The Open: Sheffield amateur Barclay Brown aiming to follow in the footsteps of fellow Yorkshireman Matt Fitzpatrick

“They used to have a deal in January or February where you’d pay a certain amount to play the three courses and one of them was the Old Course,” he begins.

“I went up with my family. I wasn’t really old enough or knowledgeable enough to appreciate the history of the Old Course to be fair, but I appreciated St Andrews as a whole, I remember absolutely loving being there.

“It was the first time I’d ever had a caddie and that was exciting having someone carrying our bags around for us. I remember it just being a great experience.”

What score did he shoot, I ask.

“Probably into the millions!” he laughs.

The second time he will play the storied Old Course at St Andrews will be next week as a member of the Open Championship field.

Now 21, Brown earned his spot in the 150th Open by virtue of winning the 36-hole final qualifying event at Hollinwell, in Nottinghamshire, last Tuesday.

He arrives at St Andrews on Sunday, will play his first practice round on Monday and tees off alongside the likes of Tiger Woods, Collin Morikawa, Rory McIlroy and Matt Fitzpatrick on an equal competitive footing on Thursday.

“Let’s hope I’m not taking another million shots,” he quips when looking ahead to how he might fare at the Home of Golf.

No fears there, for Brown is one of the rising stars of amateur golf, and this appearance at the most famous event of all is the latest staging post on his journey to what he hopes is the very top.

Indeed, of the four names above – all professional major winners and the biggest names in men’s golf – Brown has followed in the footsteps of two of them.

Firstly, he is a member of and learned the game at Hallamshire Golf Club in Sheffield, just as Fitzpatrick – men’s golf’s most recent major champion after his heroics in the US Open at Brookline – did.

And secondly, Brown is currently on a golf scholarship at Stanford University in Northern California, of which the great Woods is the most famous alumni.

Will he be hunting Tiger out for a practice round at St Andrews this week, a course Woods won two of his three Open Championships at?

“I’m not sure about that, we’ll see,” he says. “Maybe someone from Stanford will be kind enough to connect with him in some way but I’ll leave him alone, he’s a busy man.”

Fitzpatrick is different. Even amid all the whirlwind of his own life-changing victory three weeks ago, the 27-year-old still found time to congratulate his fellow Sheffielder on qualifying for the Open.

“I’m hoping to play a practice round with Matt, he texted me after I qualified at Hollinwell and said he would sort that out for us which is really nice of him,” says Brown.

It is only nine years ago that Fitzpatrick was the wide-eyed teenager from Hallamshire who had qualified for the Open, playing all four rounds at Muirfield and winning the silver medal as the leading amateur.

Later that summer Fitzpatrick became the first Englishman in over a century to win the US Amateur, turned pro the following year and won tournaments on the European Tour at roughly one a year before his major breakthrough at Brookline.

“It would be nice to follow in Matt’s footsteps,” says Brown, for whom the comparisons are obvious, if not necessarily the route he wants to take.

Where Fitzpatrick quit his golf scholarship in the United States to turn professional within a year, Brown intends to take a different path. The clamour for Fitzpatrick to turn pro was loud given all he achieved in his final year as an amateur – and justified given all he has managed in the pro game – but the latest star off the Hallamshire production line wants to stay the course.

“I’m loving it at Stanford, I’m having a really good time, I’ve done three years and I’ve got two more left,” says Brown who is majoring in economics and minoring in international relations.

“It’s a shame it’s flying by, but I want to get my degree, that’s important to me, I really enjoy the classes and the schoolwork and the students I meet.

“I’m in no rush to turn professional, I know my game still needs a lot of work and that’s the best place for me to do it over the next couple of years.”

For all he has achieved in the amateur ranks, Brown still considers his progress to be a slow burn. His Dad was a member at Hallamshire and by the age of five along with his older brother, 18 months Barclay’s senior, they followed their father to the golf course.

“There was a really good junior section at the golf club, and they were kind enough to let us play in the junior competitions before we were members,” Brown remembers.

“I joined when I was eight or nine years old and had a handicap of 37. There’s probably been a slower progression into me really taking it very seriously, but I started wanting to compete instead of just playing from a very early age. I played in my first England event at 11 or 12; I was playing for the England Under-15s team for the first time around 12 or 13. As soon as I got picked for that I started taking it more seriously.”

Brown was a scratch golfer by the age of 14 and attributes his strengths in the game not to a natural talent but to the environment he grew up in at Hallamshire.

“I’ve always been a good chipper and putter and that came from all the juniors we had at the golf club,” explains Brown who went to Birkdale School in Sheffield.

“That’s all we’d do, we didn’t have a big practice ground, so it would be chipping and putting competitions all the time.

“I’d very rarely go to the golf club and not have a competition with a couple of people, and it’s in that short game area where you differentiate yourself from others.

“As far as the long game is concerned I’m still working on that however many years later.”

The prospect of continuing his golfing education in the United States caught his eye when he was 15 and when Stanford offered him the chance, there was no looking back.

“As soon as I got a reply from Stanford I knew that was where I wanted to be and fortunately that panned out when they made me an offer in February 2018,” he continues.

“They’ve got a great facility, a great programme – the assistant (Cole Buck) has been there for as long as I have and is caddying for me next week – they’ve got a great team and it’s a tremendous academic institution which was really important for me. It checked every box.”

The US collegiate system is also turning him into a winner. Anyone who witnessed his performance at Hollinwell, when he took a lead into the second round and never looked like losing it, will have noted the resemblance to the killer instinct of so many young college players who have transitioned into winners on the PGA Tour.

“It’s just the highest level of competition that you can find before turning pro,” Brown says of the collegiate programmes. “It only sits below the PGA Tour Canada, the KornFerry and the PGA Tour.

“Why? Because you’re playing on proper tournament courses week in, week out, practising at some of the best facilities in the world – you are built ready to go.

“They make a big deal out of wins, individually and you also have a chance every week to play as a team. Every time you practice it’s with your team-mates and it’s with your coach and your goal is always to be winning.

“I think if you’re on your own that’s maybe not the case, you’re making your way on certain tours and maybe you’re focusing on making sure you play solid and get a good result.”

It is that mentality that served Brown well at Hollinwell, in the performances that have seen him rise to No 51 in the world amateur rankings, and will serve him well again this week at St Andrews.

“I’m just looking forward to competing, just trying to play all four rounds and finish as high up the leaderboard as I can,” says Brown, who played in the Walker Cup last year. “It’ll be a different challenge for me with a different kind of pressure, so hopefully I’ll be able to manage it.”

Everything that has gone before suggests Barclay Brown will have no problem doing just that.