As 16-year-old Blades Brown stars at U.S. Amateur, no one is happier to witness it than his dad
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CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, Colo. – Standing under an awning at the back of Cherry Hills’ sprawling clubhouse, Parke Brown gazed out into the brightness and pointed out the Rocky Mountains in the distance.
“You see Pike’s Peak over there at about 14,000 feet?” he said. “That’s what I feel like.”
Parke’s 16-year-old son, Blades, had just won his first-round match Wednesday at the 123rd U.S. Amateur, posting a 1-up victory over Benton Weinberg, an Iowa grad nearly a decade older than the kid from Nashville, Tennessee, who a day earlier had earned the top seed by tying for stroke-play medalist honors and becoming the youngest co-medalist in championship history. Blades was two years younger than Bobby Jones, who was 18 years old when he accomplished such a feat at the 1920 U.S. Amateur.
“You hear the youngest person in history to be medalist in a U.S. Amateur was Bobby Jones at 18, and then you hear someone did it at 16,” Parke said. “You would’ve thought it was Tiger or Jack or somebody like that who did it. But no, it was my son.”
Parke has had plenty of reasons to brag about young Blades, who isn’t just the top-ranked player in the Class of 2026; he’s the No. 6 player in all of junior golf, according to the AJGA’s rankings. He’s already up to No. 250 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking too, as he’s picked up four world-ranked wins this year alone, including the Tennessee State Amateur and AJGA’s Wyndham Invitational. This summer he medaled in three different USGA qualifiers – the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, U.S. Junior Amateur and U.S. Amateur.
And with dozens of college coaches vying for his attention, Blades went out Tuesday and fired an 8-under 64 with a pair of eagles, tying the course record at Colorado Golf Club.
“Everything is really good,” said Blades’ friend Caleb Surratt, the world’s seventh-ranked amateur who also won his match Wednesday, routing potential Walker Cup teammate Dylan Menante, 6 and 5. “He doesn’t have too many weaknesses. And he’s really comfortable being Blades Brown, and that’s why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
A little inspiration hasn’t hurt either.
Parke, 52, always considered himself a healthy guy, but last December that changed when he was diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia, a type of cancer where the bone marrow generates too many white blood cells, which, when viewed with a microscope, appear hairy.
“It’s hard when you feel like you’re in good health and then you find out, hey, you’ve got a year left – if you don’t treat it,” Parke said. “Fortunately, what I have is treatable (95% cure rate).”
Parke began chemotherapy in January, and amazingly, he’s missed just two of Blades’ tournaments this year. Now, about 12 weeks removed from his treatments, Parke says, “I can walk 18 with him and still feel good.”
Even in the high elevation and blistering, dry heat.
“I just use it as fuel,” Blades said of his dad’s cancer battle. “Having him here is just awesome. Like he could not be here right now; that’s crazy to think about. I remember when I qualified, he posted, My son is going to the U.S. Amateur! What dad can say that after thinking that they were going to die?”
While many players may take the survive-and-advance nature of this championship too literally, Blades knows better. He got down early to Weinberg on Wednesday, bogeying his opening hole. But armed with a heavy dose of perspective, Blades didn’t panic. He won Nos. 3-5 to take a 2-up lead, and then later, when he saw his 3-up lead after 10 holes dwindle back to tied, he went for the green in two at the par-5 17th hole and came up short of the creek that guards the front of the peninsula green.
“I hit it on the heel, and it just ballooned right,” Blades said, “and I was like, Oh, my gosh, I just lost in the Round of 64.”
Only he didn’t. Blades hung tough, got up and down for birdie to win the hole and then went fairway, green, easy two-putt at the difficult par-4 finishing hole to edge out his opponent.
“I barely survived this match,” Blades said, “but at the end of the day, I know that it’s just a golf ball.”
Oh, how Blades can hit that golf ball. He remembers the feeling the first time he flushed an iron shot, when he was 8 years old, before he had even played a competitive tournament. It felt even better than swishing a 3-pointer from the top of the key – Blades knows a thing or two about that as well.
Blades’ mom, Rhonda, was an All-American basketball player at Vanderbilt. As a junior, she led the Commodores in points, rebounds and assists, and she went on to play a few seasons in the WNBA, where she became the first player in league history to record a 3-point basket and later was the No. 1 pick in the 1998 expansion draft.
Blades hoops too, playing freshman, junior varsity and a few varsity games as a ninth-grader for Brentwood Academy last school year. He’s unsure how much longer he’ll continue with competitive basketball. A couple inches shy of 6 feet, he admits he can’t dunk. And he definitely can’t risk getting injured.
But Blades still loves the game, and he loves to point out that Jack Nicklaus was a multi-sport athlete in high school. Nicklaus was an All-Ohio selection on the hardwood his senior year at Upper Arlington High and even received some recruiting interest as a shooting guard.
And if the Golden Bear played both sports as a prep star? “Maybe I could someday turn out like Jack Nicklaus,” Blades says.
Right now, though, being like Blades Brown is pretty good too.
“The sky’s the limit for him,” Surratt adds.
And Parke, here to witness it all, couldn’t be prouder.
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