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Josh leppo began playing golf in his native Massachusetts at age three. At six, he broke 100. At eight he was occasionally shooting rounds in the 70s and when he was 14, two years after his family had moved to Florida, he was a scratch golfer.

Now a still-growing six-foot-one, 160-pound 17-year-old, he’s arguably the best young golfer in the Naples area and recently was voted the Naples Daily News high school player of the year as a junior at Gulf Coast High School.

More significantly, says Tom O’Brien, his full-time swing instructor and a teaching professional at the Rick Smith Golf Academy at Tiburón, young Josh is "just a terrific kid, with the perfect attitude. All he wants to do is get better. As a coach and a teacher, I try to identify talent and, just as important, desire. What puts this kid above the rest is his desire. Josh really wants it."

And what does Josh Leppo really want?

For starters, he’d like to play major college golf, and already has been receiving inquiries from a number of coaches interested in adding him to their varsity roster. Later on, like any self-respecting teenage phenom, he’d dearly love to try to play professional golf at the highest level of the game. As a left-handed player, it’s not hard to figure out that his role model is Phil Mickelson, and he’s especially enamored with the short game of the PGA Tour’s best-known "Lefty," if only because that’s Josh’s strength, as well.

Still, in addition to an admirable work ethic—Leppo tries to play at least nine holes a day and spend another three or four hours on the practice range—the youngster also is a realist. He knows there are hundreds of similarly talented players around the country, and getting to compete on the pro tour’s weekly wheel of fortune is likely a long-shot proposition.

Leppo occasionally has played on the American Junior Golf Association circuit, a nationwide series of tournaments that can be just as cutthroat as any professional tour. He hasn’t been in enough of them to be ranked among the top 100 players his age in the country, but his father, Larry, a financial analyst, said his son’s goal is to get into the top 50 by next January.

But Larry Leppo is hardly the pushy-parent-of-a-prodigy type. A former hockey player himself and 18-handicapper who still skates in an adult recreational league, the father would simply be happy to see the son play golf the rest of his life, even if it’s only for pure enjoyment.

"It’s a great game just from a business standpoint," Larry Leppo says. "It will help him get his degree, and even if he doesn’t play professionally, it will only help him later on. If you’re a scratch player, people love to play with you. It can only be a plus for him. I think he’ll be a very good college player, and if it goes beyond that, great, terrific. He’s still improving, but we’re not pushing him to the PGA Tour."

Josh Leppo already has had a taste of the pro game. At 16, he qualified to play in the senior Champions Tour Wal-Mart First Tee Open last year at Pebble Beach. He was paired with veteran pro Keith Fergus in a team format event and the two nearly made it into a playoff. Josh had a 40-footer for birdie at the final hole that would have pushed them into extra holes, but his bold attempt hit the cup and somehow stayed out.

Josh qualified for the same event earlier this summer, one of 30 junior players to do so nationwide, and was in the field for the tournament in September at the same venue, but he didn’t make the final cut. He flew to Virginia for the qualifying tournament on June 21 at the Independence Golf Club in Midlothian, arriving at 11 p.m. the night before he was scheduled to tee off.

"It was pretty cool," Josh says. "I went off at 8 a.m. the next day. I never even saw the golf course before I played it, but I hit 17 greens in regulation and shot 71. I was third in the qualifier, and that was pretty neat."

His father has measured his son’s progress in another way.

"When Josh was 10 or 11, he played in a junior tournament up in Boston with a Chinese kid who was in the top 10 in the country in his age bracket," he says. "The kid was already six feet tall, and he even had a little entourage with him. Josh was hitting it about 160 [yards] off the tee, and this kid was out-hitting him by 80 yards. Earlier this summer, Josh played in a tournament with the same kid, who was still six-feet tall and hitting it 285.

"But Josh beat him that day. These things have a way of equaling out, and all Josh does is keep getting better and better."