[PHOTO: Charlie Crowhurst/R&A]
On February 3, 2014, Dan Brown had reached a low point in golf:
Could quite happily quit golf tomorrow.
— Dan Brown (@danbrown212) February 2, 2014
Fast forward 10 years and change, and at the end of his first career major round at this year’s Open Championship, he led the entire field after a history-making showing. A day later, when everyone expected him to fade down the leaderboard – not an unreasonable assumption, considering his past eight tournaments have included six missed cuts and a withdrawal – the 29-year-old Englishman survived a tough day at Royal Troon, shooting a one-over 72 to remain in second place, two shots behind Shane Lowry.
What happened between now and then? Brown, who dropped out of college after three months in his late teens, finally decided to turn pro in 2017. He got his first crack at the Challenge Tour in 2018, but made just two cuts. Three years on developmental tours followed before he took advantage of a Challenge Tour mulligan and qualifying for the 2023 DP World Tour, where he won the ISPS Handa World Invitational last August. In the time between the start of his professional career and that victory, he came close to making good on his earlier tweet and quitting golf, and was far from a household name in the world of professional golf.
Now, he’s playing in his first major, and showing very little sense of pressure. When asked if waking up on Friday morning with the lead felt any different than usual, he shook his head.
“It didn’t, to be honest,” he said. “I played enough golf to know that 18 holes… it obviously puts you in a good situation, but still having 54 holes left, it’s a bit of a mammoth climb really when you’re playing in conditions like that. So I sort of knew that in the blink of an eye, you could drop a few shots… it’s a long old week.”
The British press gathered at his post-round presser seemed obsessed with the fact that his name is the same as the writer Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code, and frustrated that he wouldn’t feed into the connection beyond a good-natured joke that if he continued to make a name for myself, they might ask the other Dan Brown if he was the golfer.
Brown is a solid, lanky figure with a full beard and large facial features. His affect is calm and relaxed, which is helping him avoid projecting his thoughts into the future.
“I’ve always been quite laid back, really,” he said. “I think I am a bit of a realist as well. I know I’m not going to start getting ahead of myself and thinking that, Oh, my God, I’m leading The Open, or I’m second in The Open, or whatever. There’s still 36 holes left. I might have a good round tomorrow, and then I might have a stinky round on Sunday. You just don’t know.”
The most pressing question about Brown, from a golf standpoint, is what exactly changed this week? Brown made a 20-foot putt on the last hole of Final Qualifying less than two weeks ago to get his spot at Royal Troon but nothing in his recent form predicted this success. In fact, you could have found great odds on him missing the cut.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve actually had a change in form,” he said. “I think it’s just a case of results, really. I had a bit of a knee injury and had a few weeks out and haven’t really gotten going since… it was more just rustiness really from having six, seven weeks off. So I feel like the results have been coming. I’ve just had to stay patient, and I wasn’t very patient when I came back from injury at all.”
The Open is a heck of a place for a first-timer to find his patience, but Brown appeared sanguine throughout his round, never panicking even when he dropped two shots on the front nine to fall to four-under. He battled back admirably on the supposedly more difficult back nine, climbing to even for the day by reaching the green in two on the par-5 16th. He gave a shot back on 17, but still cruised in at five-under, a number that only Lowry and Justin Rose had reached by the late afternoon.
After an historic driving performance in the first round, he came slightly back to earth on day two with a few missed fairways, but still retained his spot at the top of the strokes gained/off the tee list by the conclusion of his round. Remarkably, he also leads the field in strokes gained/putting, and the combination of the two makes it very unsurprising that he’s one spot removed from the top of the leaderboard.
Brown has his brother Ben on the bag, a strong golfer himself, and together they’ve managed to stun the golf world for two days. He knows the biggest challenge is yet to come, and it would still be a brave soul who picked him to actually win, but on a day when expectations were set very low, he exceeded them by leaps and bounds yet again, and proved that even if he never holds the claret jug, he’s a man to be reckoned with at Troon.
