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Colson Brown, the college QB who played Cypress Point, on his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
When Colson Brown throws his first touchdown pass at Georgia Tech, it will undoubtedly be a special moment in his college sports career. Yet it still may not replace the highlight of his college sports career, which came last week on the golf course.
No, Brown is not a two-sport athlete, though the freshman quarterback at Georgia Tech acted as one for two days last Monday and Tuesday at Cypress Point in Pebble Beach, widely recognized as a top-three course on planet earth. As the story goes, Brown, who grew up down the road from Augusta National Golf Club, was in the trainer's room one day and happened to run into the Yellow Jackets men's golf coach, Bruce Heppler. They got to talking, and the next thing Brown knew, he was playing in a real live college golf match at an iconic venue.
"Our quarterback coach, Chris Weinke, requires all the quarterbacks to ice their shoulders every day after practice. So I was in there and I was hooked up to some machine," Brown explained on this week's episode of The Loop podcast. "There's two tables off to the side, and he [Heppler] was on the other one doing something with his foot. He and the trainer, Mark Smith, were talking, and I knew he was a 'somebody,' but I really didn't know he was the golf coach.
"I introduced myself, and we started talking, and somehow it turned into golf talk. And he's like, I need a spot for this golf tournament, you might be our guy," Brown said. "I'm like, hey, I have a couple of swing videos just to prove that I can swing a golf club pretty good. So I showed them to him and he's like, 'hey, not too bad.'"
Heppler and Brown promptly exchanged phone numbers, and soon enough, Heppler was checking with Weinke as well as head football coach Brent Key to see if they could steal Brown for a day or two. They signed off, Brown got to working on his game, and the rest is history.
Not surprisingly, Brown was happy to regale us with shot-by-shot tales of his two days at Cypress, which included four total rounds—a practice round, an alternate-shot match, a best-ball match and a singles match. It'd be one thing if he got to play it once, but getting four consecutive tee times was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he won't soon forget. To hear the full story, please listen to our interview with Colson below, and please like and subscribe to The Loop wherever you get your podcasts.