12D AGO

Nick Dunlap remembers week that everything changed at The American Express

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Written by Paul Hodowanic @PaulHodowanic

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Nick Dunlap remembers days not too long ago when his life would have revolved around this place.

It was part of the recruiting pitch that got him to commit. He had input on the facility’s layout. He planned to spend hours here daily. But he was gone before it was finished.

This chilly mid-December day is the first time he’s been here in months.

Dunlap steps inside the Crimson Reserve clubhouse, which opened along with the rest of the University of Alabama golf team’s brand-new practice facility in September, wearing a polo that resembles Alabama’s classic colors. But it is slightly off. The hue is brighter, straying more red than crimson. The logo on his chest isn’t a swinging elephant or an “A,” either. It’s an Adidas insignia. He has no locker here and his badge doesn’t work in athlete dining.

A picture of the current Alabama roster hangs just outside the entrance to the locker room he’s now sitting in. Dunlap’s photo appears in the grand foyer just off the main entrance next to fellow alumni.


Nick Dunlap's The American Express victory celebrated at Alabama Golf's Crimson Reserve golf facility. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap's The American Express victory celebrated at Alabama Golf's Crimson Reserve golf facility. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap sits during an interview at Alabama Golf's Crimson Reserve golf facility. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap sits during an interview at Alabama Golf's Crimson Reserve golf facility. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

Nick Dunlap is surprised with the Rookie of the Year trophy in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

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This is not the reality that Dunlap, 21, expected to live in. At least not this quickly. Then again, it’s hard to anticipate what happened at The American Express a year ago.

Dunlap shattered three-plus decades of history by winning The American Express last January, becoming the first amateur to win on the PGA TOUR since Phil Mickelson at the 1991 Northern Telecom Open. Dunlap tied the scoring record by an amateur with a third-round 60. He fended off perennial top-20 players Sam Burns and Justin Thomas in the final group on Sunday and poured in a testy par putt on the 18th hole to win by one shot. Dunlap is the only player to win the U.S. Junior Amateur, the U.S. Amateur and a PGA TOUR event as an amateur, cementing his status as one of the best amateurs of this generation.

“The entire week was just a perfect storm,” he says.

Then, just like that, his amateur days were over. He turned pro two days later and left the world of college golf behind.

That week in the Coachella Valley changed Dunlap’s life, though many believe it merely accelerated his ascent to the game’s highest peak. If it didn’t happen at The American Express, he expected it to be at another tournament or through PGA TOUR University Accelerated, following in the footsteps of fellow Birmingham, Alabama, native Gordon Sargent.

“He was a professional playing college golf,” Dunlap’s college teammate Canon Claycomb says.

Dunlap returns to the site of that historic performance to defend his title at The American Express this week. He’s not a college sophomore, nor is he the under-the-radar amateur anymore. He’s the reigning Rookie of the Year and a two-time TOUR winner, chasing majors and a spot on the Ryder Cup team. But the memories of that week are still just as vivid 12 months later.

At some point during Saturday’s back nine, Hunter Hamrick remembers Dunlap looking at him and asking, “How many under am I?”

Hamrick, Dunlap’s caddie for the week, didn’t have an answer.

Play at The American Express is split between three courses, and the duo was traversing La Quinta Country Club, the least-known course of the trio. Signage is minimal, fans are sparse and scoreboards are nearly non-existent. It was also Hamrick’s lone loop on the property, having missed Dunlap’s Monday pro-am round. Combine that with a dizzying number of birdies and they were unsure where they stood.

“I literally turned around to look at the standard bearer and see what his score was,” Hamrick said. “I was like, ‘What did we start the day at?’ And we're sitting there calculating like, ‘What? What are we on the day?’ We had no clue. It's just making birdie after birdie.”

Fittingly, Hamrick still can’t recall when exactly that conversation happened either, though he estimates it was around the fifth hole, their 14th of the day. At that point, Dunlap was 9-under for the round. He went out in 6-under 30 and had just birdied La Quinta’s first, fourth and fifth holes.

