Blades Brown PGA Tour win World Wide Technology Championship, Digi Mart USA News (Baja California, Mexico): Blades Brown is one of several young players who recall Tiger Woods sinking important putts, winning major tournaments and inspiring them to play. For Brown, however, that was not long ago.
Two years after his surprising decision to turn professional while still in the penultimate year of high school, Brown, 19, became the youngest winner on the PGA Tour in 95 years. He closed with a 63, nine under par, and defeated Ben James on the second playoff hole of the World Wide Technology Championship.
“I still don’t fully grasp, I guess, the magnitude of being a PGA Tour winner,” Brown said. “I think back to Blades at five years old, watching television and seeing Tiger Woods and all those great players win major championships, and thinking that now I’m in a similar place, having won a PGA Tour event, is mind-blowing.”
Brown is the youngest winner since Charles Kocsis won the Michigan Open in 1931 at age 18, an event that in the early years of the PGA was considered a regional tournament.
James lost a four-stroke lead entering the final round at El Cardonal at Diamante, then showed his resolve by hitting a 285-yard shot to leave it 20 feet from the par-5 18th hole and making eagle to rescue a 70 and force a playoff.
However, James missed an eight-foot putt on the second playoff hole, and Brown made his three-footer.
“I had a feeling it was going in,” James said of his decisive eagle, the only putt he made all day from more than 15 feet. “I hadn’t made anything all day, really.
I just read the line very well and it was a good putt. I played the best I could.”
For a sleepy FedEx Cup Fall event at the southern tip of Baja California, this was pure drama between two next-generation players. James was the No. 1 player in the PGA Tour University rankings last season.
Brown turned professional at 17 and earned his PGA Tour card this year by finishing among the top 20 in points on the Korn Ferry Tour.
