Olin throws book at ’em
Browne authors 63 to spy lead
PEABODY — Best-selling author Daniel Silva never wrote a golf instructional book, but maybe he should consider it after Olin Browne relaxed perusing Silva’s latest novel before shooting a 7-under-par 63 yesterday in the opening round of the U.S. Senior Open at Salem Country Club. Golfers, after all, will try anything to post a number.
Wrap a rubber band around your elbow? Sure. Tie a fish hook to the end of your driver with a ping-pong ball attached? Seems like a plan. Wrap a contraption around you that feels like Conor McGregor has you in a rear naked choke? If it will add 10 yards to your drive, let’s try it. So if all one need do is read a spy novel to shoot a round like Browne had yesterday, Barnes & Noble best restock the Silva shelf.
Browne warmed up for his 1:37 p.m. tee time reading Silva’s latest spy thriller, “The Black Widow,” before going out and shooting 1 off the Senior Open record, a record Kirk Triplett had to tie to maintain a 1-shot lead over the 2011 winner on a leaderboard painted in red.
Over a quarter of the field of 156 golfers shot under par, which is far from the norm on the usually challenging U.S. Open tracks, but how many were reading of the travels and travails of Gabriel Allon, the fictional Israeli art-restorer-turned spying-assassin Silva has penned into a best-seller 19 times and counting? Probably not many, but at least one did, which means 10 will be trying it by this afternoon.
“I think it’s the last of his that I haven’t read yet,” Browne said of Silva’s work. “It’s a good way to get lost with all the air travel that we have.”
Silva’s 20th, “House of Spies,” is due July 11 but that won’t help Browne this week. What will, if it continues, is the patient approach to a golf course that ceded him nine birdies.
Like a careful spy, Browne didn’t rush into anything. He simply walked out to the 10th tee and commenced an aviary fest that included five birdies in his first seven holes.
“I didn’t even look at the leaderboard,” Browne explained after teeing off on the back nine. “I had no idea what was being shot. It’s the first round of the Senior Open. You know what you have to do out here.
“You know you have to hit fairways. You know you have to hit greens. I missed a fairway today, and it was on a par 5. So that was good timing for me. And when I missed the greens, I missed them on purpose. I was missing short to play up to the hole. I managed my game well today.
“My game plan was to hit the middle of every green, and if I wasn’t in the middle of every green, I wanted to be short of the green in the middle of every green.”
As battle plans go, it wasn’t exactly storming the Bastille, but it worked for Browne after a season of struggles. He has played 12 Champions Tour events this year and has yet to win and, in fact, hasn’t won in two years. But a year ago he had five top-10 finishes, which netted him $983,489 in purses, to rank 19th on the money list.
He was not on pace to anything close to that this season until yesterday, when his opening-round 63 actually was better than the 64 he shot at Inverness Club in the opening round of the 2011 U.S. Senior Open, although both were 7-under rounds. That day launched a wire-to-wire victory and a $501,000 payday. This year’s winner will leave with $675,000 and that check is, for the moment, within his grasp. But Browne understands a lot of hay still has to be put into the barn — and kept away from his golf ball — before that check can be cashed.
“I would say that in both rounds I did what you’re supposed to do in a U.S. Open,” Browne said. “I hit a lot of fairways, and I hit most of the greens, and when I did miss a green, I left myself in the proper spot.
“There just happened to be a couple of places where I could take a slightly more aggressive line and I was fat side to the hole all day long, so it worked out. I’ve been struggling with that this year.
“I wouldn’t necessarily call them green-light situations (yesterday), even though there’s some red numbers on the board, because if you got overly aggressive and missed on the wrong side, you were cooked.
“The greens were receptive and the wind was down today, so the ball was going where we started it, but if you don’t hit good shots, you’re going to pay a real penalty out there.”
Yesterday Browne, like Gabriel Allon in the pages of a Daniel Silva spy thriller, made his opponent pay the penalty instead. That opponent is the same one he’ll face today and it’s not Kirk Triplett or Bernhard Langer or Fred Couples. It’s the deviously deceptive Salem Country Club course itself.
Yesterday, Browne had the book on it, but like any great page-turner no one knows what twists and turns will await him this morning. Not even the author of a 63 yesterday.