Top-ten finish and £246,000 winnings – Brown has earned boozy party

The eventual outcome was not what Dan Brown and his friends had hoped for when he walked up the 18th fairway on Saturday with a one-shot lead in the Open, but his hard-earned consolation of a place in next year’s championship was still worth throwing a party at their nearby rented house on Sunday night.
“I can get on the drink now,” the 29-year-old Yorkshireman said, minutes after he had completed his 72nd and final hole of the week.
Despite being nine shots short of the champion, Xander Schauffele, Brown’s three-over-par round of 74 was enough to finish tied for tenth at Royal Troon. Not only does it earn the world No 272 the biggest cheque of his career of £246,000, but a top-ten finish secures him an exemption in the field for Royal Portrush in 12 months’ time.
Understandably there was some disappointment at the end of this memorable week for Brown that he had failed to capitalise on prime position during his third round. A slack double bogey on the 18th to leave him one shot behind Billy Horschel’s overnight lead will still take some recovering from.
Brown was then in danger on Sunday of freefalling down the leaderboard at three over par after eight holes. Desperately needing a steady finish to have a chance of edging back into the top ten, he knuckled down and scored level par in his last ten holes to sit alongside Australia’s Adam Scott and England’s Matthew Jordan.
“At the minute it’s probably a little bit more disappointment,” Brown said. “But when I reflect on it, I’ll be very pleased, I would have thought. If you would have told me that [he would finish in the top ten] at the start of the week, obviously I would have been very pleased.
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“Portrush was in my head a little bit towards the back nine. Obviously I took myself out of contention quite early, so that was playing on my mind a little bit. But it still didn’t really affect me in terms of hitting shots.”
Brown’s story as the unheralded qualifier in his first major captivated spectators and viewers throughout the week. Before he arrived in Edinburgh two weeks ago for the Scottish Open — where he finished 61st — he had posted six missed cuts and one withdrawal in seven tournaments. His parents, Mick, a pig farmer, and Kay, a mortgage broker, had not even booked accommodation in Troon beyond the first two days.
Brown already has a title under his belt by winning the ISPS Handa World Invitational on the DP World Tour last year, but his efforts in Troon have propelled him into the consciousness of the wider golfing world. The footage and photographs of him lighting a cigarette on several occasions during his rounds have also proved popular on social media.
Most importantly, Brown has given himself the opportunity to push on up the rankings during the second half of this year. For a man who was applying for supermarket jobs in 2019 after coming close to giving up on his misfiring professional career, it would be quite a tale if he were to go on and secure a PGA Tour card as one of the DP World Tour’s top-ten non-exempt finishers in the season-long Race to Dubai rankings. His next tournament is the Czech Masters in Prague, starting on August 15.
“This is quite big for my confidence,” Brown said. “I had seven weeks out with an injury with my knee not long ago, and then I haven’t really got firing since. It’s nice to have a good result under my belt again.”
There is also a useful learning experience to take away from his pairing alongside the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, on the final day. This is the sort of company he would like to be keeping on the course in the coming years, and he did not disgrace himself here, scoring only two shots more in the final round than Scheffler did.
“He’s a really nice guy,” Brown said. “Obviously I’ve never met him before, so I wasn’t too sure how it was going to go. We had a good time and it wasn’t quite how we both wanted it to end, but it was fun.”With that, it was off to a chauffeured car back to the house he is sharing with three friends and his 19-year-old brother, Ben, who also had cause for celebration after securing a standard 10 per cent cut (about £24,000) for his caddying duties.
“He’s getting a nice little payday,” Brown said. “Not too bad for a 19-year-old lad.”