For the second year in a row, a golfer making his major championship debut leads at the British Open. Last year, it was amateur Christo Lamprecht; this time, Daniel Brown, a 29-year-old English golfer who plays on the DP World Tour, grabbed the lead with an 8-foot birdie on 18 to shoot 6-under 65.
“Yeah, amazing, isn’t it?” said Brown, who had his brother, Ben, on the bag. “I was nervous on the 1st tee, obviously it being my first major, but I hit a few nice shots early, so I kind of got settled into the round pretty quick.”
Ranked No. 272 in the world, Brown won his maiden title last year ISPS Handa World Invitational. In all three of his PGA Tour starts in his career, he’s opened with 65. But even Brown probably didn’t see a round like this coming: His last eight DP World Tour starts included six missed cuts, a WD and a 61st-place finish.
At the par-3, fifth hole, with the wind howling, Brown was asked if he tried to cut his 3-iron to the flag, which ended 2 feet from the hole. “No, I pulled it,” he admitted, but it was a tap-in birdie.
Brown took advantage of more benign conditions playing late in the day. At No. 11, he drained a 42-foot birdie. “I felt good all day, really, with the putter,” he said.
From the deep rough at 16, he tacked on another birdie and then broke a tie with Lowry with his birdie at the last.
“He took advantage of the conditions coming home,” Golf Channel’s Notah Begay III said. “After missing so many cuts and not playing great golf coming in, you know this game can come up at any moment and bite you. We’ve all been there. He knows he put up a great round, celebrate it for a very brief moment, but I promise he will show up ready to play tomorrow, knowing that he hasn’t been on the greatest streak of golf coming in.”
