Blades Brown, one of the nation’s top amateur golfers and a three-time defending golf individual state champion in Tennessee, is no longer attending Brentwood Academy.
Brown, the No. 4 boys golfer in the class of 2026, will take online courses this year in order to make his golf schedule easier to manage, his mom, Rhonda, confirmed. He would have been a BA junior during the 2024-25 school year.
Brown, 16, made his PGA Tour debut in May. With a Callaway sponsorship, he was on pace to become the first to win five consecutive Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association golf individual state championships. The three-time Division II-AA defending champion tied the state tournament two-day scoring record last fall, shooting a 6-under-par 66 at Sevierville Golf Club to finish at 14-under 130 for the tournament. That also helped lead BA to the team state title.
He was also named The Tennessean‘s boys athlete of the year at the Middle Tennessee High School Sports Awards in June.
Golfer Blades Brown in Brentwood, Tennessee. (Mark Zaleski/The Tennessean)
Brown’s golf career has expanded far beyond TSSAA competition, with a national schedule that includes some of the top tournaments amateurs can play. Last week, he won each of his matches to help the U.S. National Junior team defeat Australia in a friendly competition at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He is scheduled to play in the U.S. Amateur, the nation’s top amateur event, at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, in August.
Brown is No. 10 in the American Junior Golf Association rankings and No. 117 in the World Golf Amateur Rankings.
He made national headlines in 2023 by breaking Bobby Jones’ record as the youngest medalist ever in the U.S. Amateur. He tied for first place in the event’s stroke play portion, tying the Colorado Golf Club course record with an 8-under 64. He was eliminated later in the match play portion in the Round of 32.
That performance led to a sponsor exemption into the PGA Tour’s Myrtle Beach Classic at Dunes Golf and Beach Club in South Carolina. Brown shot rounds of 72, 67, 66 and 69 to finish the tournament at 10-under-par 274, tying for 26th.
He is being represented by Sportfive sports marketing agency and has NIL deals with Callaway and New Jersey-based Transcend Capital Advisors.