What Happened
The Georgia state line is only about 15 miles from The Honors Course, so maybe it was apropos that a player from the Peach State walked away with the Frederick L. Dold Trophy on Thursday as the 69th U.S. Senior Amateur champion.
Louis Brown, 61, of Marietta, defeated Dan Sullivan, 57, of Pasadena, Calif., 4 and 3, in the 18-hole championship match on yet another sunny and hot day in southern Tennessee. Brown, a former tour and teaching pro competing in his third U.S. Senior Amateur, becomes the fifth player from his state to win this championship, all in the last 25 years. He joins Bill Ploeger (1999), Doug Hanzel (2013), Bob Royak (2019) and Rusty Strawn (2022) as a Senior Am champion.
Sullivan, playing in his 13th USGA championship and first U.S. Senior Amateur, was bidding to become the first Southern Californian to hoist the trophy since fellow University of Southern California graduate Kemp Richardson claimed the second of his two titles in 2003. Northern California native Jeff Wilson (Fairfield) won in 2018.
Both players are exempt into next year’s U.S. Senior Open at The Broadmoor, in Colorado Springs, Colo., as well as next month’s U.S. Mid-Amateur at Kinloch Golf Club, in Virginia, and the 2025 U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club, in San Francisco.
Brown’s association with the USGA began with the 1981 U.S. Junior Amateur at Sunnyside Country Club, in Fresno, Calif., when he advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to a Southern Californian, Scott Erickson, of Villa Park, by a 4-and-3 margin. Forty-three years later, he won a title by that same score against another player from that region.
“I haven't done everything I wanted to do in golf, but I've won some tournaments,” said Brown, who was the Australian Tour’s Rookie of the Year in 1989. “I've won some stuff in Georgia that's pretty meaningful. But the one thing that I thought would be huge for me would be to win a USGA event, and this was the only one.
“I can't hit it far enough for the Mid-Am the way the golf ball goes today, so this was the one. It's huge.”
Brown, who lost in the Round of 64 in his two previous U.S. Senior Amateur starts in 2018 and 2023, was a two-time All-Southeastern Conference performer for the University of Georgia in the 1980s before turning pro and traveling the world to chase his dreams. That included stints in Australia and Canada. He played in nine PGA Tour events, with his best finish a T-16 in the 1991 Buick Southern Open. He also played in 26 Hogan/Nike Tour events before taking his career in a different direction.
Brown, the 1985 Georgia State Amateur champion and two-time runner-up (1982, 1984), regained his amateur status “around 2005,” about the time he became a partner and wealth management advisor for a financial firm. But even with that career change, Brown did not play much tournament golf; his last event before this week’s U.S. Senior Amateur was 11 months ago.
It didn’t look like it at The Honors Course, where he was one of four competitors to break par during the 36-hole, stroke-play portion of the event, posting 1-under 143 to earn the No. 3 seed.
Then he methodically ran through his opponents, including a 19-hole quarterfinal win over Andrew Whitacre and a 1-up decision in the semifinals over Robert Nelson, who hours earlier had eliminated the defending champion, Todd White. Brown also survived a 2-up tussle with fellow Georgian Jack Hall in the Round of 32.
