating the leaderboard on their phones.
“Leah is out on our putting green as we speak,” Kuspira said in a recent interview. “Everybody is quite proud because she has been here since she was 12. Leah came here as a shy, young girl and you can see she has matured and gained a tremendous amount of confidence.
“That final day of Q-school we couldn’t refresh the page fast enough. We were watching it online in the shop here and her dad called down and he was very excited. And it wasn’t long after she clinched her card that day that she called the pro shop. We are going to do anything we can to support her.”
John acknowledges being surprised by how quickly it has all happened. “I think about that all the time. A year and a half ago I graduated from college and I felt like I hardly played on the Epson Tour and then all of a sudden I am on the LPGA Tour and about to tee it up. Where has the time gone? It has all been very quick.”
John has also been reflecting on some of the steps that helped get her to the LPGA Tour. That includes those two B.C. Women’s Amateur championships, in 2021 at Summerland Golf Club, and in 2022 at Pitt Meadows Golf Club
Leah John With Her Two BC Women's Amateur Trophies. Summerland in 2021 (L) & Pitt Meadows In 2022
“I was thinking about those the other day when I was going through my camera roll. For one, my dad caddied for me at both of those, so it just goes back to how the game started for me.
"The first B.C. Am was one of my favourites because I remember it being a very imperfect round and I also remember I eagled my 17th hole or something. It was the first really big win that I had. It was the start of self-belief and wanting more and wanting to keep going at it.”
Her four years at Nevada, where she won four individual titles, was a time John will never forget. “I love Nevada. The community there was incredible. They were really interested in developing the person and the player. My coach prioritized my development sometimes at the cost of the team score and I am really grateful for her doing that because now I am comfortable taking risks and playing certain ways. Nevada had everything else I needed. I needed something other than golf and I found that through the academics.”
The China tourney goes March 5-8, so things are about to get real for John. She is prepared for the good, the bad and everything in between as she takes this big step in her professional career. “There is a lot of uncertainty, knowing that things may come at you that you are not prepared for, but overall I am just feeling pure excitement and joy that I am getting to live my dream and go on another adventure.”
John hopes she can be a role model of sorts, especially to young girls just beginning their athletic journeys. “I remember being a kid and you just looked up to the players, so I also do this to serve the little girl in me. Doctors make differences in people’s lives. Putting a ball in a hole doesn’t, so I think the only way to make it mean something is by giving back and inspiring the next generations.”
And having a little fun along the way.