AUGUSTA, Ga. – After carding one of the worst scores in Masters history, Nick Dunlap retreated to his rental house.
He was no longer embarrassed. Not anymore.
He was no longer angry. Not anymore.
No, now, he was just disappointed – that sullen, sunken feeling of investing all of yourself into something with nothing to show for it.
And so, after shooting 90 in the first round of the 89th Masters, Dunlap sent his trainer, Clarke Holter, to the nearest Target to buy out the sporting goods section.
Grab all of the balls, Dunlap told him. Didn’t matter the brand. Didn’t matter the color. Didn’t matter the flight characteristics.
Just get a couple of buckets’ worth.
When Holter’s returned, Dunlap headed into the backyard, put a tee in the ground, and laced shot after shot into the woods, searching for an end to his recurring nightmare.
“It’s frustrating,” he said. “It’s hard to put everything you have into something and feel like you’re not getting any better.”
It’s worth pausing here to remember that Dunlap is not some overmatched junior or fluky qualifier or an aging warrior long past his prime. He’s 21 and billed, correctly, as one of the game’s next phenoms. Fifteen months ago, Dunlap became the first amateur since Phil Mickelson in 1991 to win on the PGA Tour as an amateur. That week in the California desert he shot 29 under par and beat Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas and 141 others.
At the time, Dunlap was just a sophomore at Alabama, eager to tee it up on the world’s most competitive tour on a sponsor exemption. He didn’t have any expectation of winning; he’d merely gain some valuable experience, hopefully make the cut and then head back to Tuscaloosa to continue his ascendant college career.
But that’s not how it played out. As soon as he holed out on 18, his life was forever changed. With the victory, he had the option to take up immediate membership on PGA Tour. Access to money, world-ranking points, signature events. Wanting to return to school, to his friends and his teammates and his cushy life, sounded sweet and endearing; it just wasn’t practical, not in this current Tour environment.
So Dunlap turned pro, endured a few growing pains as he learned about pro life in real time, and then steadied himself enough by summertime to win again. Before long, he was all the way up to No. 30 in the world rankings. A certified stud.
This season has had a few bright spots too: a top-10 at Sony, another decent showing in a signature event at Torrey Pines. But problems began to leak into his swing last December and have gradually gotten worse. For the past few weeks, off the tee, he had little clue where the ball was headed. Big numbers started to pop up. An 80 on Friday at Bay Hill. The very next week, another 80 at TPC Sawgrass. Worse still were his driving stats: 186th on Tour. Dead last. Losing more than a shot and a half on the field with the driver every time he teed it up.
“I’m hitting hundreds of golf balls that not everybody can see,” he said. “I’m doing it alone, and it’s not getting any better, so it’s pretty frustrating.”
Then came Thursday at the Masters, and there was no hiding, his swing flaws exposed in unimaginable ways. He couldn’t stop it, he said, like rope slipping through his fingers. He played from wrong fairways and hit only six greens and shot an 18-over 90 despite not three-putting a single green.
“It’s like trying to bench press more than what you can and then put more weight on that and try to do it. That’s kind of where I’m at off the tee right now,” Dunlap said. “I’m trying to do something that I don’t think is going to work in the first place, so it’s very hard to step up there and see something good happening.”
Dunlap’s first-round shocker wasn’t the highest score in Masters history – that honor, officially, belongs to Charlie Kunkle, who shot 95 in 1956 – but it sent Dunlap into a darker place than he ever could have imagined a year ago. He thought briefly about withdrawing from the event, about trying to save face.
“But I would never let myself do that,” he said. “Never going to quit. I’ve never withdrawn from anything. I’ve never teed it up and not finished. I take pride in that, and that’s always how I’m going to be.”
But Dunlap still had trepidation as he drove down Magnolia Lane Friday morning. About what horrors could possibly await him now.
“I had more of a knot in my stomach today than I’ve ever had starting a round of golf,” he said.
Quiet by nature, Dunlap tried to muster as much positive energy as he could. After each shot, even the wildly errant ones, he chatted with caddie Hunter Hamrick about anything other than what was unfolding in front of them. Then he’d settle back into the shot, give it his all, and go chase after it again.
Little by little, he pieced together a score. Shying away from driver, he picked up birdies on 3 and 4. Another dropped on No. 8, even while woefully out of position off the tee. He cautiously navigated his way around Amen Corner, nothing pretty, and added another birdie on the par-5 15th.
“My 3-wood on 15,” he said, “was the first free golf swing I’ve probably had in four weeks.”
Yes, incredibly, Dunlap was 4 under for the day. One of the best rounds of the day! It defied all logic and belief; had he parred in to the clubhouse, he would have set the Masters record for the largest single-day improvement, 22 strokes.
But Dunlap was quick to remind us that he wasn’t magically fixed overnight, that there’s something broken deep inside and he’s trying to repair it in front of the biggest audience of the year. He bogeyed his last three holes, the final two after monster misses left, and signed for a 71.
“The problem didn’t just go away,” he said.
Dunlap answered from reporters all 21 questions, earnestly and honestly, some of them harder to relive than others. At one point, he was asked about what he thinks of this pro life, now that he’s more than a year into it, now that he’s experienced elation and embarrassment in equal measure.
“It’s extremely rewarding and extremely humbling and frustrating at the same time,” he said. “Professional golf can be a very lonely place, especially when you’re playing poorly. But it’s been a lot of fun. You get to travel to a lot of historic and unbelievable places like this one. You try to have fun, even though it can be quite frustrating at times, and especially right now it’s hard to find something fun about it. But I got to come out and play Augusta today, so it could have been a lot worse.”
He was proud of his under-par score, of his resilience, of the sheer fact that he even showed up for his second round at all. He’s hoping that the feeling of his striped 3-wood on 15 will carry him for the next few days, weeks, months. He’s hoping that he’s found the direction he wants to go with his game, even if, at this vulnerable moment, he doesn’t exactly know how to get there. He’s hoping for better scores next week.
“I tried my hardest to enjoy today, for whatever it’s worth,” he said. “It’s just very frustrating that my game is at this point, and it’s hard not to focus on that. I’m a competitor, and I love this game. It just doesn’t really love me back right now.”
