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U.P. native son qualifies for PGA Tour

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- The leading 20 players on the Korn Ferry Tour secured their ticket to the big leagues and then had three days to celebrate before it was back to work.

The first stop was PGA Tour headquarters -- previously known as the “Global Home” until wiser heads realized the building was in Florida and no one actually lived there -- for two days of orientation, media training and an agenda that made them feel like college freshmen.

Blades Brown wouldn’t know about that. He turned pro when he was a junior in high school and now at 19 is the youngest Korn Ferry Tour graduate in history.

With optimism running high, orientation was a chance to get a tiny glimpse of who some of them are.

Coming from the U.P.

Hunter Eichhorn, 27, grew up in Carney, located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, population 182 in the last U.S. Census. So what’s it like growing up in a one-stoplight town?

“We have one caution light, actually,” Eichhorn said.

He cut his teeth at Wild Pines, a nine-hole public course where the longest hole is 392 yards. The cost is $15 to walk, cash only in an honor box. Key to his development was playing with his grandfather, Steve Pipkorn, always in a scramble format.

“We did it so we could move along and didn’t have to worry about bad shots,” Eichhorn said. “It was just, ‘How low can we shoot today?’ That was our thing.”

He developed his game on Wisconsin’s junior circuit, and all those low scores got the attention of Marquette University, where he won six times, broke numerous school scoring records and was All-Big East four of his five years. In his first year on the Korn Ferry, he had nine top-10 finishes to secure his PGA Tour card.

“I’m excited to compete against the best in the world,” Eichhorn said. “The goal would be winning. The goal would be making the Tour Championship. If I’m going to pick something, it would be along those lines.”

It makes sense. He’s been dreaming big his whole life.

He won four MHSAA U.P. Finals titles in Division 3 culminating in the 2018 title as a senior, and was also the 2018 U.P. Golf Association annual tournament champion.

Little brother

Alvaro Ortiz made it to the Masters before his brother, Carlos, by winning the Latin American Amateur in 2019. It just took the 30-year-old from Mexico longer to reach the PGA Tour.

“I’ve always known I was going to make it,” he said. “Through the years, you’re starting to doubt. When is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? We’re in such a result-oriented business, you need to take a step back and see the year is not going so bad.”

He won twice on the Korn Ferry Tour this year, locking up his card in Tennessee. It was a test of patience. Ortiz stopped making changes based on results and trusted the game he had.

Tattoos, polish

Ross Steelman, who finished No. 1 in points this year, is sure to stand out because of the full sleeve of tattoos down his left arm. It took some 25 hours to complete -- a dragon on the shoulder, the main administration building at Missouri on the outside of the bicep, tiger eyes on the inside, then a blend of desert, mountains and pine trees.

But it’s the nail polish that get equal attention -- pastel purple on the pinkie and index fingers.

“My girlfriend got a new color of nail polish. I did it on one finger so she could see what it looked like on a person before doing it on her own,” he said. “And then I finished second that week. I’ve got to keep going now. And I won in Colorado.

“It’s going to stay until I stop playing well,” he said.

Cancer survivor

Finding a turning point in a young career is not difficult for Ian Gilligan. He was a freshman in high school, sitting in the living room with his parents when his father told him Ian he had cancer.

Gilligan was 15 when he was diagnosed with anaplastic large cell lymphoma, which is rare for teenagers but with a higher recovery rate.

“You hear about other people having it and it seems like such a foreign thing until it happens to you,” Gilligan said. “And then it was like, ‘Whoa, this doesn’t seem real.’ But fortunately, I took it day by day…. I was just going through my day and doing it.”

Some seven months of chemotherapy worked wonders. Fourteen months after the diagnosis, Gilligan played his first Korn Ferry Tour event that he qualified for in a junior event.