Blades Brown is still three weeks away from his 18th birthday and already facing another fork in the road.
The first big turn came in December when Brown decided to skip college and turn professional without status on any tour.
He has played four PGA Tour events on sponsor exemptions and made one cut, a tie for 34th in the Mexico Open. He took two sponsor exemptions on the Korn Ferry Tour and made the cut without cracking the top 40.
And then one week changed everything.
Brown used the third of his maximum four exemptions on the Korn Ferry Tour last week at the Veritex Bank Championship in Arlington, Texas. He opened with a 61 and finished in a five-way tie for second place, three shots behind Johnny Keefer.
The next stop was supposed to be a 45-minute drive north of Dallas for the CJ Cup Byron Nelson on the PGA Tour with a $9.9 million purse. Instead, Brown chose to fly to Mexico for another Korn Ferry Tour start.
It would appear to be the right turn.
That runner-up finish was worth 167 points and moved Brown to No. 44 on the Korn Ferry Tour points list. That leaves him just 53 points away from special temporary membership, which is crucial to someone in his position.
He earned his way into the Tulum Championship at PGA Riviera Maya this week by finishing among the top 25. To play the CJ Cup Byron Nelson would have meant giving up a free start on the Korn Ferry Tour, leaving him only one more exemption the rest of the season.
And if he plays well enough in Mexico — a top 15 should do the trick — Brown could get enough points for special temporary membership. He would not be able to accept it until May 21 when he turns 18.
But that would give him unlimited exemptions and make him eligible to improve his category ranking, effectively giving him a full Korn Ferry schedule for the rest of the year. The top 20 in points at the end of the season earn PGA Tour cards. At worse, he has a place to play.
“I say this to my caddie all the time, like every single event that I play in I feel like I’m exponentially better, more relaxed,” Brown said after the second round last week. “I think that comes with just experience. Like anything you do for a while, you’re going to get more acclimated and comfortable.
“Yeah, I’m really excited for what’s to come.”
His decision to skip the PGA Tour and stay on the minor league circuit is reminiscent of the decision Jordan Spieth faced as a 19-year-old in 2013. He turned pro after one full year at Texas and one failure at Q-school when he didn’t get out of the second stage.
Spieth missed the cut at Torrey Pines and tied for 22nd at Pebble Beach. And then he headed south of the border for what now is the Korn Ferry Tour. He tied for seventh in Panama. He tied for fourth in Colombia.
And then came a fork in the road.
Spieth had a sponsor exemption the following week in the Puerto Rico Open. Status was based on money back then, and Spieth was about $4,000 short of earning full status on the Korn Ferry Tour. He wanted to give back the Puerto Rico Open exemption and head to Chile to lock up his status. Part of him felt compelled to honor his commitment to Puerto Rico.
“We sat there for 30 minutes trying to figure it out,” Spieth said at the time.
He chose Puerto Rico, which proved to be the right move.
Spieth tied for second, which got him into the next PGA Tour stop at Innisbrook for the Tampa Bay Championship. He chipped in for birdie (a sign of big moments to come) on the 17th hole and finished with a 7-foot par putt to tie for seventh, giving him enough money for special temporary membership on the PGA Tour.
Four months later, Spieth won the John Deere Classic. By the end of the season, he was the youngest American to play in the Presidents Cup.
Spieth was special. He was a two-time U.S. Junior Amateur champion, the No. 1 player in the American Junior Golf Association ranking. His athletic genes came from a father who played college baseball and a mother who played college basketball (his younger brother, Steven, played basketball for Brown and later in Europe).
Brown is a different player cutting a different path, though he also has golf history and athletic stock worth noting.
His mother, Rhonda Blades, played basketball at Vanderbilt and spent four years in the WNBA, where she has the distinction of making the first 3-pointer in WNBA history (her only points that game for the New York Liberty).
Brown also was No. 1 in the AJGA ranking and earned a measure of fame at the 2023 U.S. Amateur when at 16 he became the youngest player to share medalist honors, breaking a century-old record held by 18-year-old Bobby Jones.
That led to making his PGA Tour debut last year at the Myrtle Beach Classic, where Brown made the cut a week before his 17th birthday. Two weeks later, Brown and Jackson Herrington were runner-up in the U.S. Amateur Four-ball.
He is making moments and he’s not even 18, traveling with his father, unable to rent a car but already curious where the road leads.
Brown is not the first teenager in a hurry. Akshay Bhatia turned pro at 17 in 2019. He went through some lean times and spent two years on the Korn Ferry Tour before finding his way. Now at 23, he has two PGA Tour titles and is No. 26 in the world.
Brown still has a long way to go. This trip to Mexico might not be the first detour.
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On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
