17-Year-Old Phenom With Perfect Golf Name Decides To Pass On College, Will Make Professional Debut In January

When your name is Blades Brown, you're practically destined to play golf, and the Nashville native has elected to do so at the professional level faster than maybe he himself could have ever imagined.

The 17-year-old announced on Tuesday that he will not be going the college golf route and instead will turn professional and make his pro debut at The American Express in January after receiving a sponsor exemption into the field of the PGA Tour event.

Brown is the top-ranked junior player in the class of 2026 and held scholarship offers from virtually every college you can name, but has elected to bet on himself and take advantage of the handful of sponsor exemptions he already has lined up for the 2025 campaign.

The Brentwood Academy (Tenn.) standout is following in the footsteps of two-time PGA Tour winner Akshay Bhatia who also turned professional as a 17-year-old after receiving a sponsor exemption into the 2019 Valspar Championship. Brown's career decision not only matches Bhatia's, but the two also share the same agent.

There are two significant differences between Brown's decision to turn professional at 17 and Bhatia's, however, and those are NIL and the PGA Tour U program. 

While the NIL landscape is dominated by football and basketball at the college level, the top golfers at the top-ranked programs around the country can cash in on NIL deals as well, and Brown certainly would have garnered a significant one.

If Brown had gone the college golf route, he would have had the opportunity to earn a PGA Tour membership card and status across other tours as well. The top-ranked college player following the year's National Championship tournament now receives a membership for the PGA Tour while Nos. 2-10 earn Korn Ferry Tour status, and 11-25 pick up status on PGA Tour Americas.

If Brown continues along the trend of his insanely impressive resume, he should find success at the professional level sooner rather than later. At 16, Brown became the youngest medalist in the stroke play portion of the U.S. Amateur, breaking the record an 18-year-old Bobby Jones held for 103 years. Brown also took home medalist honors at the 2024 U.S. Junior Amateur and joined the likes of Tiger Woods and Bobby Clampett as the only players to medal at both the U.S. Am and U.S. Junior Am.

Brown entered PGA Tour qualifying school earlier this year but failed to advance out of the first stage. He made his debut on Tour at the 2024 Myrtle Beach Classic and managed to make the cut.