CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE — Blades Brown isn’t afraid to name-drop the greats. His ultimate dream would be for his own name, which is already rather extraordinary, to someday belong in the same stratosphere.
Speaking at practically a word per millisecond, and even briefly mistaking the 123rd U.S. Amateur Championship for something a little bigger — “Augusta … er, not Augusta,” he called it at one point — Brown was still brimming with enthusiasm Wednesday after three and a half hours of match play at Cherry Hills County Club.
With good reason: Brown is only 16. Makes sense that he would wield outsized ambition with a bright future in front of him, especially after he made history Tuesday on the biggest stage of his budding career. Brown is the youngest co-medalist at stroke play in U.S. Amateur history, breaking a 103-year-old record previously held by Bob Jones. He was 18.
Up three at the halfway point of his Round of 64 matchup, then suddenly tied after 16 holes, Brown pulled out a victory over Benton Weinberg thanks to a birdie on the 17th. Who was on his mind afterward?
“Jack Niklaus played basketball,” Brown was saying. “I think he was an All-American as well. I mean, I’m not an All-American. But I think he was an All-American. (Nicklaus was an All-State honorable mention in Ohio.) Which, I kind of saw the parallels.
“Jack Nicklaus played basketball. I play basketball. He played golf. I play golf. OK, maybe someday I’ll turn out like Jack Nicklaus.”
Not a bad reason for Brown to stick with his first sport, even as golf becomes his potential money-maker. The Nashville-area teenager’s mom is Rhonda Brown, who played college hoops at Vanderbilt and made the first 3-pointer in WNBA history during a brief career in the pros.
Blades was schooled in basketball as much as golf while growing up. His older sister, Millie, was his mom’s original protégé. Millie made more than 220 3-pointers in high school and led their school to a state championship in 2018. She plays at UNC Ashville now. Blades’ No. 1 childhood mission was “to be as good of a shooter as my sister is.”
He joined the high school basketball team as a freshman last year, playing mostly for the freshmen and junior varsity squads. He doesn’t want the sport to fade out of his life, but the time commitment to golf is increasing. Whether or not he finishes high school on a competitive stage, he hopes to keep playing recreationally with friends to stay in shape.
“I’m more of a point guard,” he said. “I can touch rim. I can’t dunk. … I like to shoot it.”
That’s a fitting profile for an athlete whose passion and motivation for golf stems from a moment when he was 8 years old: “I was on the range and I flushed a shot,” Blades recalled. The feeling it gave him was addictive. “I strive to get that every single time now.” He didn’t start playing in competitive golf tournaments until about a year later, he estimates. The rise has been meteoric since.
He had, however, held a golf club in his hand from a young age. While Blades’ mom introduced basketball, his dad inspired him toward golf — and still does. Blades says his father has only ever missed two of his tournaments despite a leukemia diagnosis. “Having him here is awesome,” Blades said. “… Just having him here at this tournament. I remember when I qualified, he was like, ‘My son is going to … the U.S. Amateur.’ What dad can say that after thinking that they were going to die?”
With symbolism powering Blades forward in both sports — reminders of his love for each parent — he naturally has sought deeper meaning in how the two sports service each other. He believes his golf benefits from his basketball, that the two are philosophically similar even though one is known as one of the fastest-paced sports, and the other is the most methodical.
“I think, like Michael Jordan, you just step up and shoot,” Blades said, citing another all-time great athlete. “That’s kind of like in golf. Like, I’m over a 6-foot putt. I’m not trying to analytically read the putt. Let’s just get up there and putt it. Get up and shoot.”
The teenager’s chances of landing in Jordan territory are exponentially slimmer than his chances of becoming a Nicklaus-esque golfer, but that won’t stop him from invoking MJ.
Blades’ name is easy to remember, and the 2023 U.S. Amateur has been an indicator that it might grow into a familiar name someday. Fittingly, both of his parents played a part in it. When his mom debuted in the WNBA, she was Rhonda Blades. The maiden name was passed down as a first name.
“My dad was like, ‘If we ever have a son, we have to name him Blades.’ And now I’m here,” he said. “I’ve kind of gotten used to it. But I remember thinking back, like, ‘Blades, that’s not a bad name.'”
