Stephanie Lam beats cancer en-route to Class “A” Professional of the Year honours

By: Adam Stanley

Growing up in Hong Kong, Stephanie Lam’s uncle was the first to bring her clubs.  A junior set of Wilsons with steel shafts. He took Lam to the range – a makeshift spot to hit balls that was actually inside a soccer stadium – almost every week. They’d hit balls under the lights.

“I learned to play golf there, and I just loved watching him hit balls,” she says, “because they would disappear into the darkness.”

Lam, the 2021 Stan Leonard Class ‘A’ Professional of the Year,’ never felt as though she was navigating her own personal darkness over the last couple of years beating breast cancer. Her day-to-day positivity, her never-give-up attitude, and the way she manages so much at The Pulpit Club in Caledon, Ontario has made her a very deserving winner.

“I think everybody is a winner,” she says of her fellow nominees, “I’m just the lucky one who won.”

Almost 20 years ago, Lam told her parents that she was going to keep working on her game because she wanted to be a touring professional. She competed at the provincial and national level, but after giving the Epson Tour a try (then the Futures Tour) she realized how expensive that career path would be.

“I decided then I wanted to be a teaching professional, and I don’t regret it,” she says.

Lam has worked at some of the Greater Toronto Area’s top clubs in her career, spending time at King Valley Golf Club, Beacon Hall, and most recently, The Pulpit Club – where she took the reigns as an Associate Professional in 2021.

Through her time in the GTA, she says she has been lucky to lean on the advice and mentorship of so many great PGA of Canada professionals. Those mentors were the first people she wanted to thank when it had been confirmed that she won the national award.

With a laugh she says she was just happy to win the provincial award, but to be recognized by the whole of the PGA of Canada was a true honour.

The first mentor she had was Rob McDonnold at King Valley. McDonnold, she says, was the first person to give her an opportunity to do a little bit of everything – from running events, budgeting, golf operations efforts, and even arranged for her and another club pro to take a class on calligraphy.

Phil Hardy, Jim Carlisle, Rob Roxborough at Pulpit. They’ve all been incredibly important to Lam. When she was at Beacon Hall, Hardy made it clear that they weren’t just golf professionals – they could play an important role in each golfers’ life. There was an event with and for soldiers, Lam remembers, and one solider earned a pro shop certificate as a Closet to the Pin prize. He came into the shop to pick up his prize and Lam was there. He was in tears. Never, Lam says, had he won anything before. He was hopeful to get his scorecard and gift certificate and was going to frame it. Lam did what she could.

“Then, I’m thinking, for me, all these years I just thought it was a piece of paper,” she says. “How would I ever know that a piece of paper was so important to somebody. You never know.”

You never know, either, when life will take a turn.

For Lam, it was the week of the PGA Merchandise Show in 2019. She cancelled her trip to Orlando after being diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. Her doctor at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital asked her what she did for a living, and when she said she was a golf professional, he said he would make sure she could swing a club after her surgery. Treatment began in March and ended in October. She ran club events from home, thanks to technology.

She lost the strength she needed to swing after all her treatments, but she trained herself again to play. Lam was a long way from the nighttime swings as a youngster in Hong Kong, but she re-learned things quickly.

She carried her bag and played her first nine holes back in June 2020. Last year, she finished third in the PGA of Ontario Senior Women’s Championship. She’s grateful now to have a second chance to continue to be a golf professional. She wants only, she says, to give back.

Lam transitioned to The Pulpit Club in the early part of 2021, and between her ongoing club efforts at the 36-hole facility, she helps the team at Princess Margaret as a volunteer. She tries to help people who are going through cancer treatments with their anxieties. Take things, she says, day-by-day. Just like she did.

“I’ve already showed people that it is possible for me to become a golf professional again, to do the work that I love,” says Lam. “And now winning a national award… that is the best testimony I can give.

“I sent (all my doctors) an email after I won. I can only thank them. They gave me a chance and I won the award. I just want to come back and share what I’ve learned, like how all my mentors have shared with me.”

Note from the editor: The author requested that their compensation for this story be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society.