Golf: at 19, Blades Brown is the youngest PGA Tour winner since 1931
· BehindLines newsroom
American Blades Brown, 19, won the World Wide Technology Championship in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, this weekend. At 19 years and 171 days, he becomes the youngest winner of a PGA Tour event in 95 years, a record that both the BBC and Sky Sports point out.
A seven-shot comeback
Brown began the final round seven shots off the lead. He signed for a 63, nine under par, with a birdie on the last hole, to finish on 23 under par (265 strokes). Fellow American Ben James, who had held a four-shot lead going into the day, also ended on 23 under: after losing that cushion, he forced the play-off with an eagle on the par-5 18th, hitting a 285-yard shot (about 260 metres) that finished roughly twenty feet from the hole. Michael Kim took third place on 22 under and Kensei Hirata fourth on 21 under.
A play-off settled on the second hole
On the second play-off hole, James missed a putt from about eight feet. Brown holed his own, from about a metre. The win gives him a two-year status on the circuit and a place in next year's PGA Championship, his first major.
A record with some nuance
The previous youngest winner dates back to 1931: Charles Kocsis, 18, took the Michigan Open, which was regarded as a regional event in the circuit's early years. Brown is also the tour's first teenage champion since Jordan Spieth, whose John Deere Classic victory in 2013 came at the age of 19 years, 352 days.
Brown turned professional aged 17 and secured his PGA Tour card this year with a top-twenty finish in the Korn Ferry Tour standings. It is his first victory, in his 22nd start on the circuit according to the PGA Tour, as cited by Sky Sports.
He said the scale of what he had just done had not yet sunk in. He recalls watching Tiger Woods and the other great champions on television as a child, and says that finding himself in a comparable position now feels unbelievable.