Dunlap's story doesn't need dollar signs

The amateur wins at PGA West, and the PGA Tour wins too.

Nick Dunlap shot 29 under par over 72 holes in the desert last weekend and all he got was this lousy trophy.

He won the American Express (formerly the Bob Hope Desert Classic) and got no money to pay his Amex bill. He is still an amateur, a sophomore at Alabama, one of the few students whom Nick Saban goes to for guidance. He didn’t take home the winner’s purse of $1.512 million. That went to the runnerup, Christian Beduzienhout.

Somehow one suspects Dunlap’s credit is good. He was the first gentleman golfer to win a PGA Tour event since Phil Mickelson did so as an Arizona State junior, at Tucson in 1991. On Monday, Dunlap turned down his sponsor’s exemption to the Farmers Insurance Open, at Torrey Pines, presumably to consider his options. If Dunlap does turn pro, he’ll be exempt from qualifying through 2026, and he is eligible for all four majors, although he was already in the Masters and the U.S. Open because he won the U.S. Amateur last August.

Dunlap is also the youngest player to win a tour event since 1910. His 20th birthday was last Dec. 23. Yet it was hard to single him out as the intruder at PGA West. He is 6-foot-3 and has the same tunneled stoicism as most of the tour regulars. “I didn’t know I’d have to put up with a frickin’ college kid shooting 60,” said Justin Thomas, Crimson Tide alum and two-time major champ, when Dunlap went 12-under at La Quinta on Saturday.

That was the revelation. Dunlap did not sneak up on this title, did not pole-vault the field with some ridiculous Sunday spree. He was in the final group, next to Ryder Cuppers Thomas and Sam Burns. He even faltered, with a double bogey on the 7th hole. Double bogeys at the American Express are like 10s. Even if you shoot par you get lapped. But Dunlap was unshaken, and he battled his way to within a shot of Burns. When they got to the island green, on No. 17, it was Burns who faded his tee shot into the water.

Dunlap still needed to par the 18th, although he thought he was two shots ahead, not one. He chipped to within about six feet. His caddy, Hunter Hambrick, pumped him up by saying, “Your mom could make this putt.” Charlene was indeed at greenside, with husband John, and they watched their son square a circle that began, at age 12, when he shot 59 at Greystone Country Club in Birmingham. He beat the members so often that he was politely asked to quit entering their tournaments.

That doesn’t work anymore. Dunlap not only won the U.S. Am but also the North and South and the Northeast Amateur. He won the SEC Stroke Play championship and was 11th in the NCAA tournament. He and Tiger Woods are the only players to win the USGA’s Amateur and Junior Amateur titles, and at the U.S. Am he gave the field a head start by going five over par in the first seven holes of the medal-play preliminary round. He kept one foot in front of the other and got into the match-play phase, where he was confronted by Gordon Sargent of Vanderbilt, the top-ranked amateur in the field. Sargent had finished 19 shots ahead of Dunlap in a collegiate tournament last spring. But Dunlap won this match, and all the ones that followed.

Dunlap’s 60 at La Quinta Saturday was not an out-of-body experience. He had shot 60 last week at a club in Tuscaloosa, and he shot 60 at an amateur event in the Hamptons last summer. Jay Seawell, his college coach, realizes it’s quite a leap to talk about Woods and Jack Nicklaus, but says he “isn’t surprised at anything he does” and also says no one should be surprised if Dunlap does “historical things” on tour.

And that’s the macro significance of what happened Sunday, and what happens on most Sundays on the PGA Tour. That’s the reason that the real news is made on that tour, and not on the LIV Tour, a place where there are no cuts, no fourth rounds, no majors, nothing but petrodollars. One cannot blame Jon Rahm and Cam Smith and Mickelson and the others for cashing in. But nothing they do on the LIV Tour matters to anyone except their accountants and agents and other money-changers.

The PGA Tour is where every Sunday matters, to somebody. It is where journeys are completed, struggles are overcome, barriers are broken. Sports is nothing without the stories it tells, and look at the stories told by the past four winners:

Ludvig Aberg, playing college golf at Texas Tech last year before getting picked for the European Ryder Cup team, wins at Sea Island.

Chris Kirk, continuing to put a history of alcoholism behind him, wins at Kapalua.

Grayson Murray, another recovering alcoholic with a history of toxic behavior and Twitter scraps with his colleagues, wins at Hawaii.

Now there’s Dunlap. And now there is another player worth following, up and down the hills of Augusta National and around the coves of Pebble Beach, just to see how far he’ll go. Unlike money, history is the most satisfying target to chase down, mainly because it’s the one that moves.