East Alum: Chase Hanna

Chase Hanna was three years old when his grandpa handed him a set of plastic mini golf clubs in his yard in Carthage, Illinois. He soon began practicing the repetitive motion of swinging the clubs that would become his future.

After graduating from the East in 2013 and the University of Kansas in 2017, Hanna has traded the plastic club for an iron and driver, and made the adjustment from a collegiate player to a professional golfer. He is currently playing in the Korn Ferry Tour and Pro Golfers’ Association (PGA) Latinoamérica league.

From a young age, Hanna was good — and he knew it. The potential for reaching the professional league drove Hanna to push himself in high school to take golf seriously, starting with being the top player on the team. He played in all the tournaments he could, going to the golf course daily to “tee it up.” He challenged himself to play Division I golf in college, and was thrilled to be recruited to play at KU, a school he’d been a fan of his whole life. Next up was starting a career in the sport.

During his collegiate golf career at KU, his team won the Big 12 golf tournament — one of the biggest conferences in college golf. Having their highest finish in the Big 12 since 1997, Hanna led the team all season with an average score of 70.71. Hanna’s now working on qualifying for the European Tour and Korn Ferry tour in 2020, his long-term goal being to make it into the PGA American league. 

“It was certainly a very cool tournament to win, not only for myself, but to win it for something that’s bigger than just yourself,” Hanna said. “Golf is such an individual sport, but to be able to win it for the school and my teammates, and to help my team have a real solid week was really cool.”

Playing for the PGA Latinoamérica league, most of Hanna’s tournaments are in Latin American countries, although he still has tournaments in the U.S. for the Korn Ferry Tour. 

Traveling to professional tournaments around the world — Europe, Brazil, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico — is a plus for Hanna because he gets to experience the world while doing what he loves. But, finally getting settled in one spot just to get up and leave isn’t always easy.

“It’s a cool way to see a lot of parts of the world, but it can also be pretty tiresome and wear you out,” Hanna said. “It’s tough. You kind of feel like a nomad at times, but it’s not an insane amount of trouble in the sense that it’s usually just a flight every week, you’re just going from place to place.”

His younger sister Madison, a junior at Shawnee Mission South, has found that Chase’s golf career has given them more time with each other — she’s caddied for a few of his PGA Latinoamérica tournaments and watches whenever she can. 

“[Chase’s golf career] brought us closer because I go to his tournaments to see him play and we get to bond over that now,” Madison said.

And Madison isn’t the only family member who’s grown closer with him because of golf.

Hanna’s grandpa, Jerry Eads signed him up for his first golf tournament, the Little People’s Tournament, at age five when Hanna went to visit him in Carthage, Illinois. During his senior year in high school, he went back to win the tournament. Eads support and constant interest in Hanna’s schedule and success has never faltered since he began in the Little People’s Tournament, a golf competition for kids ages 3 to 18.

“It did leave me awful proud to watch him and see how he was developing,” Eads said. “It was just a great thrill to watch him play golf and it still is.”

Hanna is constantly playing either to qualify, compete or practice all year, with his off season from Thanksgiving to New Years. Spending seven to eight hours a day practicing golf or competing can leave Hanna exhausted, but it’s something Hanna loves. In addition to his training, he still makes time to play recreationally with friends — he couldn’t be where he is today without a love for the sport.

“I love playing and I don’t roll up to the golf course very solemnly where I’m like ‘Ugh, I wish I could do something else,’” Hanna said. “I feel like, for anybody who’s gotten to this level, you’ve got to have the drive, the love for it, whatever you want to call it. If you’re showing up to the golf course and dreading it, then you’re probably not any good anyways.”

Golf changed Hanna’s outlook on his future, and he never stopped wanting to enter the professional league once he realized his potential.

“It’s pretty easy to focus on what other people do well and what you don’t,” Hanna said. “But if you can just keep your blinders on and focus on what you need to improve on and focus on your games, then you’re going to get to where you want to go.”