For any player that wins on the PGA Tour, returning the next year to defend your title is a special endeavor.
For Nick Dunlap, it goes even further. By returning to La Quinta, Calif. for the American Express, he’s back where a historic victory changed the course of his life.
Dunlap became the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event at last year’s American Express since Phil Mickelson at the 1991 Northern Telecom Open. A University of Alabama student-athlete at the time, Dunlap soon turned pro and validated the first win with a second — capturing the Barracuda Championship in July — on his way to earning Rookie of the Year honors.
“It was just a decision that it was either I needed to make it quickly or I was going to wait and kind of finish out that year with Alabama,” Dunlap, 21, told reporters Tuesday. “Because with (Pebble Beach) coming up and some of the elevated events, … with that card or the 2 1/2-year exemption, I was losing time by not playing. So it was either, ‘OK, I turn pro now or I’m going to wait until after NCAAs, after the season ends and turn pro then.’
“Leaving my teammates and my brothers back home, it wasn’t easy, and obviously Coach (Jay) Seawell and Coach (Forrest) Schultz, they put a lot of time and effort into the season, and to kind of leave them halfway wasn’t something that made me very happy. Then, obviously, to watch them kind of go on and towards the end of the year, it was tough not being there with them.”
As he embarked on his rookie year on tour, the biggest adjustment Dunlap had to make involved who was around to help him. In college, coaches and staffers are seemingly around at all hours. On tour, he felt like he was “on an island” sometimes.
“I went from playing against college players to — you know, some of them have proved that they can compete out here as well. But you go from playing against them to Scottie Scheffler every week, and it changes a little bit,” Dunlap said. “I quickly learned how good some of these guys are. It’s very eye-opening, but also very humbling at the same time, and it’s cool for me to see how much I can still get better. I think that was something for me that was really fun to see as well.”
Dunlap also found it overwhelming to learn a slew of new golf courses for the first time. Now, in 2025, that’s no longer the case.
“I know where I’m going, I know the golf course, there’s not that urgency of, ‘I have to see it,'” he said. “So I can focus a little bit more on my body or recovery or making sure that I feel well going into that week instead of having to see the golf course.”
Dunlap also called it “humbling” to be honored with the Rookie of the Year award.
“If you just look at some of the list of some of the guys to win that just in the past 10 years, it’s, the track record’s pretty good,” Dunlap said of an award also given to Scheffler, Will Zalatoris, Xander Schauffele and Sungjae Im. “So I’m very, very grateful to be on that list, and that will be something that can never get taken away from me. So that’s also something that I can — that is really, really cool, and, yeah, something I definitely don’t take for granted.”
–Field Level Media
