Patrick Welch’s initiation at Augusta National Golf Club came in the form of a 30-foot putt on the practice putting green before the first Drive, Chip and Putt (DCP) National Finals. Back in 2014, the 14-year-old Welch stepped onto the green to test the speed and watched his first putt roll 30 feet by the hole.
“That’s when I knew they aren’t kidding about these greens being fast,” he recalled. “That was pretty cool; that was funny. First putt, I just hit it 60 feet on a 30-footer.”
Eight years after the inaugural National Finals were played, alumni are starting to branch into all areas of the game. Welch is now a senior at the University of Oklahoma and was a key player on the Sooners golf team that finished runner-up at the 2021 NCAA Championship. For a long time in junior golf, fellow competitors and college coaches knew him as the Boys 14-15 division winner at that first DCP National Finals.
Ashley Gilliam qualified for the National Finals in 2014 and 2015. She returned to Augusta National for the 2021 Augusta National Women’s Amateur as a sophomore at Mississippi State, where she recorded the program scoring record (a 70.61 season average) in her freshman season. After she played Augusta National in a practice round, the 20-year-old was flooded with nostalgia watching the Drive, Chip and Putt stage being set up.
“It was so cool to see the difference,” she said. “I was there five years ago for DCP and now I’m competing at one of the biggest women’s amateur events here at Augusta.”
Chloe Kovelesky, a 15-year-old who competed in the 2017 National Finals when she was just 10, distinctly remembers bringing her own golf balls to the driving competition. She now routinely draws two giant happy faces in pink marker on tournament balls. Four years after finishing second in the Girls 10-11 division, Kovelesky teed up smiles at the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open. Remarkably, at age 14, she led the field in driving distance after the first round.
The amount of pressure you feel...it doesn't really get much more than what you had for the DCP.
Kovelesky knew the DCP National Finals was something special at a young age. Multiple layers of qualifier events, a game room for National Finalists (with plentiful snacks) and, of course, the setting of Augusta National made it so. Television coverage only elevated the experience.
“Just little things that you remember that keep reminding you,” Kovelesky said of the memories she still carries of Augusta National. “It was really a great experience.”
Megha Ganne, a four-time National Finalist, honed in on that spotlight and the amount of preparation it offered for bigger events she would play down the road. At the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open, for example, Ganne, at age 17, contended and eventually claimed low amateur honors with a T14 finish.
“The amount of pressure you feel and the amount of eyes you feel on you,” Ganne says, “it doesn’t really get much more than what you had for the DCP.”
This story first appeared in the commemorative 2022 Masters Journal. This annual publication is available for purchase in the Masters Shop. Julie Williams is a staff writer for Golfweek.
