In 2024, Nick Dunlap went from a college golfer having fun with his teammates at the University of Alabama to a surprise winner as an amateur at The American Express in January to turning pro in February and winning another PGA event in July.
It was a stunning year full of firsts for the now 21-year-old native of Alabama.
Now the calendar has turned to 2025. Dunlap is no longer an unknown commodity. He’s among the top 40 players in the world, checking in at 32 in the most recent Official World Golf Ranking. His ranking this time last year was in the quadruple digits at 4,121. But as he returns to the site of his breakthrough triumph, Dunlap will still be experiencing a lot of what life on the tour is like for the first time.
First up on his new-experience list is entering a tournament as the defending champion. He’ll be doing that at The American Express, which runs from Jan. 16-19 in La Quinta, California.
“It’s gonna be fun and I’m approaching like I’m trying to enjoy it and not put too much weight on the defending the title part of it,” Dunlap said during a recent trip to the Coachella Valley to record some promotional videos for the event (another first). “As far as the golf courses compared to last year, obviously I’ve seen them now, so I don’t have to play a practice round on all of them. I kind of know what they are, and I know how to prepare for them.
“But yeah, I’m just going to come out here, you know you have to get a ton of birdies,” he said. “You know the greens are going to be perfect. You know the weather is going to be good. So just have fun.”
Dunlap said what helped him navigate his whirlwind year in 2024 was that he had a lot of good people in his corner, whether family, friends or teammates. People pointing him in the direction, not pulling him in the wrong direction.
He still stops and thinks about how different his life was 365 days ago.
“It’s wild, not even a year ago still and I was back in Alabama sitting at the table with my college teammates in the dining hall and everything was normal and good and great and smooth,” he said. “And then your life gets flipped upside down, in a good way, and I didn’t really know what kind of challenges were going to lie ahead. But I’m fortunate I had a lot of people in my corner helping me from turning pro to where I am now. A lot of help from a lot of good people.”
While your family and friends can help you in a lot of ways, to truly understand what life is like on the PGA Tour, you have to go to the guys who are living it. And Dunlap admitted that he struggled in his first five or six months on tour with only one top-10 finish between winning in the desert and winning the Barracuda Championship in July.
Dunlap said he leaned a lot on other pro golfers he knows to pick their brains. But we’re not talking about reading putts and where to miss on certain holes. It’s the “everything else” that comes with being a pro that he had questions about.
“For me, it was not so much about playing, I think everybody kind of figures that out for themselves, but more about the early part of a week,” he said. “How do I structure Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before a tournament? When do I practice? What do I practice? How do I travel from each event? Where do I stay can be a big factor as silly as that sounds.
“They’ve given me a lot of tips and tricks also on how to learn a golf course after seeing it once or twice,” Dunlap said. “Those are the type of things that you have to learn that you didn’t have experience with before.”
So don’t expect Dunlap to be quite as wide-eyed as he was last year when he heads to the first tee on Thursday to begin the tournament. The defending champion traditionally starts the three-course rotation of The American Express at La Quinta Country Club. That is the course where he shot a remarkable 12-under 60 in the third round last year. He tied the lowest score ever by an amateur in a PGA event.
He knows at this event you need to make a lot of birdies, but he’s approaching this year with the same even-keel attitude he displays on the golf course. He’s not going to panic even if he starts slow.
“I guess it’s human nature that if you don’t get off to a good start in this event it can create that little sense of urgency, but I think you always kind of have to not stray from your normal game,” he said. “There are a lot of birdies out there to be had, there are four par-5s on every course. You’re going to have your chances. So you really have to try not to press. And when you get your opportunities, if you don’t make them, you don’t make them, that’s how golf goes sometimes.”
Wise words that sound like a pro talking, not an amateur.
Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Nick Dunlap learned what it’s like to be PGA pro in 2024; he’s ready for 2025
