Life happens to you quickly when you are a prodigiously talented young golfer, so quickly in fact that a lot of money could well spend through your fingers.
At the beginning of last year, Nick Dunlap studied finances at the University of Alabama and he prepared for a salary that no student could never imagine: $ 1,512,000. Dunlap earned the money, but unfortunately, he could never take the check.
“He stings a little,” said Dunlap to CNN Sports, reflecting on his incredible performance at the American Express Tournament of the PGA Tour in California, where he had been invited to play on the exemption from a sponsor.
Few people could have imagined what was going to happen next, because Dunlap became the second youngest champion of the tour in 90 years and her first amateur champion since Phil Mickelson in 1991. It was a remarkable achievement, but she came with an extraordinary socket: as an amateur player, Dunlap had to lose the price of money.
“At the time, I don't think I really knew what $ 1.5 million was,” he smiled. “It was not as difficult as now. But in the end, I got what I wanted in the end: a trophy.”
Dunlap's rapid success should not have been a total surprise for anyone who had retraced his trajectory in the amateur game. A few months earlier, he joined Tiger Woods as the only other man to win the American and American junior amateur titles.
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; No one had ever won as an amateur and professional in the same season.
While golf is a distinguished sport, Dunlap almost describes itself as an adrenaline drug addict. “I love competition,” he said. “I miss it when I'm at home.” I bored to be hunting and having this feeling of being nervous. My parents are both very competitive, so I think I have them to blame! ”
Dunlap never graduated from Alabama: he quickly wrapped his school books and joined the PGA Tour in the days that followed his victory in California. Initially, he had a hard time on the course, recording a single top-10 in six months and missing the cup in the three majors he played.
But at the end of his first season as a professional on the course, he had put 3 million dollars in the bank. If he had trouble adapting to his new life in any way, he thinks, it was out of the course.
“It was just to learn to be a man, an adult,” he reflected in CNN. “At university, everything is ready for you.
“Obviously, the step that I took was very large and I jumped several levels, and I knew that there would be slowders along the way. I had a place in the south of Florida, determining all that, by finding taxes and accountants and how to open bank accounts, it was the biggest change for me.”
Some of the most established players on the tour have teased Dunlap about his youth and, in some respects, it is not in a hurry to grow. “I am my worst critic, being released here is very stressful,” he sounded. “I always try to be (a child).”
Although he is now classified among the 50 best golfers on the planet, he says that it helps if he does not always take the game if seriously: “I played with a friend of me in a putt putt putt putt putt. I am still trying to have fun too.”
There is no doubt that Nick Dunlap is very motivated, but he says that he tends to keep his goals and dreams for him. He is not surprising, however, that he would like to succeed in the main tournaments, where he always seeks to make his first appearance in five attempts and his beginnings to his masters last year was as memorable as they are unuclected!
“This is the only place where I have never been nervous while playing a training lap,” he recalls, “there is just a different feeling on this subject. Since I took a golf club, you have been looking forward to this.”
Playing alongside, reigning champion Jon Rahm and former United States Champion Matt Fitzpatrick, Dunlap led his first start to the left of the Fairway and in a crowd of customers.
“I expected that I was quite nervous,” he glea. “It did not help that I hung him on the first tee and that I literally cracked the head of a guy. As, he bleeds everywhere. I say to myself:” Yeah, it's a good start “”, he added with irony. The next day, Dunlap was also cut off from the tournament.
After a beginning as little conducive to Augusta, things will surely only improve for Nick Dunlap and he knows that, whatever happens on tour, he would not exchange it for anything.
“This is what I always wanted to do,” he said. “To play golf and be paid, even better. Traveling around the world, see some of the biggest golf courses in the history of the game and playing against the best players in the world. I think it's definitely a dream!”
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