He wasn’t done. His drive on the par-5 sixth missed right of the fairway and left him a precarious shot behind a tree. Dunlap hit a low, screaming 5-iron under the tree, which fooled the Golf Channel cameras that expected him to take it over, not under the limbs. When the camera found the ball again, it was trundling onto the front of the green, ultimately settling 20 feet away and pin high. Dunlap walked in the putt to set his first bit of history. The eagle moved him to 26-under and five shots clear of Thomas and Eric Cole, the largest lead an amateur has ever held at a PGA TOUR event.


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    Nick Dunlap's nice iron from rough to set up eagle at The American Express


    “I didn't even know,” Dunlap said of his lead at the time. “I had cameras and people watching all day, but it was really when there was almost like an energy around it where I felt like, okay, I'm either around the lead or have the lead.”

    A steady stream of spectators watched for much of the round, but Dunlap and Hamrick didn’t think it was for them. La Quinta’s head club pro was playing with them as a marker after his playing partner for the first two days, Wilson Furr, withdrew that morning. Spectators decked out in the club’s logo made it clear that their energy was divided, at least to start.

    However, by the group’s last hole of the day, everyone was focused on Dunlap. Standing in the middle of the ninth fairway, Dunlap needed to hole out to shoot 59. Hamrick tried to tell Dunlap the ideal line was 12 feet left of the pin. Hamrick might as well have been speaking Russian.

    “There was no way I was it wasn't going anywhere but the flag on that one,” Dunlap said.

    “That’s a common occurrence,” Hamrick said, laughing.

    Dunlap’s shot scared the flagstick in the air but landed 12 feet past the hole. He poured in the birdie putt, just like he had on almost every hole prior, to shoot 12-under 60, tying Patrick Cantlay for the lowest round shot by an amateur on TOUR.

    For the first time all week, Dunlap and Hamrick allowed themselves to look ahead.

    “He could actually win this thing,” Hamrick said. “That’s when the nerves set in.”


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      Amateur Nick Dunlap shoots 60 to take 54-hole lead at The American Express

      Jay Seawell likes to call it “the woods.” That’s where Dunlap starts every new year, physically and metaphorically. During Alabama’s coldest months, Dunlap is sparingly on the range, trading in his polos for camo coats and clubs for rifles and bows. The long hours usually reserved for grinding on his swing are instead spent in a hunting blind, on the lookout for unassuming deer.

      It leads to a familiar trend. As the weather warms and Alabama’s golfers return to practice, Dunlap’s game is, well, not warm.

      “It's actually pretty comical how average he can be,” Seawell says.

      Tempered expectations were usually best when it came to Dunlap’s form after the holiday break. So it was a surprise when Dunlap arrived back on campus beaming as he told Seawell, “I’ve just come out of the woods and I’m striping it!”

      The rust that typically takes a few weeks to shake off was nowhere to be found. It helped that Dunlap had taken the days after Christmas in Florida to prep, playing a lineup of courses – Panther National, Trump National, Grove XXIII, Medalist and Seminole – that further crystalized Claycomb’s assertion that Dunlap was not just another college golfer.

      And this wasn’t just another collegiate event he was prepping for. A little rust can slide then. He was prepping for something much different, approaching much quicker: The American Express in mid-January. Still, finding his form this quickly was unusual for Dunlap.


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        Alabama head golf coach Jay Seawell interview at The American Express


        The trip to Florida sharpened Dunlap’s wedge work. Every approach shot was settling where he was aiming. He returned home to Tuscaloosa the week before the event and shot 60 with his teammates at nearby North River Yacht Club. While the rest of the Alabama golf team packed into a van and headed south to Kiva Dunes for a week of practice, Dunlap boarded a plane to California with subdued expectations. The goal was just to make the cut and secure another point in PGA TOUR University Accelerated.

        The good play continued once Dunlap arrived in California. Dunlap played the Monday pro-am at La Quinta Country Club by himself, with Hamrick delayed by travel issues back in Alabama. Dunlap shot 62, riding in a cart and seeing the course for the first time.

        Hamrick finally arrived Tuesday morning without much knowledge of Dunlap’s form, but he quickly reached the same conclusion that the practice-round scores pointed to. Dunlap was playing as well as Hamrick could remember.

        “Just hitting the driver as good as I've ever seen it,” said Hamrick, a former assistant coach at Alabama who has held Korn Ferry Tour status. “Whatever we're aiming at, he's hitting it at it.”

