Browne rides Ryder Cup wave in '08, to turn 50 in '09

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Olin Browne, a veteran golfer who enjoys fly fishing and politics, will not turn 50 until May 22.

Some of golf's favorite names and most familiar faces will be joining the Champions Tour in 2009. Over the next three weeks, PGATOUR.COM will take a look at the former PGA TOUR winners who turned 50 in late 2008 or who will hit the half-century mark in 2009 and likely make their Champions Tour debut.

Olin Browne, an Assistant Captain to Paul Azinger at this year's Ryder Cup, will have a different Cup on his mind in 2009.

That's because the three-time PGA TOUR winner turns 50 on April 22, and can join the Champions Tour in the middle of the Charles Schwab Cup race. And, since Team USA finally beat Team Europe for the Ryder Cup trophy to reverse their recent losing streak, Browne's game has also taken a turn for the better.

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Assistant captain Olin Browne celebrated the United States' win at The Ryder Cup.

The Basics

NAME: Olin Douglas Browne HT: 5-9 WT: 175 BIRTHDATE: May 22, 1959 BIRTHPLACE: Washington, D.C. RESIDENCE: Hobe Sound, Fla. TURNED PRO: 1984 TOUR WINS: 3

Click here to view Browne's player profile.

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Click here for a look back at Browne's PGA TOUR career.

Prior to the Ryder Cup, Browne missed five straight cuts on the PGA TOUR. During the week of the event, he hardly worked on his game. Browne and Azinger almost teed it up the Sunday before but Hurricane Ike tore through the course and laid waste to it.

"My clubs stayed in my travel case. I (hadn't) touched a club really until two, three, or four days before I got (to the Turning Stone Resort Championship) for a couple weeks," Browne said.

The final score was U.S. 16 ˝ to Europe 11 ˝, and Browne noted after the victory that he got goosebumps just thinking about the win.

"I'm hoping to ride that Ryder Cup hysteria," he said at the start of the Fall Series. "Obviously I have some great memories from (the Ryder Cup). I got to see the very best players in the world performing at the tops of their games under the most intense kind of pressure. And from both sides. There was extraordinary play on both sides of the ball. Just looking forward to finally getting back into the swing of regular play."

Browne did ride the Ryder Cup momentum and rattled off four straight made cuts in his final four events of the year. The nearly 50-year-old also attended the PGA TOUR National Qualifying Tournament and played well enough to tie for 40th.

Not bad for a player who didn't pick up the game until age 19. In the summer after his freshman year at Occidental College in Los Angeles, the Washington, D.C., native worked at a golf course in Cape Cod. Before long, he was hooked.

"I had a couple of lessons when I was a little guy, but really the first time I really started playing was that summer and I played every day," he told D.J. Gregory earlier this year.

Browne quickly picked it up and turned professional in 1984. He notched his first win of four wins on the Nationwide Tour in 1991 at the Bakersfield Open and quickly followed that up with another win to finish second on the money list that season and earn his PGA TOUR card. He spent the next few years alternating between the two tours before earning his first win on the PGA TOUR in 1998.

Though he earned a spot in the Mercedes Championships thanks to that victory, Browne was forced to sit out from August 1998 to mid-February 1999 after undergoing surgery on his left arm in October. He didn't touch his clubs for that entire span and was not allowed to hit more than a small bucket of balls while practicing to return.

Imagine the golfing world's surprise when, just a few weeks later, Browne captured his second PGA TOUR title at the 1999 MasterCard Colonial. The win, which came on his 40th birthday, was the by-product of a final round 66 that included two eagles.

The next few years passed quietly for Browne, who wouldn't win again until the Deutsche Bank Championship in 2005. That same year, Browne fired a 59 in a sectional qualifier to make the U.S. Open, then he shared the first- and second-round at that Open before tying for 23rd. He had 10 other top-25 finishes that season and, as a 46-year-old, wound up 26th on the money list with a two-year exemption.

He was granted a Major Medical Extension for 2008 after missing the first half of 2007 from torn ligaments in his left index finger. When Browne didn't earn enough in 2008 to secure a spot on the PGA TOUR in 2009, he had to attend the final stage of q-school. After the qualifying tournament, though, Browne only gained fully-exempt status on the Nationwide Tour and will have to rely on sponsor's exemptions for the PGA TOUR until he turns 50 in April.

For Browne, who told Gregory that he generally finds one restaurant and eats there every night while in each different city, the Champions Tour will be a chance to find new restaurants in new cities. Plus, as the father of two once joked, he needs to keep his job after earning just $9 million over the course of his career.

"I'll have two kids in college. You bet (I want to join the Champions Tour)," Browne said when asked several years ago.