How does it feel when you wake up on the second morning of your first major and find yourself at the top of the leaderboard? If you’re Dan Brown then the answer is: kind of normal.
“To be honest, it didn’t feel that different,” the 29-year-old from Northallerton says. “I’ve played enough golf to know that 18 holes puts you in a good situation, but still having 54 holes left is a bit of a mammoth climb. It’s a long old week and you’ve just got to stick in and hang around and hopefully you can still be there on Sunday.”
The prospects of Brown lingering around like ancient clues to the identity of Jesus’s secret child are a degree higher now after a second round that was as simple and unflustered as his engagements with the media. Despite coming face to face with the powerful blustery winds that dominated the course on Friday, Brown did not get stuck on the Postage Stamp and took no detours on The Railway. He finished one over for the day, and five under after 36 holes, second on the leaderboard now and just two shots behind Shane Lowry.
Brown says he’s proud of his round, one which was “a lot tougher” than his first 18 holes. “It was certainly three or four shots harder [than Thursday],” he adds. “I was trying to kind of rein myself in a little bit after yesterday’s score and going out there with it being a lot windier. I knew that 72, 73, 74 actually wasn’t too bad.
“The front line played a lot stronger and then the back … I mean, you would think going back downwind would make it easier, but it’s so firm that it was a proper struggle to try and hold onto the green.”
Hold on to it Brown did, dropping a solitary shot on the back nine, requiring a second putt on the par three 17 after being held up by the wind. But the calm and collected way in which Brown found first the fairway then the green, and the consistency of his putting, was a pleasure to watch despite all that was going on around him both in terms of the weather and the heightened expectation.
Brown acknowledged that the scoreboards were too big to miss as he walked around Royal Troon, but beside the odd crafty cigarette, he did not appear to require anything to soothe his nerves. “I’ve always been quite laid back really and I think I am a bit of a realist as well,” Brown says. “I’m not going to start getting ahead of myself and thinking that I’m leading the Open or I’m second in the Open or whatever. There’s still 36 holes left and I might have a good round tomorrow and then I might have a stinking round on Sunday.”
Brown shared a few more details about himself and his career, beyond the established fact that he made it into the 152nd Open by dint of coming through the 36-hole shootout of Final Qualifying. He dropped out of sixth-form college, for example, feeling that his studies were getting in the way of his golf. He has hired his brother, also a golfer, as his caddie. “Him being a good golfer I can kind of trust his opinion”, he says. “It’s nice to walk down the fairways of the open with him next to me.”
On the key topic, however, of whether or not he is aware of the international bestselling author of the Da Vinci Code, Mr Dan Brown, Brown was all too willing to disappoint. While he prefers to be known as Dan, “Daniel is usually only when I’m getting told off by my mum”, he hasn’t read the books or even seen the film. “I’m not much of a book reader,” Brown says. “But I’ve had that a lot [being compared to the author], the whole Da Vinci Code and all that kind of thing. Hopefully I can start making a bit of a name for myself and people say that to him: ‘Are you the golfer?’”
If that’s to happen, another decent 36 holes certainly wouldn’t hurt, starting with the intriguing prospect of his pairing up with Shane Lowry in the third round on Saturday. Brown says that he admires the Irishman’s “grit and determination” and will very likely have to emulate it too. “Hopefully I’ll get to witness that first hand tomorrow and try and go toe-to-toe with him,” he says.
1 Shane Lowry (Ire) -7
T2 Daniel Brown (Eng), Justin Rose (Eng) -5
T4 Billy Horschel (US), Dean Burmester (SA) -2, Scottie Scheffler (US) -2
T7 Corey Conners (Can), Jason Day (Aus), Xander Schauffele (US), Patrick Cantlay (US) -1
T11 Matthew Jordan (Eng), Joaquin Niemann (Chi) Par
T13 Dustin Johnson (US), Brooks Koepka (US), Collin Morikawa (US), Mackenzie Hughes (Can), Jon Rahm (Sp) +1
Missed cut (selected players)
Keegan Bradley (US) +7; Henrik Stenson (Swe), Tyrrell Hatton (Eng), Louis Oosthuizen (SA) all +8; Ludvig Åberg (Swe), Bryson DeChambeau (US), Francesco Molinari (It), Tommy Fleetwood (Eng), Zach Johnson (US) all +9; Tony Finau (US), Viktor Hovland (Nor) both +10; Rory McIlroy (NI) +11; Cameron Smith (Aus) +12; Tiger Woods (US), Sahith Theegala (US) both +14; Wyndham Clark (US) +16.
Before then, it will be a number of games of ping pong with friends back at his accommodation, followed by an early night. Brown claimed that he had no problem getting to sleep on Thursday; “I got seven or eight hours” he says. But who knows what will be in his dreams as the clock ticks down to Saturday.
