Resurgent Broin Set for U.S. Amateur Home Game

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It’s unlikely anyone in this year’s U.S. Amateur field of 312 players will have more local knowledge of Hazeltine National Golf Club and stroke-play co-host Chaska Town Course than Gunnar Broin. 

The 22-year-old University of Kansas rising fifth-year senior from Shorewood, Minn., lives just 15 minutes from both layouts, and has caddied at Hazeltine, a two-time U.S. Open host, for the past four years. And ever since Minnetonka Country Club shuttered its doors 10 years ago to make way for a housing development, Broin has called Chaska Town Course home.

“I know the course like the back of my hand,” said Broin of CTC. “That doesn’t matter when you step on the first tee. You still have to hit the shot where you are looking…It’s a matter of playing well and finding your game at the right time.”

Which is a perfect way to describe Broin’s collegiate/amateur career over the past two years, especially 2024. Broin concluded his second season at Kansas – he transferred from Colorado State following his sophomore year in 2022 – by failing to break 70 over his last 19 rounds. In fact, he only had one top-10 finish during the 2023-24 campaign, and that came last October in the Fighting Irish Classic (T-7). 

Then something happened in the few weeks between the conclusion of NCAA regionals and U.S. Open final qualifying in Columbus, Ohio. Prior to regionals, Broin had managed to navigate local qualifying on April 29 with his best round of the year, a 67 at Westwood Country Club in St. Louis, Mo. Those good vibes continued at the Ohio State University Golf Club’s Scarlet Course, where among a field of 68 competitors, he shot 9-under 133 (65-68) to get into a 4-for-3 playoff for the last spots.

Not only did Broin advance to the championship proper at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s Course No. 2, he shocked everyone, including KU coach Jamie Bermel, by being one of three amateurs (out of 16) to make the 36-hole cut. In fact, Bermel – who helped his son, a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, move from San Antonio, Texas, to Tacoma, Wash., the week of the U.S. Open – matter-of-factly told Broin that if he somehow made the cut, he’d fly to North Carolina. Not in his wildest dreams, did he expect to be in the Sandhills on Father’s Day.

“I flew from Tacoma to Raleigh and caught the final round,” said Bermel, making good on his promise.

Broin, along with Colorado Springs high school science teacher Colin Prater, produced one of the more improbable journeys to Pinehurst among the field’s 16 amateurs. He wasn’t an all-conference or All-American performer, nor had he won a tournament. Most people outside of KU and Minnesota didn’t know anything about him.  

His golf skills were good enough to qualify for a pair of U.S. Amateurs in 2021 and 2022, making match play in the former at Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club. As a high school sophomore, he drew interest from the University of Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference, but decommitted after a coaching change. Bermel had once tried to lure him to KU but was out of scholarships when Broin decided between Colorado State, Iowa and Illinois.

Broin’s freshman season in Fort Collins (2020-21) was affected by COVID-19, and he only qualified for a handful of events during his two years at Colorado State. That led to a transfer to Kansas, where he previously knew the coach.

Bermel has a reputation for running a very structured program filled with lots of drills, especially in the short-game area, something that appealed to Broin. But it took almost two years for some of those messages to take form.

“Interesting enough, he was playing pretty in the spring,” said Bermel. “He always seemed to have one bad round out of the three. He looked good in practice. The good thing was he got another year of eligibility [because of COVID] and we approached him about staying. I told him to stay here [in Lawrence] over the summer and focus. He bought into that. I think he was tired of messing around and underachieving.”

In the few days leading up to the U.S. Open, where he was the first current Jayhawk to tee it up in 32 years (Matt Gogel at Pebble Beach), Broin texted with 2019 U.S. Open champion and KU graduate Gary Woodland, arranging a nine-hole Tuesday practice round that would also include two-time PGA champ Justin Thomas and crowd favorite Rickie Fowler, two of Broin’s childhood idols. 

