Monday Scramble: Cases for, against Dunlap going pro

Nick Dunlap makes history and debates his future, Rory McIlroy finishes the drill, Lydia Ko moves to the brink of immortality and much more in this edition of the Monday Scramble ...

This moment had been coming.

It wasn’t just the players who have flashed as amateurs. Patrick Cantlay dropping a 60 at the Travelers. Jon Rahm donning his ASU jersey in Phoenix. Collin Morikawa losing in a Korn Ferry Tour playoff. Michael Thornbjorsen, Jared du Toit, Braden Thornberry, Lee McCoy, Paul Dunne – they all popped up and had a chance, too.

No, it's the youth movement, in general. Never in the sport’s long history have the players been this good, this soon in their development.

There are myriad reasons for that, of course. Optimized equipment has helped level the playing field. Instruction has become more sophisticated. Fitness has been prioritized. College golf has become insanely deep and competitive, the best players competing on championship venues with exacting setups. Course-management strategy systems have shaved shots.

A player’s competitive peak no longer is in his mid-30s, once he’s gained a decade of experience. These days, it’s about a half-decade earlier; just look at the top 10 in the world rankings. It’s likely to shift even more in the coming years. Bigger, stronger, faster and all that.

Nick Dunlap, 20, is perhaps the perfect player to embody these changing times. He’s an athlete, tall and lean. He’s been groomed for this, mature and poised. And he possesses special qualities: He pounds the ball, with 185-mph ball speed; he’s lethal with his wedges; and his teammates say he’s the best putter they’ve ever seen. For a decade he has developed a championship pedigree, becoming the first since Tiger Woods to capture both the U.S. Junior and U.S. Amateur. He shot 59 as a 12-year-old and has learned how to dominate at every level, so there’s less of an intimidation factor when he finally arrives because – as he thought while lining up his 6-footer to win the American Express – he’s literally done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.

The gap between elite college golf and the game’s top circuit has never tighter. Dunlap is proof of that. But so were the scores of talented and precocious youngsters before him. This breakthrough will only embolden the ones who come next.

OK, be honest: What moment did you think it was over for Dunlap?

Maybe it was when he wiped his iron shot into the water on 7 and made double. Perhaps it was when he clanked his chip on the par-5 11^th and settled for par. Or it could have been when he missed birdie putts inside 7 feet on Nos. 13 and 15.

But a funny thing happened Sunday at PGA West. The player who faltered with the tournament on the line wasn’t the 20-year-old sophomore from Alabama who was making just his fourth Tour start. It was Sam Burns, a five-time winner and recent Ryder Cupper.

Dunlap showed time and time again that he was game for a fight. He bounced back from one of his only miscues of the week with a birdie. He matched Burns’ birdie on 14 to stay in the mix. And then after a tidy up-and-down from short and right of the 16^th to seize the honor on the intimidating par-3 17^th, Dunlap hit a perfect iron shot left of the flag to heap all of the pressure on Burns.

Even if he (mistakenly) thought he had a two-shot lead coming down the watery last hole, Dunlap played it as he should. Conservative off the tee. Safe-side miss with his approach. And then rely on his short game, the kind of chip shot that he’s gotten up-and-down thousands of times in his golfing life – just not with that kind of life-changing pressure.

There's a reason why it hasn't happened in 33 years, an amateur prevailing on the top tour in the world. It took a gritty comeback. Precise iron shots. Stones in the taut moments. Given his stature, given the circumstances, given his immediate competition, Dunlap authored one of the most impressive performances you can possibly imagine.

The Big Decision now looms.

Dunlap was already going to be teeing it up this week at the Farmers Insurance Open on another sponsor exemption. (Editor's note: Dunlap withdrew from the Farmers Monday afternoon.)

But here’s where it gets tricky.

Let’s break it down.

THE CASE TO TURN PRO

• He has Tour status locked up through 2026;

• He has invitations to the Masters, PGA and U.S. Open, and there’s still an avenue to qualify for The Open if he surrenders the spot he would have had for winning the U.S. Amateur last summer. (Just like that, he's all the way up to 68th in the world.)

• He has immediate entry into the Tour’s lucrative signature-event series for the remainder of the year. (So don’t weep for him forfeiting the $1.5 million winner’s check from the AmEx – millions more will soon be deposited into his account.)

• And – oh, yeah – he clearly has the game to play for pay, so little sense delaying the inevitable.

Well, except …

THE CASE TO DELAY TURNING PRO

• This is escalating quickly! Dunlap already has an agent, but there’s virtually no way that they had prepared to make the jump at this current juncture. On the eve of the final round, Dunlap was thinking about hanging out with his girlfriend and doing laundry: “I’m still trying to figure out this whole two weeks on the road laundry thing with the Tour.” Indeed, there’s so much to figure out, and little time to do so – concerns that are much weightier than whether he has a crisp polo and a clean pair of slacks.

• He may, uh, want to stay? If his Tour status isn’t going anywhere – he has until 30 days after the end of the season to accept membership – and he’s already in three majors by virtue of his U.S. Am win, then why not live out his remaining few months as a really famous college kid in a really fun college town, prepare for his pro life and tick off a few other notable accomplishments, like an NCAA title and world No. 1? That'll allow him to hit the brakes, reset, and then be ready to take on the world in early June.

