Amateur minus $1.5 million
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. 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 could not get the $1.5 million prize. Nick said, “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. “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.” 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.
Nick’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. 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).” “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. 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!”
Golf for money
After being hit by lightning on the golf course, Lee Trevino was asked what he had learned from the experience. “When God wants to play through,” he answered, “you better let Him.”
Tom, a friend, spent all day on the golf course hitting his tee shot into every water hazard possible. As our foursome stepped to the 14th tee, we faced yet another body of water, and beyond that, about 250 yards out, was the group ahead of us. Tom rarely hits the ball over 200 yards. Tom turned to us and asked, “Do you think it’s safe for me to tee off?” “Sure, Tom,” replied one friend. “Go ahead, Nobody is swimming.”
Isn’t funny that men will blame fate for every mistake,
but take personal credit for a hole in one.
Ultimate frustration on the golf course:
A man has played so incredibly badly he tells his caddy “I’m so done with this game; done with life. I’m going to drown myself in that there lake.”
Caddy replies: “Do you think you can keep your head down that long sir?”
April 9th Birthdays
1986 – Brittany Snow, 1987 – Leighton Meester, 1998 – Elle Fanning, 1990 – Kristin Stewart
1983 – Jay Barucel, 1898 – Paul Robeson, 1955 – Dennis Quaid, 1987 – Jesse McCartney