Opening Act
This teenager is making his pro debut. But there's something different about Blades Brown

LA QUINTA, Calif. — Blades Brown was standing near the podium of The American Express golf tournament’s media center on Tuesday, happily chatting after pulling off a bright and engaging press conference ahead of his first PGA Tour start as a professional on Thursday. At 17 years old, the Nashville, Tenn., native announced in December that he was passing on offers from some of the top college programs in the country to fulfill a dream of playing on the PGA Tour.
In the Brown family’s discussions weighing if Blades should turn pro, there were numerous factors to consider. A precocious player at every level, Blades rose to be the No. 1-ranked boy in the Rolex AJGA Rankings; he twice made USGA history by surpassing legend Bobby Jones as the youngest medalist in U.S. Amateur history (he was 16 for the achievement in 2023 at Cherry Hills) and matching Tiger Woods and Bobby Clampett as the only players to medal in both the U.S. Am and U.S. Junior Am. When Brown got an exemption for his first PGA Tour start in last May’s Myrtle Beach Classic, he excelled by making the cut and eventually tying for 26th.
Those are enormous accomplishments that ultimately fueled Brown’s decision with his parents and management agency, SportFive, to take what some have experienced as a circuitous road to the top. Less tangible than trophies, however, was something lingering far deeper in Blades’ heart than head: “You only get one dad.”
The Browns were dramatically faced with how precious and fleeting time can be when in 2022 Parke Brown was initially diagnosed with bone cancer and given months to live. He underwent further tests, with doctors discovering that he had Hairy Cell Leukemia—an extremely rare form of the disease that can’t be cured but is treatable with chemotherapy and frequent blood monitoring.
The parents held off telling their kids, with Parke finally giving Blades the news on their way home from his last golf tournament that year. “Unfortunately, we had to tell them right before Christmas because I had to get some treatment quickly,” the dad said. “We’re standing there is an airport terminal, and I told him. He cried.
“Obviously, cancer, you think death. There are a lot of stigmas with it. But he stood up to it, though, and when he and [sister] Millie got their minds around it, we talked and all realized, ‘Hey, it’s treatable, and we’re going to fight.'”
“It was super difficult,” Blades recalled this week. “When the doctor says your dad only has six months to live, it hit me for a second. But I knew that God had everything under control, and I could trust Him.
“My dad looked leukemia in the face and said ‘no.’ He beat it, and it just put a whole new perspective on golf. I’m not just playing for the benefit of me; I’m playing for the benefit of watching him watch me on the PGA Tour.”

Blades Brown poses with his father Parke at PGA West, where Blades will make his first pro start on the PGA Tour. (Tod Leonard)
After 20 rounds of chemotherapy in those early months and now more than two years later, Parke Brown’s health is stable, though the emotion surfaced on Tuesday at PGA West as the 54-year-old watched Blades pose for photos with a new Callaway tour bag with his name on it. There are good days, Parke allowed, and then remarkable ones like this. That could have been moving Blades into a college dorm for the first time. Instead, there are many firsts of a completely different nature.
“The last thing any of us want to do in life is to be in one place and want to be in another,” Parke explained. “For Blades, there were plenty of amateur golf opportunities out there for him, but he was hungry to compete professionally, and the opportunity presented itself, and his name was hot.”
Said Blades, “There were a lot of trade-offs in every decision that we make, and for me turning professional was a very difficult decision. But it was the best decision that I believe was for me. When someone comes up to you and says, ‘Hey, do you want to play on the PGA Tour?’, I'm like, yeah, 100 percent, let's do it."
Brown, however, is not a current member of the PGA Tour. By tour rules, he could not become one until he turns 18 in May, and for the time being Blades can make seven starts in 2025 on sponsor’s exemptions, with The American Express being the first. His other route is through Monday qualifying, and barring him earning his way to a card with a victory, he would have to return to Qualifying School, where Brown missed out at the First Stage this past fall.
The fates of golfers who turned professional in their teens run the gamut from enormous success to flame-out futility. Seventeen has been a popular number, with Justin Rose (11 PGA Tour wins), Tony Finau (6), Kevin Na (5) and Akshay Bhatia (2) all becoming pros at that age on their way to excelling at the top levels. Among those who made the jump young and did not succeed are Ty Tryon, who turned pro at 16 in 2001, and Tadd Fujikawa, who was 16 in 2007 and recently said on “The Golf Club” radio show that, now at 34, he hasn’t picked up a club in three years and is the head pickleball pro at the Sea Island Resort in St. Simons Island. Ga.
All of those players started out with enough credentials to believe they would buck the odds, and Blades Brown’s team is no different. Between the athleticism that comes particularly from his mom, Rhonda, who played in the early days of the WNBA, and the drive she instilled from her stories of shooting 500 balls a day, Blades has either possessed or been afforded all of the tools.
'My dad looked leukemia in the face and said ‘no.’ He beat it, and it just put a whole new perspective on golf. I’m not just playing for the benefit of me; I’m playing for the benefit of watching him watch me on the PGA Tour.'—Blades Brown
The exquisite hand-eye coordination was there from early age, Parke Brown said, first showing up when Blades could swat a pitched acorn with a stick when he was just barely walking. Like his older sister, who now plays NCAA Division II college basketball, Blades was a standout shooting guard, but he also reveled in the more personal challenges and rewards in golf.
At 10, Blades played in his first golf tournament at Montgomery Bell State Park when the dark Tennessee skies opened up. As the rain poured down, the boy looked to his dad to see if he had signaled that they would have to run for cover. Instead, Blades got just the answer he had hoped for: “As long as it’s not thundering, you can keep playing.”
Parke Brown chuckled at the memory, saying, “He was running up and down the fairway with mud all over his Rickie Fowler orange shorts and having the best time. He shot 75 from the red tees and beat a few kids out there, and he really liked that.”
About those Rickie Fowler shorts … Blades, who is 19 years younger than the now-36-year-old Fowler, was a Rickie fanatic, donning all of the signature orange gear whenever he could. The two have never met, but there was a good chance they were going to on Wednesday at PGA West while playing the pro-am in back-to-back groups. “I may say ‘hey’ to Rickie on the putting green,” Blades said with a grin.

Wearing orange shorts as a Rickie Fowler fan, Blades Brown poses with PGA Tour player Brandt Snedeker after winning a youth Sneds Tour event in Tennessee. (Photo courtesy of Brown family)
There is some compelling symmetry to this week. A year ago, University of Alabama star Nick Dunlap played on a sponsor’s exemption as an amateur and pulled off a shocking win at 20 that propelled him in turning pro and joining the PGA Tour, where he notched a second victory later. Blades said he watched that win live and “it just gave me so much inspiration to know somebody else similar to my age is able to do that. And then it raises the question, ‘What if I can do that?’”
Dunlap did his own press conference minutes before Brown, and though he wouldn’t offer direct advice to the youngster, he said of his own path, “I approached it as, OK, this is going to be a learning year. It’s a big jump, and I knew that; I knew there was a difference between playing against college players and the best players in the world.”
If Brown were to have success this season, he would figure to be an instantly popular figure. He is affable, expressive and truly looks like he’s having fun on the course. Blades repeatedly calls this his “journey,” and his dad, in particular, is grateful to be living in these moments with him.
“I think with our children, we’ve got to give them some freedom when opportunity knocks,” Parke Brown said. “Of course, as parents, we worry—‘How are they going to do? Are they going to be happy?’ Our desire is that they can be passionate about something, be happy doing it.
“When you see it, stoke the fire, blow on the flames. Let the oxygen in and let him go.”