        Still, those are just practice rounds. Dunlap had gone low ahead of previous junior and college tournaments and then struggled in competition. His game was in a good place, but he wasn’t getting carried away. Then in Thursday’s first round at the Nicklaus Tournament Course, Dunlap opened birdie-eagle-birdie. It translated immediately.

        “He was like 4-under through four and I was like 2-under and I’m losing by two,” Dunlap’s playing partner Wilson Furr recalled. “Like, what is going on?”

        By Saturday, Dunlap held the lowest round ever shot by an amateur and had a three-shot lead entering the final round. He was far from the woods. He was firing in the desert.

        The text came in late Saturday night to Dr. Bhrett McCabe, a few times zones away from a pair of his clients who were about to showdown in little more than 12 hours.

        “Yo,” the text read.

        Short and sweet, but McCabe, a prominent mental coach on TOUR, knew what it meant. Some clients like to call for their sessions, others like to text. Dunlap is a text-to-call guy, and whenever that one word buzzes through to McCabe’s phone, that’s Dunlap’s bat signal: “Call me, I’m ready to talk.”

        They weren’t light on material. McCabe has known Dunlap since he was 10, and their families both belong to Greystone Golf & Country Club. McCabe worked with Dunlap when he won the U.S. Junior and the U.S. Amateur and talked with him before many crucial final rounds. None rivaled this, though – the chance at a PGA TOUR title and history.

        And unlike some players, Dunlap’s not afraid to talk about it. He ate dinner with Hamrick Saturday night and the two openly talked about what Sunday would feel like. McCabe reiterated that in their phone call. It was going to be hard and uncomfortable. Players often romanticize about their first TOUR win and think it’s going to be simple. It’s far from that.

        “I wanted to temper some expectations,” McCabe said. “I wanted him to realize … how hard it was, that it was not going to go according to his plan.”

        There was going to be adversity. There would be a moment that could cost Dunlap the tournament if he wasn’t ready to face it head-on and respond.

        McCabe was right.

        “However I saw Sunday going, it wasn’t actually going to go that way,” Dunlap said.

        “I never envisioned I was going to half-hosel one on seven,” he added.


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          The swing that nearly cost Nick Dunlap The American Express title


          After six rock-solid holes to begin his final round, which Dunlap played in 1-under, here was the mistake. Dunlap’s tee shot on the short par-4 seventh never had a chance; describing it as “half-hosel” was generous. Seawell had just arrived on-site from a cross-country morning of travel and watched Dunlap’s ball splash into the water, some 50 yards from dry land.

          “I mean, it was right of right,” Seawell said.

          Dunlap made a double-bogey 6 while Burns wedged it close and holed the birdie putt. And just like that, Dunlap’s three-shot lead was gone thanks to one 3-iron swing.

          McCabe was watching anxiously from home in Birmingham. “This is the moment we’ll know,” he thought to himself. Was Dunlap going to fold? It’s safe to assume most amateurs would in that situation, about to enter the back nine of a PGA TOUR event with two Ryder Cup players chasing him down. That’s why no amateur had done what Dunlap was trying to do since 1991.

          Hamrick did his best to keep Dunlap focused. “Here is our adversity,” Hamrick told him. Then, Hamrick returned to conversations the two had all week about mindset, which Dunlap wanted to take from his weeks spent in a hunting blind: Narrow focus. Don’t focus on what’s ahead, only what’s in front of you.

          “This is our time to hunt,” Hamrick said.

          The stories are the stuff of legend, and nearly everyone who watched a young Dunlap grow up has one. There’s been something innate with him since he picked up a club. There’s an intensity that’s hard to ignore.

          McCabe recalled the time Dunlap shot 59 as a 12-year-old to win a local tournament by 13 shots. Or how Dunlap’s mother made Dunlap, then a middle-schooler, return a wad of cash that he took off PGA TOUR pros after he beat them at Greystone. Or how he’d run up and down the bleachers of the Alabama outdoor track after college practice simply because he “knew nobody else was.”

          “When he goes into a competitive environment, he's almost, and I say this in the most admiration possible, like a serial killer,” McCabe said. “Like you can't quite see behind his eyes how bad he wants it.”

          Hamrick calls him “a shark.”

          “I thought of myself as a pretty good player, but he definitely has some qualities when it comes down to the end that I would have loved to have,” Hamrick said.

