Can Mark Brown make the Masters?
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2007 US Masters | General | 04 Mar 2008
If anyone had mentioned to Mark Brown three weeks ago that he might have a chance to play the US Masters this year, he and many others would have questioned the person’s sanity.
After all at the beginning of this year the New Zealander was well outside the top 300 in the world and the prospect of becoming even New Zealand’s leading player over the next three months appeared as unlikely as gaining a start at Augusta National.
Enter a rapidly improving Mark Brown. Making the decision to play the Indonesian Open ahead of the PGA Championship in his homeland, an event in which he had finished 6th twelve months earlier, was no doubt a difficult one but as it turns out it was an inspired and important one.
Brown finished 5th at the Indonesian Open, a week later he was in New Delhi winning the Asian Tour’s SAIL Open and yesterday he won the lucrative and prestigious Johnnie Walker Classic in New Delhi. If he had stayed around long enough he might have been given the keys to the city having won consecutive professional tournaments in India’s capital but he was quickly on a flight to Kuala Lumpur to play in this week’s Malaysian Open, an event co-sanctioned with the European Tour.
As a result of his win yesterday Brown has moved to 64th in the world, an amazing climb of 258 places since the start of the year and now faces the possibility of climbing inside the top 50. If he does so by the week preceding Augusta, he will take the drive up Magnolia Lane. A victory this week in Malaysia might just achieve that result despite the field being weaker than that in India.
In his current form and with the confidence he now has people would be reluctant to rul out a trip to Georgia in April. He is now New Zealand’s highest ranked player ahead of David Smail (98th) and Michael Campbell (230) and would join Campbell at Augusta with Campbell still eligible courtesy of his 2005 US Open victory.
