By DAN KINVIG
Abbotsford News
Mar 31 2007

Put yourself in James Lepp’s shoes for a moment.

You’re an up-and-coming pro golfer – one of Canada’s finest prospects in quite some time, in fact – and you’re looking to sharpen your game in advance of the 2007 season. But every morning when you wake up, for weeks on end, you’re greeted by the sound of raindrops pounding on your window.

Suffice it to say, you’d be pretty frustrated, much like Lepp was during the recent run of soggy weather in Abbotsford. But things are looking up for Lepp these days, and not just because the sun made a rare appearance in the Fraser Valley this week. The 23-year-old Abbotsford phenom is taking his game to the Canadian Tour this season, and he’s headed south in April for a series of tournaments in warmer climes.

Lepp will play a pair of CanTour events in California, beginning with the San Jose International Open on Apr. 12. From there, Lepp will head to Mexico for four more CanTour tourneys. In June, the tour migrates north of the border with the Times-Colonist Open in Victoria and the Greater Vancouver Open in Surrey.

It’ll be nice to be on the Canadian Tour,” Lepp told The Abbotsford News in an interview this week. “I know a lot of the guys there, and it will be nice to hang out with them.

Lepp is looking at the CanTour as an opportunity for a fresh start, after his first go-around as a pro didn’t go quite as smoothly as he may have hoped. Lepp, whose sparkling amateur career includes a 2005 NCAA title and a record four straight B.C. Amateur victories, turned pro to great fanfare last June after wrapping up his career at the University of Washington.

But after a 15th-place finish in his debut at the Canadian Tour’s Greater Vancouver Open at Hazelmere Golf Club in Surrey, Lepp failed to make the cut in five subsequent pro starts, including a trio of PGA Tour tournaments, a Nationwide Tour event and a CanTour tourney.

“It’s kind of a fresh start to play a tour this year,” said Lepp, who is looking forward to a bit of schedule certainty after bouncing between three tours during his debut season. “I’ve got some direction and I know where I’ll be playing, so that’s going to be nice.”

Lepp warmed up for the season on Monday, when he flew to Livermore, Calif. to take part in a qualifier for a Nationwide Tour event. He shot one over par to finish three strokes shy of qualifying for the main tourney, and the rust on his game can be attributed to the uncooperative weather in Abbotsford.

“(The weather) has been brutal,” said Lepp, who kept in shape by playing men’s league hockey over the winter. “It’s been frustrating, to say the least. I don’t think the courses were open even last week, and it was just brutal.”

Lepp played in three PGA Tour events last year thanks to sponsor’s exemptions – the Buick Open, the Deutsche Bank Championship and the Canadian Open. He doesn’t anticipate that the PGA exemptions will be available to him this year, though the Canadian Open might be a possibility.

Lepp made it to the second stage of the three-step PGA Tour Q-school last fall, and he plans to take another run at PGA qualifying later this year.

If Lepp ever needs some advice about the Canadian Tour, he can always turn to fellow Abby native Andrew Smeeth. For the past several years, the 34-year-old has played between five and eight events per season on the CanTour.

Smeeth, though, is taking a step back from pro golf this year. The former amateur star, who won a pair of B.C. Junior titles in 1990 and 1991 and claimed the B.C. Amateur championship in 1993, has taken an assistant professional job at Langley’s Redwoods Golf Course.

“I was basically middle-of-the-pack (on the tour), and that really wasn’t cutting it as far as I could tell,” said Smeeth, whose best-ever finish on the Canadian Tour was a sixth-place tie in 1997.

Just because he’s cutting back his schedule doesn’t mean Smeeth has let go of his dreams of moving up the pro golf ladder. He’s planning to play this season on the more local BCPGA Tour and the Vancouver Golf Tour. The Vancouver tour, in particular, fascinates Smeeth, because the overall winner receives a paid entry fee for PGA Tour Q-school.

Ideally, Smeeth would love to follow the career arc of North Vancouver’s Bryn Parry, a former teaching pro who became a bit of a Cinderella story when he earned his Nationwide Tour card last year. In the meantime, Smeeth is giving unique “playing” lessons at Redwoods.

“No one around here really does it,” he said. “It’s nine holes of golf with myself, teaching the finer points of golf – how to manage your game and use short-range shots that you wouldn’t normally see on a driving range. That’s the next frontier in teaching golf, taking someone out on the course.”

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(Feb. 20/07) . . . . . . In 2003 James won the Canadian pro golf Tour's Greater Vancouver Open while still a 17-year-old amateur. A week later he was the first Canadian winner of the Pacific Coast Amateur, smashing tournament and course records while annihilating the field on West Vancouver's capricious Capilano Golf & Country Club.

In 2005 he became the first Canadian player to ever win the prestigious U.S college NCAA individual championship while a member of the University of Washington Huskies and then finished his season by winning a history-making fourth consecutive British Columbia Amateur crown. After graduating from UW he signed on as a client with the renowned IMG talent agency, the same agency that represents Mike Weir.

But in 2006, in his rookie season as a tournament professional, James suffered his worst season as a golfer. He managed to place 15th in the Greater Vancouver Classic his first tournament as pro but after that he failed to make a cut, either on the Canadian Tour or the PGA TOUR.

Two seasons ago James' pro career looked very promising but when he failed to reach the final stage of the PGA TOUR qualifying school and he wound up without a spot in either the PGA Tour or Nationwide Tour. So now, although it has yet to be officially announced, James will spend 2007 playing the Canadian Tour and attempting to Monday qualify for various Nationwide Tour events, hopefully regaining his confidence and his game. Once he pays his annual dues, he will automatically become a CanTour member because of his 2003 victory . . . .

BC Golf News, web site: www.bcgolfnews.com
Published: February 20, 2007