A Family, a Club and Three Decades of Championship Golf: Michael Tucker, PGA, at Bellerive

In August 1992, Michael Tucker arrived at Bellerive Country Club with a job unlike the one that would eventually define much of his career. He was there to caddie for his older brother, Jerry.

Jerry Tucker was Bellerive’s PGA Head Professional and, as the host professional, had received an exemption into the PGA Championship. Michael was then leading the golf operation at Green Hills Golf Club in Mount Vernon, Illinois. He had once worked at Bellerive as Jerry’s second assistant, but no one could have known how fully his own story would eventually become tied to the club.

Nick Price left Bellerive that week with the first of his three major championships. The Tucker brothers left with another shared chapter in a golf story that had begun years earlier, in a family led by a U.S. Postal Service employee who played on weekends and passed the game to his sons.

Thirty-four years later, the BMW Championship has brought the PGA TOUR’s top 50 back to Bellerive. Michael Tucker is now the club’s PGA Director of Golf, a Gateway PGA Hall of Famer and one of the lasting figures behind Bellerive’s standing as a championship venue.

Tucker began playing at age 5. Jerry, 15 years older, became his coach, mentor and eventual boss. After playing college golf at Southern Illinois University, Michael turned professional in 1987 and accepted his first golf-industry position as Bellerive’s second assistant.

His career took him to Green Hills, but the family connection eventually led him home. When Jerry completed his run as Bellerive’s head professional in 1996, Michael and PGA Professional Joe Schwent were selected as co-head professionals. Michael became head professional in 2005 and was promoted to PGA Director of Golf in 2017.

Those job titles only tell part of the story. Tucker served as Gateway PGA president in 2003 and 2004 and later represented PGA of America Members as a district director. He has been named the Gateway PGA Golf Professional of the Year three times, earned the Section’s Player of the Year honor in 2004 and twice received its Bill Strausbaugh Award for leadership and mentorship.

Jerry entered the Gateway PGA Hall of Fame in 2002. Michael joined him as a 2025 inductee. The brothers had followed different paths, but each left a lasting imprint on the same club and the same PGA Section.

Bellerive’s championship history began long before Michael Tucker’s arrival. Gary Player completed the career Grand Slam there at the 1965 U.S. Open, only five years after the Robert Trent Jones Sr. course opened in its current location.

Tucker, however, has spent three decades helping carry that history forward.

After the 1992 PGA Championship came a tournament that was never played. The 2001 World Golf Championship-American Express Championship was canceled following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaving Bellerive connected to a sobering moment far larger than golf.

The championships returned. Peter Jacobsen won the 2004 U.S. Senior Open. Camilo Villegas earned his first PGA TOUR victory in the 2008 BMW Championship. Kohki Idoki captured the 2013 Senior PGA Championship, an event that made Bellerive the third club to host the U.S. Open, PGA Championship, U.S. Senior Open and Senior PGA Championship.

Then came 2018. Brooks Koepka won the 100th PGA Championship as Tiger Woods charged through a Sunday that turned Bellerive into one of the loudest places in golf. It was a major championship staged at enormous scale, but Tucker has consistently placed the credit beyond one person or one department. Hosting championship golf, he has said publicly, requires the commitment of the membership, the staff, volunteers and the greater St. Louis community.

That perspective matters. Those of us who have worked as PGA Professionals know tournament week is the visible portion of a much larger job. Years of planning, member communication, staff development and attention to everyday operations come before the grandstands fill. When the final putt drops and the television crews leave, the responsibility to serve the club remains.

It would be easy to measure Tucker’s Bellerive career only by the championships. His legacy is just as evident in the PGA Professionals he has mentored, the members he has served and the culture he has helped maintain between those major weeks.

Perhaps the clearest symbol sits on roughly three acres of the property. Tucker’s Trail, Bellerive’s short course, features three greens with multiple teeing options and was created as a place for members, juniors and families to practice, compete or simply enjoy the game together. The club named it for Jerry and Michael, honoring two brothers who led its golf operation across generations.

There is something fitting about that. Bellerive is known nationally for championship golf, but its stated mission begins with being a family country club. Tucker’s Trail connects both identities. It carries a family name, yet its purpose is to help other families experience golf.

Now the BMW Championship has returned, bringing another elite field, another buildout and another week with St. Louis in the golf spotlight. The 2030 Presidents Cup is already waiting on Bellerive’s horizon.

Michael Tucker’s career has unfolded alongside all of it, from a younger brother carrying a bag in 1992 to the PGA Director of Golf entrusted with helping one of America’s great championship clubs move toward its next chapter.