You can’t help but hear the murmurs of the Royal Troon, carried by the wind among the sounds of waves, trills, claps and calls. “Jon Rahm birdies the first three holes!” the young man who had managed to get a signal on his phone said to the two men on either side of him as he ran his thumb down the scoreboard.
“How’s Rosie?” his companion asked. “He just kicked off the ball.” Another chimed in: “Scotty Scheffler is here.” He waited a moment. “Who is with him?” The three people squinted at the man walking on the fairway in the middle. Blue sweater, blue slacks, white hat. No one spoke.
“Who is that?” is a question a lot of people have been asking Dan Brown lately. Four days ago, you had to pay very close attention to the outside world of DP’s World Tour to find out more about him. Brown, a 29-year-old veteran from Northallerton, entered the Open ranked 272nd in the world and had failed to advance in six of his past eight matches. But it’s been a long week for Nexus, and a lot has changed. Brown himself said that if you had told him on Monday that he would finish tied for 10th, he would have been delighted.
But after moving into first place with 20 holes remaining, he found himself disappointed with his score, nine strokes behind winner Xander Schauffele. “A little bit,” he paused for a moment, searching for the right words. “I want to do better and be higher up on the board.”
Even Brown seemed a little surprised by his performance this week. He said it helped that he was used to losing on the DP World Tour, so he wasn’t scared anymore. “I think a lot of people probably thought I was going to be shaking and really nervous this morning, but I’ve been fine,” he said Saturday night. “I don’t know about myself, I didn’t know last night if I was going to wake up this morning feeling nervous, sweaty, whatever it was, but I think I feel good.”
His own mother had booked a hotel here just for the first night of the tournament. She was superstitious and didn’t want to bet that he would survive until the weekend. It’s such a shame. Given that he has odds of 750 to 1 to win this match, her odds are pretty good.
Everyone was waiting for the moment when Brown looked down and saw that the ground beneath him had disappeared because he had run so far off the cliff. But it never came. You wondered if that would happen on Saturday night, when he dropped three shots on the final two holes, and again on Sunday morning, when he started the final round in seventh place on the leaderboard and Partnered with Scotty Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world. Scheffler is a few inches taller, $69 million richer and 271 spots higher. But Brown took it all in at a slow and steady pace, pausing only for a quick drag on his cigarette.
He said he got a little carried away by the wind, which flipped it over on the front nine. He fumbled his first shot when he missed his putt from 10 feet after playing in a greenside bunker. He made consecutive bogeys on the fourth, fifth and sixth holes. But he birdied the second and seventh holes, which meant he remained firmly on the top of the leaderboard. Scheffler passed him on the road. The American was four under after eight holes, moving himself up to third in the rankings. But he three-putted for a double-bogey six on the ninth hole and never recovered.
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Brown played the back nine in par, as tough as any major championship, and one stroke better than Scheffler’s finish. The gap between the two is not as big as imagined. When your rankings get into the hundreds, the profits become pretty slim.
Brown is about to take three weeks off, and you can only hope he can finally enjoy what he accomplished this week at Royal Troon. He did it under conditions that would cripple some of the best golfers in the game. He has earned almost more money in these four rounds (€291,576/£245,580) than in the first four years of his career and has earned a huge sum for his 19-year-old brother Ben, who has been Caddies. It was life-changing money for a man who once had to borrow money from his grandmother to travel to Switzerland to compete. What’s more, he also earned himself an exemption to the 153rd Open Championship at Royal Portrush.
So Cinderella failed to marry the prince. But at least she can treat herself to a new pair of shoes and come back next year to try them again.
