Practice Makes PGA: 2016 East alum Andy Spencer has trained since age 9 to work his way to the majors

At two-and-a-half years old, East alum Andy Spencer had one goal: drive the ball into the neighbor’s yard. 

He’d spend hours outside with his Little Tikes golf set while his mom kept watch from the porch.

Twenty years later, Andy traded in plastic toy clubs for metal ones and backyard “driving ranges” for Professional Golfer’s Association courses.

Growing up, Andy spent his time chasing after haphazard golf balls and hitting home runs over the nearest tree. After a baseball game in eighth grade when his coach said his swing looked more like he was playing golf than hitting a home run, that was it — Andy sat his parents down that night and told them he wanted to play Division 1 golf in college.

Andy became focused on becoming the best, taking lessons every Monday at Milburn Country Club with golf pro Rob Shipman.

“You can always see he was going to be special, even as a little kid,” Shipman said. “He’s just bigger, faster, stronger, [and] had the desire. He practiced and played all the time.”

Once he got to East, Andy made varsity his freshman year. He played alongside then-senior and now-professional golfer, Chase Hanna whom he respected but also used as competition to get better — eventually beating him, according to former East golf coach Ermanno Ritschl. 

“He probably surpassed many of Chase’s records [when] he finished his senior year,” Ritschl said. “He set an example for the rest of the team, which really showed up by winning many tournaments and winning a couple of state tournaments as well.”

They lost state his freshman year, which Andy and his team used as motivation to win his sophomore and senior year, along with an individual state title his junior year. He also won the Kenneth Smith award in 2015 for the best high school golfer in the Kansas City metro area. 

After graduating in 2016, he went on to play for the University of Kansas. Andy stood out on the roster by leading the team, shooting 71.63 on average per round — 72 being the average par per course. Following a long list of successes including Academic All-Big 12 First Team sophomore and junior years, Andy was ready for a new challenge: going pro.

During his senior year at KU, Andy decided to enroll in the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School to better his chances of going pro. Out of the 154-man final stage field, there were only two amateurs — one was Andy.

Once he left Q-School, he had Korn Ferry status — the first major step towards the PGA Tour. He played in six events during the 2020-21 season, making the cut in one.

After the Korn Ferry Tour, Andy played on the Latin America PGA TOUR from late 2021-2023. He played on courses all over South America — Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru. But he only made seven out of 19 cuts.

“Every golfer that ever plays golf you run through patches where [they] play good and bad,” Shipman said. “Even him playing ‘bad’ is still very good, it’s just that so many players are so good today.”

He took six weeks off of competing this spring to recharge his battery. He spent more time with friends and family, stepping back from constant practices and tournaments.

“I get bored if I don’t touch a ball for two days,” Andy said. “It was just time to step back. I hadn’t taken time off for over two years to step back and do some other stuff here with some friends that I don’t usually see. Stuff like that kind of recharges the batteries and gets the mentals back home on par.”

His first event back was the Monday Qualifier for the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit, Michigan in late June. In order to get into PGA events, players must be top four in the gauntlet known as a Monday Qualifier and receive a top score from a pre-qualifying event. 

“He kind of went through an entire reset with not only his golf game, but his nutrition, workouts and mental game,” his mom Jenny Spencer said. “It just kind of did a total reset. So for him to Monday qualify in Detroit was really rewarding because he saw the fruits of his labor.”