10 hours Ago
Life comes at you fast when you’re a prodigiously talented young golfer , so fast in fact that an awful lot of money might just slip through your fingers. At the start of last year, Nick Dunlap was studying finance at the University of Alabama and he set himself up for a payday that no student could ever imagine: $1,512,000. Dunlap earned the money, but unfortunately, he never got to cash the check.
“It stings a little bit,” Dunlap explained to CNN Sports , reflecting on his incredible performance at the PGA Tour’s American Express tournament in California, where he’d been invited to play on a sponsor’s exemption. Few could have imagined what would happen next, as Dunlap became the tour’s second youngest champion in 90 years and its first amateur champion since Phil Mickelson in 1991. It was a remarkable achievement, but it came with an extraordinary catch: as an amateur player, Dunlap had to forfeit the cash prize.
“At the time, I don’t think I really knew what $1.5 million was,” he smiled. “It wasn’t as hard as it is now.
But ultimately, I got what I wanted in the end: a trophy.” Dunlap’s rapid success shouldn’t have been a complete surprise to anybody who’d been tracing his trajectory in the amateur game. Just months earlier, he’d joined Tiger Woods as the only other man to win both the US Junior Amateur and the US Amateur titles.
A few months later, Dunlap achieved something that even Woods never did, he won again on the PGA Tour, but this time it was for money; nobody had ever won as both an amateur and a professional in the same season. While golf is a genteel sport, Dunlap describes himself almost like an adrenaline junkie. “I just love competing,” he explained.
“I miss it when I’m at home. I miss being in the hunt and having that feeling of being nervous. My parents are both highly competitive as well, so I think I have them to blame for that!” Dunlap never graduated from Alabama: he quickly packed up his schoolbooks and joined the PGA Tour in the days after his California win.
Initially, he struggled on the course, recording just one top-10 finish in six months and missing the cut in the three majors that he played. But at the end of his first season as a professional on the course, he’d put a tidy $3 million in the bank. If he struggled to adjust to his new life in any way, he thinks, it was off the course.
“It was just learning how to be a man, a grown-up,” he reflected to CNN. “In college, everything is laid out for you. “Obviously, the step I took was very large and I skipped multiple levels, and I knew there were going to be some speed bumps along the way.
I got a place in South Florida, figuring out all that stuff, figuring out taxes and accountants and how to open bank accounts, that was the biggest change for me.” Some of the more established players on the tour have teased Dunlap about his youthfulness and, in some ways, he’s in no hurry to grow up. “I’m my own worst critic, being out here is very stressful,” he mused.
“I still try to be (a kid).” Despite now being ranked as one of the top 40 golfers on the planet, he says it helps if he doesn’t always take the game so seriously: “I played with a buddy of mine at a Pop Stroke Putt Putt championship. I still try to have fun with it too.
” There is no question that Nick Dunlap is highly motivated, but he says that he tends to keep his goals and his dreams to himself. It’s no surprise, however, that he’d want to succeed in the major tournaments, where he’s still looking to make his first weekend appearance in five attempts and his Masters debut last year was as memorable as it was forgettable! “It’s the only place I’ve ever been nervous playing a practice round,” he recalled, “there’s just a different feeling about it. Ever since I picked up a golf club, you look forward to that.
” Playing alongside then defending champion Jon Rahm and the former US open champion Matt Fitzpatrick, Dunlap drove his opening tee shot way to the left of the fairway and into a crowd of patrons. “I expected myself to be pretty nervous,” he chuckled. “It didn’t help that I hooked it off the first tee and literally cracked some dude’s head open.
Like, he’s bleeding everywhere. I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s a good start,’” he added wryly. The next day, Dunlap was cut from the tournament too.
After such an inauspicious start at Augusta, things will surely only improve for Nick Dunlap and he knows that, whatever happens on tour, he wouldn’t trade it for anything. “This is what I always wanted to do,” he said. “To play golf and get paid for it, even better.
Traveling the world, seeing some of the greatest golf courses in the history of the game and playing against the best players in the world. I think it’s definitely a dream!”.
