Tyler Mawhinney led Eagle Harbor brotherhood to state titles, lifetime memories

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The story of Fleming Island High School’s four-year run in boys golf begins more than a decade ago at the Eagle Harbor Golf Club, when a group of 5- and 6-year-olds were running around the course, using cut-down clubs and playing in Junior PGA Team events, and then North Florida Junior Foundation and club junior events.

If nothing organized was going on, they would compete against each other in putting and chipping contests or play with their fathers. When they got older they learned how to play games such as Wolf and Nassaus, and loved nothing more than to practice together, play 18 holes, then practice more.

Years later, they formed the heart of the Golden Eagles team, stacking victories, stuffing trophies in cases and hanging banners from the gym rafters.

Two state championships, in two classifications.

Tyler Mawhinney of Fleming Island High School is the Times-Union's boys golf player of the year for the third year in a row. He was photographed on Dec. 23, 2025 at his home course, the Eagle Harbor Golf Club in Fleming Island.

Three region titles.

Three district titles.

One special player.

Tyler Mawhinney won six postseason titles

Not that Tyler Mawhinney did it all by himself. His Eagle Harbor buddies, Emmet Kuhlenkamp, Ryan Houck, Dylan Frein, Carson Moore and William McGready joined him in taking Fleming Island to a level of domination not seen since the Nease and Bartram Trail teams of 2005-2008.

But Mawhinney, a senior who won two district titles, three regional titles and the 2023 state championship, was the most dominant individual player on the high school level on the First Coast since Julian Suri of Bartram Trail won back-to-back state championships in 2007 and 2008.

After winning the district and regional titles this year and coming one shot away from a second state title, Mawhinney is the Florida Times-Union's boys golf player of the year for a third season in a row.

Tyler Mawhinney was true to his school, and his friends

Mawhinney said he would have never accomplished anything on an individual level at Fleming Island if it hadn’t been for his friends at Eagle Harbor.

While he has won national championships (the U.S. Four-Ball and the Canadian Amateur), gone deep in the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Junior match play, made the cut in a PGA Tour event and played on international match play teams, playing for Fleming Island and with his pals has been a special experience in itself, one he said he wouldn’t have traded for anything.

“If I hadn’t already known these guys and played with them since we were little, I might have played a year or two of high school golf,” he said. “Playing with them has been fun.”

Tyler’s father Joe Mawhinney, who has assisted Eagles coach Bruce Cloud for the last four years, has shared in that joy.

“It’s fun to see where they started and where they’ve finished, and to see them stay together,” he said. “I was privileged to have a front-row seat to watch that. They’re a bunch of good kids.”

Mawhinney played eight 9-hole high school rounds (averaging 34.2 strokes), one 18-hole tournament, one 36-hole event and three postseason tournaments, totaling 36 holes. Those 135 rounds are a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of his 2025 schedule, when he played 22 junior and amateur events and traveled more than 20,000 air miles.

Did Mawhinney, third on the AJGA rankings and 11th on the Junior Golf Scoreboard rankings, need to play high school golf?

Perhaps not. But he wasn't going to miss any opportunity.

“There was never a doubt he was going to play high school golf all four years,” Joe Mawhinney said. “He had friends he cares about and they care about him. They wanted to share memories of playing with each other because they’re never going to be on the same team again. And you blinked your eyes, and it was gone.”

Bruce Cloud got a hint of things to come

Cloud, who had already put together solid teams in the past behind players such as Joshua Lee, Andrew Lee, Peyton Billings and Jacob Goodwin, got an inkling of the talented crop of players he was getting when Frein and Kuhlenkamp, one year older than Mawhinney, Houck and Moore, told him to clear space in the school’s trophy case.

“They said once Tyler got there, we were going to win championships,” said Cloud, who is retiring from teaching and coaching after the end of the school year. “I’m a skeptical guy by nature. You’ve got to show me first.”

It was a game of show and tell he never expected.

