Marietta’s Louis Brown is the latest Georgian to win a national golf championship.
Brown, 61, who plays out of the Atlanta Country Club, defeated Dan Sullivan of Pasadena, California, 4 and 3 on Thursday to win the 69th U.S. Senior Amateur Championship at The Honors Course outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Brown is the fifth Georgian to win the U.S. Senior Am, joining Rusty Strawn of McDonough (2022), Bob Royak of Alpharetta (2019), Doug Hanzel of Savannah (2013) and Bill Ploeger of Columbus (1999).
Sarah Gallagher of Canton won the U.S. Women’s Senior Amateur in 2023. Earlier this month, Jackson Buchanan of Dacula reached the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur.
“I haven’t done everything I wanted to do in golf, but I’ve won some tournaments,” Brown said. “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 U.S. Mid-Am the way the golf ball goes today, so this was the one. It’s huge.”
There wasn’t much drama in the championship match. Brown won the first three holes and was 5 up after a birdie on the 13th hole. He closed the match with a par on the 15th hole.
Brown was solid all week. He tied for third after the two rounds of stroke play. To reach the final, he defeated Keith Lundquist of Texas, 2 and 1, fellow Bulldog Jack Hall of Savannah, 2 and 1, Paul Smith of California, 6 and 5, Andrew Whitacre of Texas in 19 holes, and Robert Nelson of Alabama, 1 up.
Brown’s career has come full circle. A highly regarded junior player from Newnan, where his father, the late Johnny Brown, was a legendary sportswriter for the Newnan Times-Union. He was runner-up in the Georgia Amateur Championship in 1982 and 1984 before winning it in 1985.
Brown played at the University of Georgia from 1982-85, where he was a two-time All-SEC selection before turning professional. He toiled on the lower tours for years, playing in 26 events on the then-Nike Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) and making nine starts on the PGA Tour, where his best finish was a tie for 16th at the Southern Open.
His lack of success helped persuade Brown to change careers. He became a partner in a wealth-management company and was reinstated as an amateur in 2005. Since then, he hasn’t played much competitive golf, the last event coming almost a year ago.
Brown won the 2020 Georgia Senior Amateur Championship but had little success on the national level. In two previous visits to the U.S. Senior Am he reached match play, but both times lost in the Round of 64.
“I played a lot of tournament golf a long time ago,” Brown said. “I never stopped working on my game. I practice and I know what’s important, which is the short game. My short game is not always there, but it was pretty good this week.”
Brown had plenty of support. His daughters, Hailey and Lauren, drove up from Atlanta to support their dad, as did his sister Kathryn Jenkins and former UGA teammate and roommate Bob Sargent.
As the champion, Brown receives a gold medal, exemptions into the next 10 U.S. Senior Ams, an exemption into the 2025 U.S. Senior Open, exemptions into the 2024 and 2025 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championships, exemptions into the 2025 and 2026 U.S. Amateur Championships, and an exemption from local qualifying for the 2025 U.S. Open.
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