Blades Brown has left a successful stint on the PGA Tour behind to play a junior event at Sedgefield Country Club.
OK, it’s not that simple.
Brown is scheduled to return to Greensboro next week to defend his Wyndham Invitational title won last year. Though he did make the cut three weeks ago at the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic, a secondary PGA Tour event played on the same weekend as the Wells Fargo Championship, he doesn’t have a place in a PGA Tour field — unless he gets a special exemption, as he did in Myrtle Beach.
There are no special exemptions for 15-year-olds at The Memorial, a premium Tour event.
Fourth in the national AJGA rankings, Brown is set to head the 72-player field at the 54-hole tournament scheduled for June 11-13. The field also includes Pennson Badgett, a rising junior at East Surry High; and North Carolina recruits Carson Bertagnole of Pinehurst, and Mack Edwards of Charlotte. Badgett, who had been an alternate, was added to the field when Will Hartman of Marvin, No. 9 in the AJGA rankings and committed to Vanderbilt, withdrew.
“We’re going to bring the best to the best,” said AJGA director of operations and rules Jacob Kennedy. “This is one of our five or six best fields we offer.”
Kennedy said the juniors would play the back tees at Sedgefield, measuring almost 7,000 yards. But he said distance hasn’t typically been a major factor at Sedgefield, where the testing Donald Ross greens complexes provide the biggest challenge.
Often approaches that land close to the pin roll off the back or sides of the putting surfaces.
“It’s one of the more challenging ones that we play on,” Kennedy said. “This one is unique in a sense because I feel like it requires a lot of discipline.
The players who end up winning here are typically more disciplined, hit into the middle of the green, find a way to make par.”
While Brown has won at Sedgefield, tournament officials can also take pride that Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player, played in the tournament and left without a victory.
Bobby Powell, the tournament director of the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield, said a limited amount of hospitality opportunities remain for this year’s August tournament. Powell said the 15th hole skyboxes had been expanded to meet demand. Availabilities remain for teams in the Monday pro-am as well as some “smaller” hospitality packages.
