Trevor Gutschewski proved Thursday that winning golf is never that far away.
Gutschewski, the incoming Florida freshman and son of tour pro Scott Gutschewski, had mostly struggled since capturing the U.S. Junior Amateur last July. But fresh off a missed cut at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, Gutschewski got back to his victorious ways with a one-shot win over another son of a PGA Tour veteran, Cameron Kuchar, Matt Kuchar’s oldest.
With three birdies in his last six holes at the Harvester Club in Rhodes, Iowa, Gutschewski carded a closing 2-under 70 to finish at 7 under. Kuchar, who is committed to TCU for 2026, joined Gutschewski in playing his back nine in 2 under, though a second-round 74 proved too costly after his leading 67 after the first round.
On the bag for Gutschewski was his older brother, Luke, who played his college golf at Iowa State.
Gutschewski beat recent Sunnehanna Amateur winner Tyler Watts in last summer’s U.S. Junior final, but he followed with a missed cut at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Pinnacle Bank Championship, T-262 at the U.S. Amateur, T-55 at the AJGA Junior Players, T-13 at Nebraska Open and T-24 at the Jones Cup Junior to close the year. Then last March he beat only four players at the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley. He followed with a T-71 at the Terra Cotta Invitational and then posted back-to-back 80s last week at Oakmont.
He now joins a list of past Western Junior champions that dates to 1914 and includes Bobby Clampett (1978), Willie Wood (1979), Jim Furyk (1987), Trip Kuehne (1991), Hunter Mahan (1999), Rickie Fowler (2005), Patrick Rodgers (2010), Collin Morikawa (2013) and Kevin Yu (2015).
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