No one has ever won the City Section Individual Golf Championship four times, but Leila Phillips has a chance to win her first.
The 14-year-old freshman at Harbor Teacher Prep University shot a 5-under 67 on Thursday at Encino’s Balboa Golf Course, good enough for a six-stroke victory over Macy Lee of El Camino Real.
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“She’s been playing since she was 2 years old,” said her father, Casey, who was there to watch his daughter’s rounds and couldn’t have been prouder. “Our old house was right next to the Maggie Hathaway Golf Course, and balls were constantly flying onto the property. It was a nuisance, and my wife was worried it would hit the kids playing in the backyard. So we complained about it, and they offered us free lessons as a kind of settlement.”
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As fate would have it, Leila and her sister Roxanne, who is one year younger, both fell in love with the sport like fish out of water.
“I started taking lessons at Chester Washington Golf Course because it was a better practice range,” said Leila, who started playing in the Toyota Tour Cup Series 18 months ago. “We are very close, we practice together every day. She follows me. We are opposites. I get very nervous, but she just hits the ball and doesn’t care. Sometimes we have to take each other’s advice.”
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After bogeying the first hole, Phillips moved to the top of the leaderboard with a birdie on the second hole, an eagle on the third hole and a birdie on the fourth hole. She held a lead of at least two strokes the rest of the way. After suffering a bogey on the 6th, he made two pars and three consecutive birdies to increase his lead to six.
“I can’t be too upset with my performance today, but there’s always room for improvement,” said Phillips, who improved to 6 under with 18 bogeys and finished two strokes shy of the city final record of 65 set last year by Palisades senior and current Stanford freshman Anna Song. “I’ve only played this course twice before, but never on the back nine.”
Phillips aims for one round a week and plays a two-day tournament each month. She won the Southern California PGA Junior Tour Championship in Palm Springs in December with a 6 under par (matching her personal best). She has won about 50 SCPGA Junior events since she was 10 years old. In March, when Roxanne was 12 years old, she won the LA City Junior Championship on the same course by 15 strokes.
“I get out of school at 3:30, so I practice at Los Verdes (Palos Verdes) or Victoria (Carson) from 4 to 7:30 p.m.,” said Phillips, who finished in the top 10 at last year’s Junior World Golf Championships in San Diego.
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Phillips dreams of playing golf in college (perhaps at the University of Southern California, just a 30-minute drive from Harbor City, where she lives). When told she could become City’s first four-time winner, she said: Yes, that’s a possibility. My best rival at City might be my sister. She has already hit me several times. ”
She will also have to contend with ninth-grader Lauren Song (Anna’s younger sister), who helped Palisades (+55) win its fifth straight title and finished alone with a 75 on the third Thursday. This is one step short of the city record set twice by Granada Hills. The Highlanders finished second on Thursday with a 64-stroke lead, but still advanced to next week’s Southern California Regionals.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