A team of freshmen and sophomores reached the Class 3A state tournament and after one round at the Mission Inn Resort, the Eagles were only 10 shots off the lead. Mawhinney and Colton Swartz were tied for seventh and they were chomping at the bit for the second round.

It never happened. Rain washed out the second round and Jupiter was declared the state champion.

Cloud said his players held onto that for a year ― especially Mawhinney.

“They were determined to come back the next year and win it,” he said.

Eagles were dominant in 2023 and 2024

Fleming Island won the Class 3A state championship in 2023 by 17 shots. Mawhinney won the individual state title by three, making a hole-in-one and an eagle in the first round.

The next year was even more dominant. The Eagles won the 2A state title by 38 shots, even though Mawhinney finished second to future Vanderbilt teammate Sohan Patel for the individual title.

The Eagles seemed poised for a three-peat this year, but with Mawhinney and Houck as the veterans, it wasn’t enough. In a painful ending to an era, Mawhinney lost to Patel by one shot, and Fleming Island lost to Bishop Moore by one shot.

Mawhinney said the Eagles had already dug a big hole for themselves in the first round, and even with the one-shot lead, he and his teammates rallied as best they could.

“It would have hurt more if I had made a bogey on the last hole,” said Mawhinney, who birdied five of his last six to get close to Patel. “We were chasing most of the day.”

Mawhinney said individual trophies are one thing. But achieving as a team is what kept him coming back each year to play for Cloud and his teammates.

“The team titles are more important to me because everybody’s got to play well,” he said. “I can have a good week but there’s too many moving parts. It means more to hang banners in the gym.”

Cloud relied on Joe Mawhinney

Cloud is a veteran coach and teacher but knows when to park his ego. When he realized the heart of his lineup would be the Eagle Harbor crew, he asked Mawhinney to help him coach the team the last three years Tyler played.

“Joe came up to me after that first year and offered to help,” Cloud said. “He said he could help get them on the right track. Why wouldn’t I take him up on that? He knew those kids from the time they started playing golf, had coached them, and knew their games.”

In 2023, there was still an FHSAA rule that allowed only one coach to speak to the players during competition. Cloud designated Mawhinney as that coach.

“I’m all about the team, and I wanted Fleming Island to win a state championship,” Cloud said. “I had seen Joe working with the kids on the range and how they listened to him. I didn’t have all the knowledge in the world about the golf swing, so Joe handled tha,t and I worked with them on course management.”

The results speak for themselves.

A golfing band of brothers

When Mawhinney isn’t traveling to play his junior and amateur schedule, he’s at Eagle Harbor almost every day. Kuhlenkamp is in his freshman year at West Florida and Frein is playing at Carson-Newman in Tennessee so it’s getting harder for them to get together with Houck, Moore and McGready.

But they take every chance they can get. Mawhinney may have the dominant game off the tee and into the green, but given enough strokes, the others get their licks in.

Houck, especially, drives Mawhinney up the wall with his clutch putting.

“It’s actually fun to watch,” Frein said. “A 30-footer is like a 3-footer for Ryan and he saves some of his best putts for when he needs to beat Tyler on a whole.”

Kuhlenkamp is the equipment geek of the group, Frein said. Mawhinney says that the group doesn’t do a lot of trash-talking, but Frein said that’s not entirely true.

“Tyler dishes it out pretty good,” he said. “But he can take it. Then he backs it up. He’s just a freak out there.”

The group also plays pickup basketball, pickleball and the occasional game of cards when the weather’s bad.

Buddies for life? Bet on it

Joe Mawhinney said golf is secondary to the bond they have with each other.

“It doesn’t have as much to do with golf as it does with friendship,” he said. “Tyler’s playing golf on a national level. They’re not. But he never wanted to lose the opportunity to compete with his friends, the people he wanted to go to war with. He would not have traded that for anything.”

Will they be playing golf together when retirement beckons and gray hair sets in?

“I honestly don’t know,” Frein said. “Maybe we’ll all be sick of golf by then. But we’ll definitely be hanging out later in life.”

