U.P. Power – Hunter Eichhorn and Jay Jurecic on Tour
Eichhorn is just days away from earning PGA Tour Card
By Tom Lang
Hunter Eichhorn isn’t far from jumping onto the largest stage in professional golf – the PGA Tour.
That’s light years away from where he grew up in the village of Carney in the western Upper Peninsula, which had only 17 kids in the 2017 graduating class. At Nadeau High School, he won the MHSAA Upper Peninsula Div. 3 golf state title all four years, including a 68 as a sophomore, and he’s in the MHSAA record books for 3-point goals made in basketball.
With the Korn Ferry Tour wrapping up in mid-October and Eichhorn well within the top-20 point earners who get their 2027 PGA Tour card, the small-town kid going large is one of those golf stories you have to cheer.
“He comes from a town of 190 people. He’s certainly not going to toot his own horn,” said Steve Bailey, Eichhorn’s former coach at Marquette University in Milwaukee. “I think he’s one of those kinds of guys to get a touchdown and just quietly give the ball to the official. You might get a fist pump here or there – but he’s more like a Barry Sanders than a Dion Sanders.”
Eichhorn is an unknown for most Michiganders because he rarely played junior golf in the Lower Peninsula – just two GAM events and no AJGA tournaments anywhere. He went to Wisconsin tournaments that were closer, instead. It’s part of the reason he played golf at Marquette; familiarity.
A partial list of Eichhorn’s collegiate successes include:
Four-time All-BIG EAST First Team (2018-22) and Freshman of the Year in 2018
Three-time BIG EAST Player of the Year (freshman, junior and senior)
Wisconsin State Amateur Champion (2019) and runner up (2021), and six collegiate tournament wins
Marquette's all-time leader in scoring average (71.38)
Single round school record score: 61, 11-under-par, Puerto Rico Classic
Eichhorn earned full-year status on the current Korn Ferry season by winning the second stage of Q-School late last year. That’s opened the door he needed to be exempt on a regular basis.
“It’s been nice to be in this environment the whole year,” Eichhorn told me. “When I was Monday qualifying into it once every couple months, I got a taste of it over the past few years (his first three years out of college). But now consistently being in the environment where you have to go play well or you’re going to get run over… It’s very competitive and it’s been nice to be part of it the whole year.”
In May he tied for the win in the Visit Knoxville Open by shooting a course record 61 in the final round but lost to Tour veteran Doc Redman in a playoff. Through mid-September, he’s had nine top 10s and 11 top 25s, earning the points he comfortably needs to elevate to the PGA Tour.
Eichhorn (pronounced Ike-Horn) said he loved where he was raised – a small town in remote western U.P.
“I would never change it. A lot of people would say it wasn’t the most optimal place to try and become a pro golfer – but the friends, the family’s support – even the guys I played golf with now are older, have all been mentors to me,” he said.
While he enjoyed the positives of college in Milwaukee, he remains an outdoorsman-type person in a world of chaos today.
“Life can be very chaotic with all the travel and the cities with how busy everything is,” he told me. “But obviously the lifestyle in the U.P. is a lot quieter and you have a lot more ways to find a little peace. It’s something I still keep with me today and I recognize it more now.”
Eichhorn is self-taught to this day, yet played the game the most with his grandfather, when they often teed it up at Wild Pines in Hermansville. As he aged he landed a job at Island Resort & Casino during his late teen years, he eventually set, and still holds, the course record at both Sweetgrass (63) and Sage Run (64).
Tony Mancilla, the GM at Island Resort, has a great relationship with Eichhorn and they’ve sponsored the golfer ever since leaving college.
“After college we just asked him what his future plans were and he wanted to give tour golf a try, and we said we wanted to help,” Mancilla told me. “In the U.P. we take care of each other.”
Eichhorn added: “They’ve had my back the whole way. Tony talked to me about it when I first started playing and has sponsored me every year since turning pro. They’ve always been there for me and that’s huge for getting started and trying to get status. It’s very expensive to play mini tour events and I’m so grateful to have them as part of this.”
It sure looks like the Island Resort palm tree logo is traveling to the PGA Tour soon.
Jay Jurecic Led PGA Tour Champions Final Round in Sioux Falls
“My lightning in a bottle goal is to win on the Champions Tour,” Iron River resident Jay Jurecic told me back in late December.
In the final round of the Sanford International in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Sept. 13, with 15 holes left to play, Jurecic was ready to grab such an electrifying bolt – a jolt that would’ve shaken him to the core and changed the senior golfer’s life forever.
Jurecic was holding a one-shot lead over eventual winner Zach Johnson as they went down the 4th fairway together, paired up in the final grouping along with Ben Crane in South Dakota.
Jurecic played pretty well the rest of the way, but Johnson played much better, having a Master’s title under his belt compared to Jurecic playing in only his 4th PGA Tour Champions event ever. He Monday qualified (like he did here in 2021), which is what he’s limited to at age 55 and having never had status on any Tour. Johnson and Crane each shot 4-under par; Jurecic scored 1-over par Sunday, to finish T8 with a 54-hole run of 68-65-71 for 6-under par.
Who Is Jay Jurecic?
If you’re asking yourself why you haven’t heard Jurecic’s name before, you’re in natural company because neither have millions of other golf fans across the country. A handful of Michiganders know him as the former public-school teacher in the Upper Peninsula who won the 2025 Tournament of Champions at Boyne with an eagle on the final hole to force a playoff.
For Jurecic, his dream began later in life than most. He never played on a high school golf team, nor on a college team. He took up the game as a high school senior because the local Young’s Golf Course allowed students to play for free. He needed to keep busy.
As a young adult getting better at the game, he thought about teaching in the golf business but eventually turned that into teaching science and math for two decades at his alma mater, West Iron County Middle/High School. All along that journey, he’s been carving out options on summertime mini tours that could hopefully get him onto the PGA Tour Champions circuit.
What happened in South Dakota:
After Monday qualifying, Jurecic had a nice 68 in the first round (with his sister on the bag) and followed it with a dazzling 65 in the second round, including a birdie on the 18th hole to launch him into a tie with Johnson at 7-under for the final round pairing (with his cousin on the bag).
“I didn’t know Jay’s story… but No. 1 he’s very classy,” Johnson said. “Very, very complimentary and very appreciative, which I’m not surprised by that. He’s a Midwest guy. Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
“Quality, quality player. I wanted him to finish in the top 10 so he’d have a chance to do whatever that would entail. But Ben (Crane) and I both told him, ‘you’ve got to keep playing man.’ He’s good, and he’s just got to get in that position more often. I think if he gets in it more often he can see some good results, because he’s a really good player. And as I could tell, he’s an even better person. I enjoyed my day with Jay.”
Due to a scoring tiebreaker, Jurecic’s top 8 finish did not automatically qualify him for the PGA Tour Champions event that followed at Pebble Beach. So, he’s back to Monday qualifiers. But that said, this journalist hopes a few sponsor’s exemptions come along because so many people seem to like these kinds of unknown-from-a-small-town, out-of-nowhere contests he had with Johnson.
“I was just trying to love the battle more than the prize,” Jurecic said. “I got to play with a Masters’ Champion, on the biggest stage, for me anyway. I didn’t even think about the TV coverage. It wasn’t about that. I just wanted to make it about the golf – and for the people at home, in the U.P., in my hometown, for all the kids I taught (in middle school) just to show them, put yourself out there. Keep failing forward and keep learning from it. Failure is not the end – it’s just feedback to tell me what to work on. I’m not going to learn that at home on the driving range. I’m watching all these guys do a great job.”
And for at least one three-day stretch, Jay Jurecic was one of them.
