“I could just walk across the street and play ball whenever I wanted,” Leach said. “I basically lived there. I hardly spent any time in my house.”
You can probably find some PGA Tour dreams at Spring Valley, a tree-lined, public layout that doesn’t have a driving range and still costs less than $30 to play on a Saturday morning. But it’s not exactly where you’d expect any of these to materialize.
And yet Leach, now a 25-year-old Marquette graduate, is on the cusp of a dream come true. Leach’s PGA Tour Q-School journey began three legs ago during pre-qualifying and continues in this week’s final leg in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where Leach is one of 176 players competing for five PGA Tour cards.
Only one of them has experience trying to blast through the tight corridors of Spring Valley’s back nine. Spring Valley tops out at just 6,000 metres, 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 a 7-under 65 there.
The pines, says Leach, “taught me how to hit straight.” And no range meant more actual golf, which taught Leach how to score. He arrived at Marquette as an experienced ball-striker who didn’t miss a start his freshman year, then caught fire as a sophomore, winning his first tournament and averaging a 71.9 in seven events before the pandemic canceled the rest of the season. He would play five seasons for the Golden Eagles, earning first-team All-Big East honors twice and bookending his career by helping Marquette to Big East titles and NCAA regional berths.
But as much as Leach could flush the ball, his putting held him back toward the end of college and Leach’s professional career, which began two years ago.
“You could even say I had the yips,” said Leach, who recalled the low point at the 2022 Wisconsin State Amateur, where he lost more than 16 strokes, reaching the PGA Tour average in four rounds and still finishing in sixth place. “That was quite demoralizing,” he added.
The following summer he turned pro.
“My expectations were that I would 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 working, I could definitely get there. I started to see some progress, but the one thing that was still missing was the putter. I just couldn’t quite understand that.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying, and Leach tried just about everything: left hand low; hips and shoulders open, closed; strong grip, weak grip; lots of facial rotation, and none at all. The one place he never went initially was the long putter.
“I was actually making fun of people using 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 praises Leach’s confidence, which Bailey calls his “X-factor.”
“Even during the times when he wasn’t playing his best in college, he had the superpower of not being fazed by adversity,” Bailey said. “Tyler had his unique way of working around obstacles and never doubting his abilities.”
Leach’s stubbornness from his stroke finally disappeared last June, when Leach’s wife, Abby, told him, “It can’t hurt,” referring to the broom. So Leach threw a center-axis LAB Mezz.1 Max into his bag. In his first event with the broomstick, he missed a mini tour of nine. He stuck with it, and for the best; Leach recorded his first professional victory at the Minnesota State Open in July, scoring a stunning victory.
“Once you have a great putting week, you prove to yourself, OK, I did this once, I can definitely do this again,” said Leach, who has just two PGA Tour-sanctioned starts to his credit, both in Canada.
Through three phases of Q-School, Leach gains more than a shot and a half per round, about three shots better than his college average. He has also won medals in two consecutive stages, including last week’s second stage in Tucson, Arizona. Leach started the final round at Starr Pass three shots off the mark before firing 7-under 63, more than seven shots better than the field average that day. The round ended with seven birdies in the final nine holes from Leach.
“It was just one of those days where you black out,” Leach said. “You try not to think about anything. I knew there was a lot at stake, but I was so locked up.”
Leach, one of five final-stage players to begin pre-qualifying, was also one of two second-stage medalists from Marquette. Hunter Eichhorn shot 21 under in Savannah, Georgia, to advance to the final stages for the first time since turning pro in 2022. Eichhorn comes from a town even smaller than Spring Valley – Carney, Michigan, located in the UP and home to fewer than 200 residents. He won six times for the Golden Eagles and was the Big Ten Player of the Year three times. He was also Leach’s roommate for three years and groomsman at Leach’s wedding.
The two friends have already played several practice rounds together this week as they aim to become the first and second Marquette alumni ever to earn PGA Tour cards.
“And neither of them has ever had a swing coach,” Bailey said. “What a great story.”
Leach, ranked 4,896 in the world, doesn’t mind thinking about the prospect of such a feat.
“I’ve been to some pretty dark places with my putting, and climbing out of them is definitely a huge achievement because it’s hard to make it in professional golf when you can’t make putts,” Leach said. “I went through two or three years there where I was struggling and definitely had my doubts. But if I could finish in the top five, that would mean I overcame that hurdle and achieved my dream, which is great to think about.”
Leach’s parents recently sold Spring Valley, but it will always be a home — and that practice green, the start of a dream that could finally come true in just a few days.
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