There is an elephant in the room with our men’s amateur of the year, Nick Dunlap. That is fitting given the mascot of the University of Alabama, where he is in his sophomore year.
The elephant – and it’s quite a bit larger than Big Al – is that Dunlap, for all intents and purposes, is already a professional golfer.
We call him an amateur, because technically he still is. But other than his lack of PGA Tour status and inability to cash large checks for on-course performance, Dunlap screams professional golfer in every possible way.
He looks like a pro golfer. He trains like a pro golfer. He plays like a pro golfer.
And in the brave new world of amateur golfers being able to make money off their talents, Dunlap is already the de facto CEO of his own pro golfer business.
Those who know his story are not surprised in the slightest.
Here is a kid who grew up around Birmingham, Alabama, cutting his teeth against Gordon Sargent and other future tour players. Dunlap, who was homeschooled throughout his youth, was an immediate natural at golf, winning his first tournament by six strokes and picking up three junior club championship trophies at Greystone Golf & Country Club. He was still just a kid when Jeff Curl, a former Korn Ferry Tour player, recognized Dunlap’s overwhelming promise and started to mentor him. Dunlap and Curl have remained extremely close, and Curl was on the bag for Dunlap when he won the U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills in August.
He grew to a muscular and athletic 6 feet, 3 inches, the prototypical modern golfer whom everyone envisions when they close their eyes. Dunlap looks a little like Dustin Johnson, who happens to be a model of sorts.
“I’ve always looked up to D.J.,†Dunlap said of Johnson. “I’ve played in his [junior] event a couple times. I feel like I can hit the ball a fairly good ways off the tee, and I’d like to try to center my game around his and try to mimic his mental game. I think it’s unbelievable how he carries himself on the golf course.â€
It only highlights how Dunlap has been destined for pro golf for about a decade now, despite the fact that he is only 19 years old.
But for all of his natural gifts, Dunlap was not handed his standing in the golf world. There is a proverbial graveyard full of so-called prodigy golfers who were destined to be the next big thing but couldn’t make it. This feels different.
The people closest to Dunlap say he simply has worked harder than his competition, on top of already being more talented than most of his opponents. Curl tells a story of how Dunlap, at age 14, caddied for Curl on a miserably hot Southern afternoon and then, upon getting back to the hotel, ran two miles each way to a local gym so he could get in a workout.
“He’d be at the course working on his game whether you told him he needed to or not,†Greystone head pro Jon Gibbons said.
It all adds up to a player who feels built in a lab.
He wore logos from sponsors who long ago lined up to sign him. And Dunlap played like a seasoned professional going up against amateurs who are not operating at his level.
“He’s going to be very successful on the PGA Tour, and he’s going to be around for a long time,†Surratt said after the Northeast. “I’m just going to try to stay in company with him.â€
Dunlap had been attending Alabama Crimson Tide golf camps from the age of 11. He committed very early, then backed off, then committed again. By the time he arrived in Tuscaloosa for his freshman year, Dunlap was the No. 1 junior in the country, with a sterling résumé that included being the 2021 AJGA player of the year, the 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur winner and qualifying for the 2022 U.S. Open.
He came into college with a wrist injury that hampered expectations out of the gates, and Dunlap was indeed sluggish – by his lofty standards – when he had just three top-10 finishes and a few mediocre performances in his first seven college events.
It was a learning process, but coach Jay Seawell knew what was coming on the other side of that process.
“He’s as talented as any player I’ve ever coached,†Seawell said before comparing Dunlap favorably to Justin Thomas, a former Alabama standout. “He just has what I call an old soul and old mentality, what I call a golfer from the old days. He has that will to compete that separates him from a lot of guys.
“He’s going to play at the highest level. I think he’s a future tour player.â€
By the spring semester, with his wrist healed, Dunlap became everything we thought he could be. He won a major college event and then competed favorably in an NCAA regional (T4) and the NCAA Championship (T11) before qualifying for another U.S. Open.
It was all setting up a massive summer. The momentum started to grow when Dunlap won the Northeast Amateur in dramatic fashion over Caleb Surratt, another fabulous freshman from the 2022 class and winner of the SEC Championship.
Dunlap then turned around and won the North and South Amateur by defeating Stanford’s Karl Vilips, 1 up, in the championship match. After a top-10 in the Trans-Miss and a quarterfinals appearance in the Western Amateur, Dunlap embarked on a magical run to capture the U.S. Amateur in Denver.
The U.S. Am has a history of some champions being can’t-miss kids who go on to phenomenal careers (Matt Fitzpatrick, Bryson DeChambeau and Viktor Hovland are a few recent examples) and other champions being more in the fluke category. They get hot for a week and are never heard of again.
Everyone on site immediately knew Dunlap belonged to the first category. Golf is an arduous game, and anything can happen in life, but those who watched Dunlap could see that, if the event had been contested 100 times, he easily could have won more than a dozen trophies. The best player won, which is often not the case in the U.S. Am.
Dunlap wasn’t finished in 2023. He helped the Americans to a victory in an historic Walker Cup at St. Andrews, won another big college event this fall and finished runner-up individually in the World Amateur Team Championship as the American trio of Dunlap, Sargent and David Ford sprinted to the team title.
What more could be said?
Our men’s amateur of the year is Nick Dunlap – an amateur in name but a professional in reality.
Top: Nick Dunlap at the 2023 Walker Cup
PAUL DEVLIN, GETTY IMAGES
