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Blades Brown couldn’t turn off his phone’s airplane mode fast enough.
Brown, a 17-year-old making his pro debut this week at The American Express, spotted plenty of golf courses on the Palm Springs flight, but also an attractive amount of pickleball. Brown, who comes from a sporting family, figures he’s about to scratch the surface.
Upon landing, Brown turned on his phone and immediately texted his mother, Rhonda, who played in the WNBA and recorded the first three-pointer in league history: Bring my things. We’re playing this week.
Brown also greeted all challengers inside the media center on the ping pong table.
“I’m totally ready to play,” Brown said. “Just let me know.”
(Wait until he discovers Larry Bohannan from Desert Sun has a wicked service.)
Brown is about to find out a lot as he embarks on this next chapter, where he’ll only need golf clubs, some balls, and copious amounts of courage. Nick Dunlap knows this well. A year ago here at PGA West, Dunlap became the first amateur since Phil Mickelson in 1991 to win an official PGA Tour event. Days later, Dunlap was opting out of his final two-and-a-half seasons at the University of Alabama and jumping straight into professional waters, where the expectations somehow exceed the purses of the signature events for which Dunlap was suddenly eligible.
Dunlap won again, in July at the Barracuda Championship, but he wasn’t spared his growing pains either – bad finishes, loneliness, and to top it all, a legal dispute with his former agency, which was settled last October.
“I knew it was going to be a learning curve,” Dunlap said. “I didn’t expect to come out early and dominate. You go from college golf to playing against the best players in the world, it’s a huge jump.”
Brown remembers watching Dunlap make history — he even recalled Tuesday the length of Dunlap’s game-winning par save (6 feet).
“It just gave me so much inspiration to know that someone my age was able to do it,” Brown said. “And then the question arises, What if I could do that?”
Now, he could.
Brown, a home-schooled high school senior from Nashville, Tenn., was courted by every elite college in the country before ending the recruiting process a few months ago, and he left junior golf as the AJGA’s top-ranked player. He’s at least another day at No. 74 in the world amateur golf rankings, bolstered by medal wins at the 2023 US Amateur and last year’s US Junior Amateur — Brown, Tiger Woods and Bobby Clampett are the only players to accomplish that impressive USGA duplicate – and a T-26 at last season’s Myrtle Beach Classic, Brown’s only PGA Tour start to date.
At the same time, Brown hasn’t dominated his peers, names like Miles Russell and Luke Colton, the way Akshay Bhatia and Joaquin Niemann — two players who bypassed college golf for the pros — did at the junior level. . (Brown actually shares an agent with Bhatia, Sportfive’s Tommy Riehle.)
But there’s no denying that Brown is a special, athletic kid with a jump shot almost as good as his shot. He’s charismatic, fearless and seems to understand that this isn’t a sprint – as much as he probably wants it to be.
“I feel like you’re put in a position where you have to get better,” said Brown, who will likely rely on the sponsor’s exemption to start until Q-School this fall. “Playing against people like Xander Schauffele, Scottie Scheffler, I mean, you learn from the best. I feel that’s life, you learn every day. I probably won’t go to school in college, but I’m going to school on the PGA Tour, so that sounds pretty good to me.”
Many will expect Brown to follow in Dunlap’s footsteps this week in the desert.
Brown, however, is grateful for the opportunity – or as the kids say, “Pumped!” – knowing that it’s going to be a long process, whether it goes down in the next few days or not. Like any teenager, he wants to have fun, hopefully make a bunch of birdies and then build for the next tournament.
He just won’t tolerate losing to mom in the ball game.