The ultimate goal is still 2 ½ months away, but right now Rory McIlroy looks and sounds like a player primed to finally nab his biggest career goal.

A week after blowing the lead on the 72^nd hole, McIlroy responded with one of the best weekend flourishes of his career. With rounds of 63-70 he erased a career-best 10-shot deficit and won the Dubai Desert Classic for the fourth time.

His successful title defense was sweet redemption for McIlroy, who nearly made it a Dubai double but made some uncharacteristic mistakes last week in the final round, rinsing a tee shot with an iron, four-putting from 3 feet and then rope-hooking his drive on the last into the water.

McIlroy, however, said he was undeterred after what amounted to an easy warmup event with 60 pros and 60 amateurs: “I think people were making a bigger deal out of it than I was. It was a couple of bad mistakes at inopportune times. Over 72 holes, you can’t look at two instances of bad whenever the rest of it was very, very good.”

Indeed, because at one of his personal playgrounds, McIlroy hunted down Cameron Young over the final two rounds and then passed him on a tricky final day with a clinical performance, especially over the last five holes. Sure, there was still more to clean up: He had left misses on 13 and 16, just as he did a week ago that cost him the tournament. But he was still able to get by – an important early checkpoint that he believes can be a “nice springboard” into the rest of the year, with the Masters looming in just 2 ½ months’ time.

In his winner’s press conference, McIlroy retold the story from last year, when he started his second round at Augusta and noticed that he was 10 shots behind Brooks Koepka already. It was easy, in that moment, to press, to feel discouraged, to stray from his game.

Not this time.

In Dubai, he erased that same 10-shot deficit and won.

“So I feel like I’ve taken that learning already and put it into practice a little bit,” he said. “That’s a huge thing for me.”

After a season full of letdowns, Lydia Ko began 2024 in familiar fashion.

The former wunderkind moved to the doorstep of the LPGA Hall of Fame with a victory Sunday at the season-opening Tournament of Champions.

Ko was winless in 20 LPGA starts last season and didn’t even qualify for the season finale, a shocking U-turn after what was a resurgent year in 2022. But Ko quickly put that dismal campaign behind her. This victory, her 20^th on tour, gave her 26 points – one shy of the threshold needed for inclusion in the exclusive LPGA Hall of Fame, no small thing for the 26-year-old who has made no secret about her desire for a second career.

How can she nab that final point?

• Another LPGA win;

• The low scoring average for the season;

• Another Player of the Year award;

• An Olympic gold medal.

The LPGA season continues this week, two hours down the road in Bradenton …

Bitter Collapse: Sam Burns. Up by one over Dunlap with two holes to play, Burns made the critical mistake by flailing his tee shot into the water on 17 and carding a double. To make matters worse, he then overcorrected on the next hole and found the water again, leading to two more dropped shots. The double-double disaster (plummeting him all the way to T-6) cleared the way for Dunlap to make history. Burns didn’t speak to the media afterward, but it's obvious this one will sting for a while.

That’s More Like It: Justin Thomas. It took JT a whopping one event to accomplish something he couldn’t for the entirety of 2023: a top-3 finish. Sure, in his closing 68 he still made a couple of miscues at inopportune times, but Thomas looks like he’s well on his way to reestablishing the form that made him one of the best players of his generation. You can’t keep a mega-talent like JT down for long.

Not Again: Cameron Young. Meanwhile, it was another dose of frustration for Young, who seemed to be seething inside the ropes as he failed once again to win at the elite level. Up by two in the desert, he frittered away shots in the final round, playing his first 12 holes in 4 over par to tumble out of the lead. Young still had a chance to make it interesting late, but he blew that opportunity too, with a drive on the 17^th that sailed just a bit too far right and left him needing three shots just to reach the green for a momentum-killing bogey. Oy.

The Kids Are All Right: Michael Thorbjornsen. All of the attention last week understandably went to Dunlap, but don’t forget about the sensational Stanford senior who was playing in Dubai on a sponsor exemption. In his first start since a back injury last summer, all Thor did was tie for 11^th against an elite Rolex Series field to further prove his mettle. As the leading points-earner in the PGA Tour University standings, he’s currently in line to receive his PGA Tour card after nationals this spring.

And On and On It Goes: LIV rumors. The LIV season will begin in less than two weeks, but we still don’t know who will round out Jon Rahm’s star-studded team. Just last week there was a fresh round of denials from European players Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton and Nicolai Hogjaard, all of whom confirmed that they’d been approached by LIV but were staying put. Hatton was the most interesting, given his successful partnership with the Spaniard in Rome. But Hatton told The Scotsman that he was “quite happy” playing the PGA and DP World tours and that, “as of right now, yeah,” he was spurning LIV’s advances. It remains to be seen if a better offer is forthcoming; the countdown is on until the season opener.

Back, Baby: Daniel Berger. It was great to see Boog back inside the ropes for his first Tour action in a year and a half. The former Ryder Cupper made the cut on the number at (gulp) 13 under and ultimately tied for 39th, but that wasn’t as important as it was to see him healthy and active. He was also sharper than perhaps anticipated, with Berger ranking second in the field in driving accuracy and top 12 in putts per green in regulation. Fittingly, Berger was paired early in the week with Will Zalatoris, who is also on the mend from back troubles and made his first cut of the year (T-34).