“That was the most nervous I was the entire week other than the first tee on Thursday,” said Broin, who also played with Grayson Sigg and recent PGA Tour winner Davis Thompson on Wednesday. “It helped me so much to experience a little bit of nerves and the big crowds. There were a lot of people watching. I was able to settle down and see how I would adapt in really tight situations. It really helped me Thursday and Friday.

“Gary has been awesome. He’s probably one of the best dudes on the PGA Tour. He was great to me all week. Even though he missed the cut, he texted me on Friday with a lot of words of encouragement. It was awesome to hear from somebody like that, a major winner and someone I look up to.”

As Round 2 neared conclusion, Broin was in danger of heading home early as he approached his final five holes. That’s when he went birdie-par-birdie-birdie-par on Course No. 2’s inward nine (he started on No. 10) that included a chip-in birdie on the par-4 eighth. Needing a par on the par-3 ninth, Broin, still shaking from that miraculous hole-out on No. 8, knocked his tee shot to 15 feet and two-putted to punctuate a 2-under 68. Under the circumstances, it arguably was one of his greatest rounds. He joined 2023 U.S. Amateur runner-up Neal Shipley and Florida State All-American Luke Clanton as the three amateurs to play the weekend.

A Saturday 81 followed, but it didn’t faze Broin, who carded a final-round 72 to tie for 70th. When he walked up No. 18 on Sunday, his emotional parents (Brad and Jill) were waiting, along with his college head coach. Broin’s caddie was a longtime instructor from Hazeltine, Chris Braisch, who has been like a second father since the two first began a professional relationship a decade ago. Braisch will be on his bag again at the U.S. Amateur. 

“We’re like two peas in a pod,” said Broin of Braisch. “We have great conversations and we’re always just laughing at each other. I was his first student to play in a U.S. Open, so it was special for him. He’s a great guy and one who I have looked up to for a while.”

Making the 36-hole cut at Pinehurst guaranteed Broin starts in the next two U.S. Amateurs, but it will be this one in Minnesota that will have ultimate meaning.

“If he can get to match play, you could see some fireworks,” said Bernal, who is starting his 14th year at KU and has been coaching 33 seasons, including six at Drake University where one of his stars was future two-time major champion Zach Johnson.

A few days after returning from North Carolina, Broin was back in the caddie yard at Hazeltine, double bagging it three consecutive days. He said that might have been more grueling than the four competitive rounds at Pinehurst. Two weeks later, he was back at Pinehurst competing in the annual North & South Amateur, but he found a vastly different course and failed to be among the 32 match-play qualifiers. Perhaps, he was still on the emotional high from the U.S. Open.

He also returned to Lawrence to finish a summer-school capstone class, where he had to interview an individual from a local organization – he chose Matt Tait, a sportswriter with the "Wave the Wheat" website operated by R1S1 Sports, who had interviewed him multiple times after qualifying for the U.S. Open – before making his final U.S. Amateur tune-up in the Western Amateur at Moraine Country Club in suburban Dayton, Ohio.

Sleeping in his own bed with support from Hazeltine members, friends and family certainly will be enough to get Broin’s adrenaline pumping. The biggest thing will be tempering those emotions and focusing on the tall task of trying to make match play from a field of 312 extremely talented competitors, which includes a handful of Minnesotans such as good friend Ben Warian, a 2024 University of Minnesota graduate who won this year’s Sunnehanna Amateur and competed in the PGA Tour’s 3M Open, and fellow Minnetonka High graduate Jacob Pedersen, also a Minnesota alum.

“It’s like I am cheering for the [hometown] Minnesota Vikings in U.S. Bank Stadium,” said Broin. “It’s going to be loud and it’s going to be rowdy. I have to feed off of that as much as possible. But it’s also about controlling my emotions, even if I don’t have it that certain day. You just have to look up in the sky, look where you are right now and what you’re playing in.

“Whether I make match play or not, I’m going to relish the moment. It’s not a life-or-death situation. I understand it’s a dream come true to play in a U.S. Am at those courses.”

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.