Nick Dunlap, the 20-year-old college student who won last week’s American Express tournament on the PGA Tour, has announced that he has decided to turn professional.
The University of Alabama sophomore caused a sensation last Sunday when becoming the first amateur to win a PGA Tour event since 1991. Being an amateur, he missed out on the $1.5m first prize, but the victory earned him playing rights for the rest of this season and all of next year, which proved too hard a carrot to resist.
Dunlap will make his first start as a professional next week in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which boasts a $20 million prize fund as one of the PGA Tour’s signature events.
“It was the easiest hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, by far,” said Dunlap, who had to resign his place on his college golf team half-way through the season. “A week ago today, if you told me I’d have the opportunity to live out my dream as a 20-year-old – it’s pretty surreal. But it’s also scary, there’s a lot of changes. But I was given a really cool opportunity and wanted to chase that.”
While he had already qualified for the Masters, US Open and Open Championship as a consequence of winning last summer’s US Amateur title, Dunlap now qualifies for the Masters and the PGA Championship as a tour winner. The US Open allows the US Amateur champion to turn professional and still retain a place in the field, so the only major he isn’t currently qualified for is the Open Championship, which requires him to have remained an amateur. He could earn his way into the season’s fourth major through his world ranking. He is currently 68th in the list – having risen more than 4,000 places with the win – and the top 50 in the ranking automatically qualify for the Open when they are released in May.
By turning professional Dunlap is now also exempt into the field at next month’s Genesis Invitational, as well as the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship in March.