Guy and Wendy Leach bought a golf course in western Wisconsin in 1998. The next year, they had a son, and they named him Tyler. The family lived across the street from the 12th tee at Spring Valley Golf Course, which shares the name of the town it belongs to, a town of only 1,400 people. Tyler and his older sister, Taylor, would spend about half the week at daycare and the other half with Wendy, who worked in the clubhouse. One day, Tyler discovered the practice green, and he never looked back.
“I could just walk across the street and tee it up whenever I wanted to,” Leach said. “I basically lived there. I hardly spent any time in my home.”
You can probably find some PGA Tour dreams at Spring Valley, a tree-lined, public layout that lacks a driving range and still costs less than $30 to play on Saturday mornings. But it’s not exactly the spot where you’d expect any of them to materialize.
And yet, Leach, now a 25-year-old Marquette grad, finds himself on the cusp of a dream realized. Leach’s PGA Tour Q-School journey began three stages ago, at pre-qualifying, and continues at this week’s final stage in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where Leach is among the 176 players vying for five PGA Tour cards.
Only one of them has experience trying to thread shots through the tight corridors on Spring Valley’s closing nine. Spring Valley tips out at barely 6,000 yards, but Leach warns of its difficulty. He was the Big East Freshman of the Year for the Golden Eagles, and even he couldn’t break 7-under 65 there.
The pines, Leach says, “taught me how to hit it straight.” And no range meant more actual golf, which taught Leach how to score. He arrived at Marquette a skilled ball-striker who didn’t miss a start his first year, then caught fire as a sophomore, winning his first tournament and averaging 71.9 in seven events before the pandemic canceled the remainder of the season. He’d play five seasons for the Golden Eagles, twice earning first-team All-Big East honors and bookending his career by helping Marquette to Big East titles and NCAA regional berths.
But for as good as Leach could flush the ball, his putting held him back toward the end of college and into Leach’s professional career, which began two years ago.
“You might even say I had the yips,” said Leach, who recalled the low point at the 2022 Wisconsin State Amateur, where he lost over 16 strokes putting to the PGA Tour average in four rounds and still tied for sixth. “That was pretty demoralizing,” he added.
The next summer, he turned pro anyway.
“My expectations were to put in some work every day and just start climbing the ladder,” Leach said. “I knew I wasn’t good enough when I first turned pro, but I felt like if I kept putting in the work, I could definitely get there. I started to see some progress, but the one thing that just kept lacking was the putter. I just couldn’t quite figure that out.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying, and Leach tried just about everything – left hand low; hips and shoulders open, closed; firm grip, weak grip; lots of face rotation, and none at all. The only place he never went initially was the long putter.
“I actually made fun of people who used the broomstick or the arm lock,” Leach admitted. “I said, there’s no way I’m going to use that. I’m going to putt conventionally and figure this out.”
Marquette head coach Steve Bailey lauds Leach’s self-belief, which Bailey calls his “X-factor.”
“Even during stretches of college when he wasn’t playing his best, he had a superpower of being unfazed by adversity,” Bailey said. “Tyler had his unique way of deflecting hurdles and never doubting his ability.”
Leach’s stubbornness with his stroke eventually wore off this past June, when Leach’s wife, Abby, told him, essentially, “It can’t hurt,” referring to the broom. So, Leach threw a center-shafted L.A.B. Mezz.1 Max in his bag. In his first event with the broomstick, he missed a mini-tour cut by nine. He stuck with it, and good thing; Leach recorded his first pro win at the Minnesota State Open in July, rolling it beautifully.
“Once you have a great putting week, you kind of prove to yourself like, OK, I’ve done this once, I can certainly do this again,” said Leach, who has a mere two career PGA Tour-sanctioned starts to his name, both in Canada.
Through three stages of Q-School, Leach is gaining over a shot and a half per round, about three shots better than his average in college. He’s medaled in two straight stages, too, including last week’s second stage in Tucson, Arizona. Leach started the final round at Starr Pass three shots outside the number before firing 7-under 63, over seven shots better than the field average that day. The round was capped with seven birdies in Leach’s final nine holes.
“It was just one of those days where you black out,” Leach said. “You’re trying not to think about anything. I knew there was a lot at stake, but I was so locked in.”
Leach, among five players at final stage who started at pre-qualifying, was also one of two second-stage medalists out of Marquette. Hunter Eichhorn shot 21 under in Savannah, Georgia, to advance to final stage for the first time since he turned pro in 2022. Eichhorn is from a town even smaller than Spring Valley – Carney, Michigan, located in the U.P. and home to less than 200 residents. He won six times for the Golden Eagles and was thrice the Big Ten Player of the Year. He also was Leach’s roommate for three years and a groomsman in Leach’s wedding.
The two buddies have already played some practice rounds together this week as they look to become the first and second Marquette alums ever to earn PGA Tour cards.
“And neither guy has ever had a swing coach,” Bailey said. “Such a great story.”
Leach, ranked No. 4,896 in the world rankings, doesn’t mind allowing himself to ponder the prospect of such an achievement.
“I’ve been in some pretty dark places with my putting, and it’s definitely a huge accomplishment to climb out of that because it’s hard to make it in professional golf if you can’t make putts,” Leach said. “I went through two or three years there where I was struggling and certainly had my doubts. But if I could finish in the top five, it would mean I overcame that hurdle and accomplished my dream, which is amazing to think about.”
Leach’s parents recently sold Spring Valley, but it will always be home – and that practice green, the beginning of a dream that in a few days could finally come true.