Maybe Dan Brown loves writing too, he just hasn’t written a best-seller…yet.
Of course, that could all change on Sunday night at Royal Troon, where Brown, a 29-year-old Englishman on the DP World Tour, is looking to write one of The Open’s ultimate underdog stories.
Brown, who shares his name with famed novelist Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons), shot a 6-under 65 on Thursday to edge out Shane Lowry by one stroke and take the sole first-round lead.
Brown had no issues with the conditions, but the big names struggled.
Brown isn’t ranked as low as Ben Curtis, who won the Claret Jug in 2003 at 396th in the world, but he’s not far off, coming in at 272nd in this week’s Official World Golf Rankings. Incidentally, there are other players in professional golf besides Brown, like Daniel Brown, another Englishman born four years ago who played a couple of Euro Pro Tour events two years ago.
Daniel Brown earned his DPWT card in 2022 at Q School after five years of playing on the Challenge Tour and other developmental circuits around Europe, including a tour called the Evolve Pro Tour, where he won two titles in 2018. Then, in his rookie season on the DPWT, he won the 2023 ISPS Handa World Invitational in Galgorm, Northern Ireland, not far from Troon, Scotland, by five strokes over Alex Fitzpatrick. But his sophomore campaign has been less successful. Brown missed nine weeks after removing a cyst in his left knee earlier this year, ruining the momentum he gained from a T-4 at the SDC Championship in early March. He made the cut at last week’s Genesis Scottish Open, finally ending his streak of seven consecutive weeks of absences. But that still left him in solo 61st place.
“I was playing well leading up to the tournament, but my scores lately haven’t really reflected that,” Brown said Thursday night.
Brown, who qualified for this week’s British Open after a final qualifying run, was 500-1 odds-on to win when he arrived at Royal Troon, where his brother Ben, who was also trying to qualify for the tournament, was also in attendance. But Brown has already defied the odds, judging by a bogey-free performance on Thursday that ended with a confident short birdie from eight feet on the final hole. He is the first lower-ranked player to lead after 18 holes in a major tournament since Andrew Landry, ranked 624th in the world, did so at Oakmont in 2016. Brown turned professional a year earlier, winning the 2015 Dutch Junior and 2016 English Amateur as an amateur.
Just don’t expect Brown to take any leaderboard photos, at least for now.
“Some people understand that, but I don’t,” Brown said. “I want to get my feet on the ground a little bit and get to work tomorrow.”
Back in his hometown of Northallerton, England, and at Brown’s local club, Romanby Golf and Country Club, he’ll surely be cheering on the British Open’s latest Cinderella story.
