Whenever a young golfer shows a lot of potential, the name Tiger Woods comes to mind. It’s not something anyone rushes to say out loud, because it’s almost impossible for there to be another Tiger — but the excitement of a phenom usually brings to mind some of the best to ever do it from an early age.
Blades Brown brings to mind Tiger Woods. Except in this case, the golf world didn’t even have to do it. Brown brought up Tiger himself.
Brown won the World Wide Technology Championship on Sunday. He did it at 19 years old, and it took a playoff to accomplish.
And afterward, he spoke about the disbelief in the fact that he had just actually won a PGA Tour event. He shouted out Woods to do so.
Blades Brown on Tiger Woods
When speaking with the media after his victory on Sunday, Brown’s mind went back to the start of his golf journey.
He thought about first watching the sport growing up — he thought about watching Tiger.
“It hasn’t sunk in just yet, I guess, the magnitude of being a PGA Tour winner,“ Brown said. “Golf is one of the best games, is one of the greatest games in the world. It challenges you mentally, physically, spiritually. It challenges you in every aspect of us, right? I mean, it still hasn’t sunk in yet. I just go back to, you know, 5-year-old Blades that was watching the TV and watching Tiger Woods and all those great players win major championships, and to think that I’m now in a similar spot with having won a PGA Tour event is mind-blowing.“
Pretty much any golfer on the PGA Tour these days grew up watching Tiger.
Blades Brown is simply the one who ascended to victory faster than even Tiger himself.
Blades Brown Makes History With Win at 19
Brown will turn 20 years old in May 2027. That makes him approximately 19 years and 6 months at the moment of his first PGA Tour victory.
Tiger Woods was 20 years and 9 months old in 1996 when he won the Shriners Children’s Open for his first PGA Tour win.
The only three men to ever win a PGA Tour event at a younger age all did it between 1923 and 1931: Harry Cooper, Charles Kocsis and Ralph Guldahl.
The golf world has changed considerably since then, so the odds of a 19-year-old winning a tournament weren’t high. But there haven’t been many young golfers like Blades Brown.
He grew up watching Tiger. Now, Brown has a head start in chasing all Woods’ records — most of them quite unlikely to be matched, but the best thing about sports is that you never know that a new great athlete has arrived until they’ve arrived.
Blades Brown in Disbelief at Tiger Woods Flashback