Mawhinney said the experience of playing golf for more than four hours at a time, practicing together, playing putting and chipping games, has perhaps lent itself to a bond that might not have existed had they all played football, soccer or basketball.

“We might be less close because of the time you put in with golf,” he said. “We’re out here sometimes from 10, 11 o’clock to sundown. That’s more time with guys than you’d put in if you played basketball or football.”

No one who knows Tyler Mawhinney, Ryan Houck, William McGready, Carson Moore, Emmet Kuhlenkamp and Dylan Frein doubts they will be, as caddie Carl Spackler told Ty Webb in the movie Caddyshack, “Buddies for life.”

Perhaps they will go on to careers and raise families that will take them far from the Clay County course where they grew up.

But maybe they will find ways to come together. They will gather at the first tee at Eagle Harbor 50 years from now, flip tees to determine the hitting order for a game of Wolf and set out for 18 holes under a warm Florida sun.

Tyler will still out-drive them all, but Ryan will sneak in a few long putts, Emmet will show off his latest driver, and they will laugh, joke, and talk trash.

And they will gather at the 19^th hole to add up the dots, settle the bets and then reminisce as old men do. They no doubt will re-tell stories about the four years when they wore the Fleming Island green and gold and brought trophies and banners to their school.

“These guys have a bond that won’t end,” Cloud said. “They’re going to be taking money off each other for a long time.”

All First Coast boys golf

First team

Turner Hersey, Palatka, senior: Closed fast with three consecutive top-five finishes in the postseason, capped by a tie for fourth in the Class 2A state tournament.
Charlie Hipp, Creekside, junior: Shot 63 at the Slammer & Squire to beat a loaded field in the St. Johns County Championship, then posted two ties for seventh in the District 2-3A and Region 1-3A tournaments, and a tie for 11th in the 3A state tournament.
Tyler Mawhinney, Fleming Island, senior: Finished his high school career with a heartbreaking one-shot loss in the Class 2A state tournament to future Vanderbilt teammate Sohan Patel. Mawhinney won the 3A state title as a sophomore, finished second in the 2A state tournament by four shots as a junior and won two district titles and three regional titles in leading the Golden Eagles to the 2023 3A championship, the 2024 2A title and second in the 2025 2A tournament.
Jonah Nacional, Beachside, senior: After winning the boys division of the Jax Beach Varsity and tying for fourth in the St. Johns County Championship, he tied for third in District 2-3A, won the Region 1-3A title and tied for fourth in the 3A state tournament.
Jackson Runquist, Fletcher, senior: Led a surprise post-season showing by the Senators with a tie for third in District 2-3A, a tie for first in Region 1-3A and a solo second in the Class 3A state tournament. He tied for third as Fletcher won the Gateway Conference title, and the Senators won the district team titles, finished third in the region and second in the state tournament.

Second team

Brady Dougan, Tocoi Creek, sophomore
Cooper Franklin, Ponte Vedra, senior
Ethan Grossman, Providence, junior
Ryan Houck, Fleming Island, senior
Dmytro Kulyk, Nease, senior

Third team

Ambrose Kinnare, Tocoi Creek, sophomore
Jaspreet Kondal, Beachside, junior
William McGready, Fleming Island, junior
James Nagle, Ponte Vedra, junior
Cole Slater, Fletcher, senior

Honorable mention

Jack Cole, Providence, freshman; Aubrey Fellows, Episcopal; Colson Hale, Fernandina Beach, junior; Jude Johnson, Ponte Vedra, sophomore; Neal Kuthilia, Bolles, senior; Jake Mason, Ponte Vedra, junior; Noah Ochob, Ponte Vedra, senior; Easton Oliva, Ponte Vedra, senior; Michael Rattigan, Wolfson, junior; Mason Seaton, Fletcher, senior; Alexander Stewart, Providence, junior; Brody Tran, Episcopal, junior; Will Wiggins, West Nassau, junior.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Tyler Mawhinney is Times-Union boys golf player of the year for a third time

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