Nick Dunlap posted the highest score in the Barracuda Championship, but it’s the only PGA Tour event where the highest score wins.
With the tournament played using the Modified Stableford scoring format, the former Alabama All-American put up 19 points on Sunday to finish at plus-49 for his four rounds on the Old Greenwood Course at Tahoe Mountain Club in Truckee, California.
The victory made Dunlap the only golfer who has won as a pro and an amateur in the same PGA Tour season.
Dunlap won the PGA Tour’s American Express tournament on Jan. 21 in LaQuinta, California, as an amateur. The former Spain Park High School standout took the PGA Tour membership that came with the victory and left the Alabama men’s golf team in his second season to turn pro.
Dunlap shot 29-under par to win that tournament. On Sunday at the Barracuda Championship, Dunlap carded a 62, but that translated to plus-19 for the round because he had seven birdies and one eagle without any bogeys.
Under the Modified Stableford scoring format, an eagle is worth five points and a birdie two points. Pars aren’t worth anything, and a bogey costs the golfer one point and a double bogey or worse loses three points.
Dunlap held fourth place when he rolled in a 55-foot eagle putt on the par-5, 562-yard 15th to shoot into the lead during the final round. He picked up another two points with a birdie at the par-4 17th hole, then waited for the rest of the field to finish.
“Five points for an eagle’s big in these things,” Dunlap said. “I hadn’t made an eagle yet this week, and that was kind of the outside-chance one that I really didn’t think I was going to make. And that’s what happens – they go in.
“On 17, I started to look at scoreboards and see where I was at, and I thought: Birdie 17 and potentially birdie 18, I’d be very, very comfortable in that position. But happy to be here.”
Dunlap won by two points over runner-up Vince Whaley.
While Dunlap couldn’t accept the $1.512 million first-place prize when he won the American Express, he earned $720,000 for winning the Barracuda Championship.
Stories by Mark Inabinett
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.