          For the first time all week, Dunlap admitted his anxiety to Hamrick as they walked to the 17th green.

          “OK, now I’m nervous,” Dunlap told him.

          It was the moment it all got real; when it felt like the tournament was in Dunlap’s hands. No more playing with house money. History was staring him right in the face. And the scariest part? It was entirely within his reach.

          Dunlap had recovered from the disaster at the seventh, birdieing the par-5 eighth and sinking a testy par putt on the ninth to take a one-shot lead into the final nine. Burns retook the lead with birdies on 10 and 11, but Dunlap told himself to stay steady. There would be an opportunity down the stretch. Dunlap and Burns both birdied 15, distancing themselves from Thomas. Dunlap viewed it as match play from there, and he was 1-down with three to play. Dunlap made a clutch putt on the 16th, holing a 12-foot birdie to tie Burns, who mustered only a par.

          That gave Dunlap the honor on the devilish 168-yard island-green par-3 17th. He was in between 8- and 9-iron, ultimately deciding to take a little off the 8-iron and hold it back into the wind. He struck it well and found the green, landing just a few paces from the hazard guarding the front of the putting surface. Now it was Burns’ turn. He tried to hit the same shot but it ballooned in the wind and found the hazard.

          “When you’re around the lead, it’s not a matter of if you’re going to blink but when you’re going to blink,” said Claycomb, who was watching the moment with his 10 teammates from a parked sprinter van somewhere along US-43. “Nick blinked early, but Sam blinked at the wrong time.”

          What Dunlap didn’t know was that Christiaan Bezuidenhout made birdie on No. 18 in the group ahead to move just one back.

          Hamrick and Dunlap spent the 100-yard walk from the 17th green to the 18th tee box debating their upcoming club choice, oblivious to what happened up ahead, believing they only needed bogey to win. Their initial plan was to hit 3-iron, the same club Dunlap hit the shank with at the seventh. For obvious reasons, they weren’t fully confident, and 3-iron might not have been enough to carry one of the right fairway bunkers. After a lengthy conversation on the tee box, Dunlap pulled a 3-wood and, with water lining the left side of the hole, safely sent his ball into the right rough. It wasn’t until after Dunlap’s second shot, which nestled into the right greenside rough, that they realized he needed par, not bogey, to win.

          “I hear the (Sirius)XM announcer doing play by play … and he’s like, ‘Alright, (Dunlap)’s in a decent spot, but he needs to get up and down for the win,’” Hamrick said. “So I literally go over to him and ask him, ‘Does he need to make par or bogey?’ And he’s like, ‘He needs par, Bezuidenhout made it.’”

          Hamrick relayed the information to Dunlap, who nodded and continued his trek toward the ball. His chip ran 6 feet past the hole, setting up a par putt to win the tournament.

          In a normal Tuesday practice round or money game back home, this was the exact putt you’d want. An uphill, inside-the-hole 6-foot putt. Given the circumstances, it was no easy feat. Dunlap called Hamrick in for a read and they looked at it multiple times from both sides. That’s when Hamrick thought back to a moment from Tiger Woods’ 2000 PGA Championship victory against Bob May, in which Woods revealed he told himself, “My mom could make that putt,” when he had a crucial attempt on the back nine.

          “That’s always been in my head,” Hamrick said.

          So what were Hamrick’s parting words to Dunlap before he stepped away? “It’s left center. Your mom can make this putt. Go knock it in.”

          Dunlap stood over the ball, aimed about an inch left from the center of the cup and poured it right in the back.

          History was his. Dunlap was a winner in the desert, beating Bezuidenhout by one stroke.


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            Nick Dunlap recounts his winning putt at The American Express


            Over the last year, Dunlap has revisited that putt many times. He’ll watch it on days he’s not playing well or his mindset isn’t where it should be. He’ll return to it on the days he wonders if everything is moving too fast and if he should’ve stayed at Alabama.

            Every time, that moment reassures him. It centers him, reminds him of why he’s here and the dream he’s living out. That putt was the start of Dunlap’s wild, glorious, overwhelming, exciting, and new accelerated timeline. Dunlap can’t imagine it any other way.

            “I was super nervous until I got over (the ball) and everything went silent,” he said. “It was a weird sense of, this is where I always wanted to be. This is really cool.”

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