After a torrential downpour Saturday afternoon halted play only 11 holes into the championship match of the 123rd North & South Amateur, the script turned when play resumed Sunday morning in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Australian Karl Vilips saved par on 11 at Pinehurst’s No. 2 course to retain the 2-up lead that he had held since winning the first two holes Saturday against Nick Dunlap. From there, however, it went all Dunlap’s way as the rising Alabama sophomore rallied to beat Vilips, 1 up.
Dunlap – who played in the U.S. Open and won the Northeast Amateur in the two preceding weeks – finally made a dent in Vilips’ lead with a birdie on the 12th hole. Then he flipped the match with clutch pars on the par-3 15th and 17th holes that Vilips couldn’t match.
“Every win is special, but especially this place,” said Dunlap, who joins the likes of Francis Ouimet, Harvie Ward, Jack Nicklaus, Curtis Strange and Davis Love III on the list of North & South champions. “There’s so much history behind it, and then you hear some of the names to also hold this trophy, it’s really special. To be in the history books of Pinehurst forever, to hopefully get some rounds in for next year’s Open, there’s nothing like it.”
Vilips had maintained control before play got suspended when 2.6 inches of rain saturated the No. 2 course. He jumped to a quick 2-up lead after two holes and maintained that advantage with a succession of nine consecutive halved holes.
After play resumed early Sunday morning, Dunlap got his first win with an 8-foot birdie putt on 12 to cut the deficit in half. But it was on 13 where Dunlap’s magic and the cracks in Vilips’ game started showing.
Dunlap chipped in off a dodgy lie from 20 feet for bogey on 13, and Vilips’ par putt to win the hole lipped out from 4 feet.
“Fortunately I got a gift from him,” Dunlap said of the momentum-swinging halve. “It’s crazy how match play works. You can think you have a great chance to win the hole, and then two seconds later you’re for sure to lose the hole, and then two more seconds later you’re like, ‘I can still tie this hole.’”
"Pinehurst gives a lot of bad breaks to good shots, but that’s U.S. Open-style, and I love it."
Nick Dunlap
After his par on 15 tied the match, Dunlap needed more recovery magic on 16. His tee shot nestled deep into the native area right of the fairway and under a low-hanging tree. Forced to punch out, Dunlap had one thing in mind for his long pitch into the green.
“I thought, if I could just get it in the fairway, get myself a look inside of him, I may have a chance to tie the hole,” he said.
He did just that, leaving himself about 12 feet and on Vilips’ 15-foot line for birdie. Vilips’ attempt grazed the left edge but didn’t fall, and Dunlap drained his par save, confidently walking the ball in as it dropped to remain all square.
“Thirteen was big, but I think 16 was the turning point,” said Dunlap, who is a virtual lock to make the U.S. Walker Cup team for the biennial match September 2-3 at St. Andrews' Old Course in Scotland. “He hit a great shot on the green at 16, and to make that putt and tee off first on 17 and kind of force his hand was really big for me.”
The par-3 17th proved decisive. Vilips ran his 45-foot birdie try 5 feet long, and Dunlap two-putted for par. Faced with another tester, Vilips lipped out again, giving Dunlap his first lead. A pair of pars on the last closed it out for Dunlap.
“Tee to green, I struck it really, really good,” Vilips said. “My putter just let me down. I haven’t been really strong with it all week, and it just finally caught up to me. I struggled to read the greens and hit confident putts.”
Said Dunlap: “It’s really hard to win, and Karl had the momentum for a lot of the day yesterday, and my goal was just to try to halt that today. And the thing is, you never know. Golf is really hard. He had 3½, 4 feet, and a player like Karl, you know he’s probably going to make it 99 times out of a hundred. But … you never know. There’s that 1 percent chance.”
The championship eventually came down to some of Pinehurst’s most experienced competitors. Vilips has been competing around Pinehurst since he went by the nickname “Koala Karl” and was dominating the youngest ages with multiple wins in the U.S. Kids World Golf Championship. The Stanford senior was medalist a year ago before falling to eventual champion Luke Clanton in the Round of 16 and reached the quarterfinals of the 2019 U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst No. 2.
Dunlap brought his own successful legacy to the sandhills, having won the U.S. Junior Amateur just two years ago at the nearby Country Club of North Carolina’s Dogwood course. He had no easy route getting to the North & South championship match. He squeezed out a tough win in 20 holes over Minnesota’s Ben Warian the round of 32 as the No. 2 course firmed up, and then he took out three top-10 seeds – including ACC champion and player of the year David Ford of North Carolina in the quarterfinals – to set up his final against Vilips.
“Pinehurst gives a lot of bad breaks to good shots, but that’s U.S. Open-style, and I love it,” Dunlap said after needing two extra holes to escape Warian while getting what he called “Pinehurst-ed” by Donald Ross’ signature turtle-backed greens along the way.
Vilips had to get through top seed and local favorite Jackson Van Paris in the semifinals, which was no small task. Two years after making a remarkable run to the championship match of his hometown tournament, only to finish runner-up, Van Paris added another page to his already considerable Pinehurst legend, setting a course record on Gil Hanse’s Pinehurst No. 4 with a 9-under 61 on Tuesday en route to securing medalist honors by two shots the next day with an even-par 70 on No. 2.
Van Paris, a Vanderbilt junior, came into the North & South on a relative heater as he sought to become the first local to win the North & South since Jack Fields in 2011. He shot another 61 just 12 days earlier in the second round of his victory at the Sunnehanna Amateur. He also finished tied for seventh at the Northeast Amateur, where he added a third-round 65.
“I have had a few rounds where I’ve gotten hot recently, and I think it just builds confidence and reassurance that you can go low and shoot good scores,” Van Paris said.
Against Vilips, however, Van Paris never got the upper hand, falling 2 down immediately. Twice Van Paris clawed back to tie the match, but the Australian birdied 12 and 13 to go back 2 up and halved his way home to a 2-and-1 victory.
RESULTS
Staff and wire reports