Masters 2025: How to react after having drew 90 at Augusta National?

Augusta, Ga. – Let's start with this: Nick Dunlap is a good golfer. A very Good golfer.

Before being 21, he has already had two victories on the PGA Tour. In the history of sport, only eight players had done it – and only two others in the modern era: Tiger Woods and Tom Kim. Enter into Masters this week – Still eight months at less than his 22nd birthday – It is classified 42nd in the world.

And then he started to be released on Thursday, fired on 18 out of 90 and became a bit of a bag of punch after the round 1. In 89 years of tournament history, only seven laps have been worse. (The “recording”, by the way, is 94.)

“Like trying to keep a rope and you can't hold it,” he said the Tour.

Beaten and seriously disappointed by a round 11 worse than anyone on the ground, Dunlap could have retired and no one would have hit an eye. His father, Jim, even asked him if he thought he was retiring.

“No,” he said, “I'm going to get out tomorrow and show people I can do it.”

Then he got out of his airbnb on Thursday evening and struck a bunch of bullets he had bought in Target in the woods, ate Chipotle, just like his custom, and went to bed early.

On Friday, he arrived at the Practice in Augusta National at noon, released his driver and started beating. Drive after the journey – on a t -shirt and out of the bridge – just trying to understand what is wrong. He is in the middle of a swing change, which only adds to the fight.

This and the rocket in her golf career have been.

He was natural from the start, the ray of the first time that his father put a club in his hand like a young child.

“I am here by grinding,” said his father to him, “and you dry him every time.”

After shooting one of the worst laps in the history of the masters on Thursday, Nick Dunlap responded with one of the best laps of the day around 2. (Photo by Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)

(Richard Heathcote via Getty Images)

He fired out of 59 at the age of 12, was the champion of the State of Alabama at 14, the American amateur junior champion at 17, committed to playing at the University of Alabama at 18, became the American amateur champion at 19 and won his first PGA Tour event – the first amateur to win since Phil Mickelson in 1991 – at the age of 20.

A week later, he became pro.

“We hoped that he would take a little slower, would end up in Alabama,” said Jim. “But this victory gave him an exemption from a 2 1/2-year-old tour. How do you go that?”

Six months later, he won again, collecting a pay check of $ 720,000 – a 21 -year -old player not even at 21 trying to understand how to live alone and manage a suddenly considerable bank account. It is a problem of the first world, for sure, but it is an obstacle nevertheless for an arrival by trying to understand how to compete with Scottie Scheffler and Rory McILroy, a struggle that is for real.

Dunlap missed the Cup with the three majors he played last year, including the Masters, and arrived in Augusta this week after missing three consecutive cuts.

A bogey the first, third and fourth and a double in the fifth condemned his first round from the start. And then things got worse. He carded four double bogys on the nine rear, sending him to the ranking … until death.

After a 30 -minute session on the range on Friday afternoon, in which he struck 63 balls – almost all the drivers – he started his second round by spraying his TEE shot on the N ° 1 in the Rough left.

“It was he who pulled 90 years,” whispered a woman to her husband when Dunlap was heading for the first green.

However, he managed to rush for the peer.

His tee shot on the n ° 2 on the right, but he managed another peer, slightly lubricating a Birdie putt.

At n ° 3, he again lost his journey on the right, his ball ending on a straw of pine under a pair of trees. This left him 145 yards, with nothing other than a climb and a group of georgia pines between him and the green.

“What do you think?” Asked his shopping cart.

“Divide these trees with a draw,” he replied.

Standing behind him, it was impossible to say which trees he planned to separate. There were two forming a sort of offbeat objective pole, but they were barely 15 feet from each other, so that couldn't be that. The amateur eye looked good, where there was much more daylight.

Then he threw an iron at 8, dividing the goal posts in the middle. As he traveled the hill, his ball had settled at nine feet from the hole.

There was magic.

He drained the putt, his first birdie of the tournament, then went to the fourth par-3.

“These are the moments that define you,” said Jim Dunlap, standing near the fourth tee while his son was waiting for the green to move before him. “You will stop or …”

Or … Place your shot for less than 11 feet and leave a second consecutive birdie, which Nick Dunlap did. He had made another one at n ° 8, putting him 3 under the first nine.

He continued to move forward at the back, rushing for a few pars, without returning anything. At 15, one by 5, he almost put on his third blow, leaving him only eight inches for Birdie. He had 4 under his round.

At that time, he was looking for another masters record – most improvements from one turn to another. At 22 shots – +18 Thursday at -4 Friday – Dunlap was better than the record (21 shots) started again in 1936.

The release of the shots was still not worked, but it was heading for one of the best rounds of the day.

A three -stroke bogy at 16 made him go back one, yet another capricious driving at 17 cost another, then one more Bogey at 18 cost a third blow. Not the finish he wanted, but a round of less than 71 – 19 strokes better than the day before.

“It's extremely enriching and extremely humiliating and frustrating at the same time,” he said after his turn. “I think professional golf is a very – maybe a very lonely place, especially when you play badly. But it was very fun. You can travel in many historic and incredible places like this.”

For almost 10 minutes, he stood next to the clubhouse in Augusta National, answering questions after question about the difficulties of his game, the battle with his swing, the frustration of Thursday.

“You are trying to have fun even if it can sometimes be quite frustrating, and especially at the moment, it is difficult to find something fun about it,” he said. “But I have to go out and play Augusta today, so it could have been much worse.”

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