With pro caddie and mentor riding shotgun, Nick Dunlap rolling toward amateur golf’s peak
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CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, Colo. – Jeff Curl remembers the moment like it was yesterday. It was 2014, and he was in the middle of what would be his penultimate season on what is now called the Korn Ferry Tour. It was pouring down rain, and Curl was hitting balls on the range at his home club, Greystone Golf and Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama. Not ideal weather, but Curl was playing for paychecks, so he couldn’t afford to skip a day of practice.
As for the 10-year-old grinding on the range next to Curl? Well, that kid had no excuse.
Curl knew Nick Dunlap was special from the very beginning. A few years later, Curl threw a 14-year-old Dunlap in the pro games at Greystone, which now included PGA Tour winners such as Sepp Straka, Lee Hodges, while predicting that Dunlap would soon be the best player in the world.
“I’ve known this was coming since he was 14, and I’ve told everybody,” Curl said Wednesday after the 19-year-old Dunlap took down world No. 1 amateur Gordon Sargent in the Round of 64 at the 123rd U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills.
Now, with Curl on the bag, Dunlap is two wins away from lifting the Havemeyer Trophy.
Match scoring from the U.S. Amateur
“Just to see this kind of come to fruition,” Curl added. “Look, Gordon is fantastic and the two of them are going to battle forever, but I don’t think anybody would disagree that the past few months he’s the best player on the planet.”
Dunlap may sit ninth in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, but his record since March is unmatched. That’s when he won the Linger Longer Invitational, his first college individual victory as a freshman at Alabama.
The 2021 U.S. Junior champion then tied for fourth at regionals, shared 11th at the NCAA Championship and qualified for the U.S. Open before catching fire this summer. Not only did he win the Northeast Amateur, but he won his next event too, the North and South Amateur at Pinehurst No. 2, where he went 5-0 in match play to run his record in the format to 28-2 since winning the AJGA’s Polo Golf Junior Classic at Liberty National a few weeks prior to his USGA triumph at Country Club of North Carolina.
Dunlap’s stellar play earned him an early invitation to represent the U.S. in the Walker Cup next month at St. Andrews. To celebrate the occasion, Curl’s 8-year-old daughter, Addison, who shares a birthday with Dunlap (Dec. 23), made Dunlap a beaded bracelet that says, Team USA. Curl has one as well, only his says, Dad.
Dunlap looks up to Curl, who frequently caddies for Dunlap and looped for Dunlap at the 2021 U.S Junior, like a second father.
“A lot of what I know about the game comes from him,” Dunlap said. “When he says something confidently, I trust him.”
Dunlap possesses the frame that allows him to smash drives forever, and the touch to pull off the miraculous around the greens. Curl says that stuff is God-given, but he adds that what people don’t see is what’s inside.
They can certainly see the byproduct of it, though.
In Monday’s first round at Colorado Golf Club, Dunlap accidentally played the wrong ball out of the heather and carded a triple bogey on his third hole of the championship, and two holes later he four-putted for a double. After seven holes, Dunlap was 5 over.
Dunlap ended up making match play by two shots, dispatched an imminent Tour pro in Sargent and then took down Colorado State’s Connor Jones, 16-year-old Bowen Mauss from Utah and Auburn’s Jackson Koivun, the favorite for national freshman of the year this upcoming season.
In beating Jones, Dunlap saw a 4-up lead shrink to just 1 up on the back nine. That’s when Curl challenged his player, “This is what champions are made of.”
Dunlap birdied Nos. 14-16 to close out the match. Then on Friday, he got 2 down early to the hard-swinging Koivun before delivering a knockout blow on the first extra hole.
Dunlap had just three-putted the par-4 18th hole and sent his tee shot long and left at the 333-yard, par-4 first. But with 20 feet left for birdie, Dunlap stepped up and drained the putt, following the make with a huge fist pump. Koivun then missed his short birdie.
“I didn’t make much all day, to be honest with you, especially I’m normally pretty good inside 10 feet, and I missed two coming down the stretch,” Dunlap explained. “That’ll shake you up a little bit. You’re just standing behind the putt, and I had some pitch marks out there, some spike marks, and it’s like, man, all I could do was hit a good putt. If I hit a good putt and miss and he makes it, I can wrap my head around that.
“Fortunately, I looked up, and it crested, went right over the spike mark we were looking at.”
It helps having a pro helping him read those big putts. Curl logged 116 career starts on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour, posting nine top-10s. He tied for 56th at the 2012 U.S. Open, and before turning pro, he made match play at the 2000 U.S. Amateur at Baltusrol, which coincidentally was the last time before this week that no playoff was needed to determine the Round of 64. Curl’s father, Rod, was a PGA Tour winner with two decades spent on the big tour.
Jeff Curl never earned his PGA Tour card, two torn shoulder labrums made sure of that. But the 44-year-old Curl can play a role in Dunlap earning his one day.
First, Dunlap has the U.S. Amateur crown in his sights – and spots in the U.S. Open and Masters should he beat Florida sophomore Parker Bell on Saturday. Bell bombs it, but he also is ranked No. 534 in the world, and as a freshman for the Gators cracked just one lineup – at the SEC Fall Preview, where he beat just two players and finished 20 shots behind
Dunlap, who tied for seventh.
Dunlap, though, isn’t overlooking Bell.
“That match with Gordon was a long time coming and we’re going to have plenty of run-ins,” Dunlap said, “but I treat everybody with the same respect.”
No wonder Curl jokes that Dunlap already has a Master’s degree in golf. All those days beating balls in the range, it was well earned. And now, just south of Denver, Dunlap is rolling fast toward amateur golf’s peak.
Curl would argue that Dunlap’s already there.
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