Hunter Eichhorn grew up in a village of fewer than 200 people (a potluck crowd, not a gallery), and now he has a PGA Tour card. The former Marquette golfer from Carney, Michigan, locked up 2027 membership by finishing 12th on the Korn Ferry Tour points list, according to the PGA Tour’s list of 20 graduates.
Say it out loud: a kid from the Upper Peninsula just beat out nearly everyone in the minor-league ranks.
And no, that’s not a typo.
How Eichhorn Earned His PGA Tour Promotion
He did it in his first season with full Korn Ferry Tour membership. In fact, he led the entire tour with nine top-10 finishes. His best week was a runner-up at the Visit Knoxville Open, where he lost a playoff to Doc Redman.
That Knoxville week was something else. Eichhorn fired a career-low 10-under 61 to force the playoff, then came up just short.
Ahead of the final event, the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, the PGA Tour had already declared the top 13 on the points list “TourBound,” The Daily News in Iron Mountain reported. Twelve of those 13 players will get their first PGA Tour card. Eichhorn is one of them.
A Long Road Through Q-School to a Tour Card
Nothing about this was handed to him. Before he had any status, Eichhorn open-qualified into six Korn Ferry events from 2023 to 2025. He also reached the 2024 and 2025 Korn Ferry Tour Finals without membership.
Then came the breakthrough. He earned his 2026 card as medalist at Second Stage of the 2025 Q-School. He won in Savannah, Georgia, by two strokes after a third-round 62, as Wisconsin.golf documented.
Meanwhile, his former Marquette teammate Tyler Leach won a Second Stage site the same day.
Where the Future Korn Ferry Graduate Started
Eichhorn’s home course was the nine-hole Wild Pines Golf Course in Hermansville, where he played with his grandfather, Steve. He has called it “the best place to learn golf,” he told WLUC.
He was a four-time individual U.P. champion at Carney-Nadeau High School. Then, at Marquette from 2017 to 2022, he won six times and earned Big East Player of the Year in 2018, 2021 and 2022.
Marquette says he is still the program’s career leader in scoring average at 71.38, and the first Golden Eagle to reach the PGA Tour through tour membership.
Here’s the Thing About This Tour Card Story
The Korn Ferry Tour is a grind. Hundreds of players chase a few dozen cards, and most of them never get one.
Eichhorn is also the first golfer with Wisconsin ties to graduate from it since Skip Kendall of Fox Point in 1996, per Wisconsin.golf. That’s a 30-year wait.
He’s 27, and his girlfriend, Sarah Busey of Racine, Wisconsin, caddies for him. Not a bad team to bring to the big leagues.
The 2027 season start and his first events weren’t available as of this writing, so check pgatour.com for the schedule. Either way, the kid from a village of fewer than 200 now plays where the stars play.
The only question left: what does he do with it?
