In 12 months of firsts for Nick Dunlap, perhaps the final new thing comes this week: Serving as defending champion of a PGA Tour tournament.
“Pretty neat. I had never really got to in junior golf or amateur golf – I got to defend a U.S. Junior once, but that was about it,” said Dunlap, the defending champion at this week’s The American Express PGA Tour event in La Quinta. “So, yeah, just to kind of see my name around and to see some pictures, and it’s pretty cool, I’m not going to lie. It’s something that I definitely want to experience again, and hopefully next year I can come back to some of the same stuff.”
Dunlap’s victory in The American Express last year, the first time an amateur had won on the PGA Tour in 33 years, ranks among the most historic moments for the event that will be played for the 66th time beginning Thursday. After a whirlwind year of learning all about life on the PGA Tour, Dunlap is now ready to focus on 2025.
“More comfortable than I was, for sure. I wouldn’t say really comfortable,” Dunlap said Tuesday. “I think I learned a lot this past offseason. I learned more those first couple months than really anything. I knew that. I knew it was going to be a learning curve. I wasn’t expecting to come out and dominate early.”
While Dunlap didn’t dominate early in the year, he did win the PGA Tour Arnold Palmer Award for rookie of the year. He also won a second tournament, the Barracuda Championship, making him the only player in tour history to win as an amateur and as a pro in the same calendar year.
Dunlap is one of the biggest stories in The American Express as the tournament begins play Thursday at three desert golf courses. The event, with an $8.8 million purse, features 156 pros, including the pro debut of 17-year-old Blades Brown, an accomplished junior who turned pro in December.
Despite the loss of the top two players in the world ranking to withdrawals, No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 2 Xander Schauffele, this week’s tournament still features eight of the top 25 players in the world ranking. Those players include No. 7 Wyndham Clark, No. 12 Patrick Cantlay, No. 16 Billy Horschel, along with Sundjae Im, Sam Burns, Justin Thomas, Tom Kim and Tony Finau.
Other top names in the field include Jason Day, Rickie Fowler, Matt Kuchar, Zach Johnson, Brian Harman, Sony Open winner Nick Taylor and past American Express champions Si Woo Kim, Jason Dufner, Bill Haas and Jhonattan Vegas.
Play begins at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at all three courses – the Pete Dye Stadium Course and Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West and La Quinta Country Club – off the first and 10th tees of each course. Pros and the pro-am partners will rotate courses each of the first three days, with the low 65 pros and ties playing the Stadium Course for Sunday’s final round.
A sophomore at the University of Alabama at the time and just 20 years old when The American Express was played in January of 2024, Dunlap had already achieved some fame as winner of the 2023 U.S. Amateur Championship. He came to The American Express as an amateur, hoping to help his chances of getting a PGA Tour exemption through PGA Tour U, a program that provides tour exemptions for top college players. After the win, Dunlap took less than a week to make the decision to turn pro and accept the two-year exemption for the tour.
“With Pebble (Beach) coming up and some of the elevated events, and with that card or the two-and-a-half-year exemption, I was losing time by not playing,” Dunlap said. “So it was either okay, I turn pro now or I’m going to wait until after NCAAs, after the season ends and turn pro then. So it wasn’t really a thing of, okay, I’m going to take one or two weeks and just kind of sit on it. It’s like, ‘Well, I’m losing, the more time I take off, the more events I’m losing towards end-of-the year playoffs’. All these points are going to matter.”
Dunlap finished the year in the FedEx Cup playoffs and comes to The American Express ranked 32nd in the world. At the Sony Open in Hawaii last week, Dunlap tied for 10th.
For Dunlap, returning to the scene of his breakthrough victory means reliving old memories.
“I walked in, saw my brick in the front (for past winners in the PGA West clubhouse floor), that was pretty cool,” Dunlap said. “But it’s nice to know where I’m going for the first week, I don’t have to find everything for the first time.”
Dunlap set a tournament scoring record since the event moved to a 72-hole event in 2012 at 29-under 259. His week included a 12-under 60 in the third round at La Quinta Country Club. On the final day, Dunlap held off Sam Burns down the stretch, and it is Burns that Dunlap will play with the first three days. Christiaan Bezuidenhaut finished second and won the first-prize check.
For Dunlap, the change in 12 months has not been just the caliber of his competition from college to the PGA Tour. It has been a radical change in his life as well.
“The life I live now, I’m traveling the world, traveling to new places,” he said. “I just got to spend two weeks in Hawaii, and I’m playing against the best players in the world, living out my dream. So I wouldn’t give up that for anything.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say I miss college, I just miss being around my teammates every day,” Dunlap said. “I miss the dumb stuff we used to do as a team, or traveling to an event, if something happened, just the camaraderie we had and the little jokes and jabs we threw at each other every day.”
For Brown, his professional debut is a start to what he hopes is the right decision to skip college golf and try for a PGA Tour exemption through sponsor’s exemptions.
“This is going to be a process, and in processes there are hills and valleys,” said Brown, who also will begin play Thursday at La Quinta Country Club. “And I’m lucky enough to where I have an awesome team around me supporting me, and I’m just super excited to go through this journey along with them. Whatever happens is going to happen.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Nick Dunlap’s American Express win as amateur still a remarkable PGA Tour story
