Tiffany Joh’s first full day at home after announcing her retirement from the LPGA was filled with three surf sessions followed by … a trip to the driving range.
“I was like, what do I now?” she said with a laugh.
Most conversations with Joh are laced with laughter. On a tour where job security can come down to a handful of dollars, self worth is often defined by score and lonely nights in hotel rooms add a sometimes crippling invisible weight – God bless Tiffany Joh, the LPGA’s chief spirit lifter.
Joh hadn’t planned on letting too many people know that she was leaving the tour after nearly 11 years to take a soon-to-be-announced college coaching position. But then she told Ben Harpring of Women’s Golf in Toledo, Ohio, during the Marathon LPGA Classic and one story later, well, everyone knew. That turned out to be a blessing, she said.
“I think when you’re not in contention every week and are kind of a journeywoman,” said Joh, “you don’t really know if you have an impact, because you don’t really have as big of a platform.”
Throughout the week in Toledo, player after player came up to Joh and thanked her, recalling times she made a joke during an awkward situation and shifted the mood. Or simply made a bad day better.
“You don’t have to be crazy successful to have an effect on people,” she said. “You can do it just with little interactions.”
Roberta Bowman, chief brand and communications officer for the LPGA, called Joh a force of nature on tour, commenting on her ability to bring people together. Joh did that last year during the pandemic through the Race of Unity, helping to raise money for the Renee Powell Grant. Last week, she started a GoFundMe page for her best friend Jane Park that has raised more than $80,000 in support after Park’s daughter Grace was hospitalized during the Volunteers of America Classic in Texas, where she remains in critical condition.
“I think Tiff’s legacy is to show the power of authenticity,” Bowman wrote in an email. “She’s a complete original.”
Joh, 34, didn’t start applying for jobs until the week of Grand Rapids (in June). Because she’d never built a resume before, she leaned heavily on surfer friends who had “regular” jobs. One friend suggested that she split up her Symetra Tour and LPGA experience so that it looked like she’d had two jobs.
“What do you wear for a job interview,” she asked. “And if it’s on Zoom, do you have to wear pants?”
Joh landed a job during the VOA in Dallas.
Growing up in a home that borders the Country Club of Rancho Bernardo in San Diego, Joh often spent evenings in the backyard retrieving the balls her father, Gun, would hit onto an nearby hole. Tired of playing fetch, a 12-year-old Joh asked if she could hit a few. Her father, an inventive accounting professor at San Diego State, threaded fishing line through their range balls and then reeled them in so they wouldn’t be caught trespassing.
The lively pre-teen was hooked.
Congratulations to @tiffjoh on an amazing LPGA career. We hope we made your last stop special. Wishing you all the best in your new journey ⛳️💙
📸: @4thFlCreative pic.twitter.com/5QZY8ZxoRw
— Marathon Classic Presented by Dana (@MarathonLPGA) July 10, 2021
Joh won two USGA titles as an amateur – the now defunct U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links in 2006 and 2008 – and was the first four-time All-American at UCLA. She joined the LPGA in 2011.
Known for her music-making videos, her more than a dozen onesies and her self-deprecating humor, Joh turned to jokes to deflect a cancer diagnosis in 2017 that she took seriously.
When the doctor called and said that as someone of Asian descent, she wasn’t even on the radar for melanoma, Joh replied, “You know I’ve always suspected I had a little Caucasian in me. I don’t turn red when I drink alcohol; I’m not lactose-intolerant; I’m surprisingly bad at math and decent at parking.”
The upbeat Joh beat cancer and used her story to help warn others of the need to get checked and cover up.
LPGA lay chaplain Cris Stevens will miss many things about Joh, including her heart for worship and her guitar. Joh played the guitar and sang at tour fellowship meetings and Good Friday services throughout her career.
Joh brought life to junior clinics on tour, Stevens noted, and she brought the tour closer together with her musical skits about the commonalities of professional life.
“I think it deepened the community out there,” she said.
Park and Joh were partners the last time the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational was held. They’ve been best friends since age 13. It comes as no surprise that after Joh missed the cut at her final event on tour, she flew back to Dallas to check in on Grace and Jane and husband Pete Godfrey.
“It’s still a lot of waiting,” said Joh. “You really realize the inner strength of someone when you see them go through a crisis like this.”
Looking back on how things transpired, her faith in things happening for a reason grows even stronger. At the KPMG Women’s PGA in Atlanta, Joh stayed with Park and her family and enjoyed quality time.
Joh’s ancient iPhone 4 is a bit of a running joke on tour, and the next week in Texas, during a 6-hour delay, her cell phone finally died. She couldn’t have known how much she’d rely on a new phone in the coming weeks after Grace fell ill. Even her missed cut in Dallas – that included a “spectacular back-nine collapse” – make sense now.
“It really did have a greater purpose,” she said. “I felt like I was more able to help them and be of service.”
Tiffany Joh leaves the LPGA without a title, but what she accomplished in her time on tour leaves a far greater legacy than any trophy.
She is no ordinary Joh.
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