Dan Brown's Open week ends with pride and disappointment

Shane Lowry, the former Open champion, was in the process of turning a one-man procession into a wide-open tournament as he went from eight-under-par stood on the eighth tee to one-under par 11 holes later.

Up ahead, Justin Rose and Billy Horschel were turning their caps backwards and forwards to counter the drips from their peaks, as they jovially revelled in the conditions to keep their Open hopes alive.

Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No 1 golfer a few groups further ahead, looked like he needed a roaring log fire to go and sit beside as he battled the conditions.

Xander Schauffele just went about his business, a sense of what he was to produce in a flawless final round on Sunday, perhaps inevitable.

All the while the 29-year-old major championship debutant kept his head about him, unfazed by the howling winds and driving rain, and unbowed by the calibre of company he was keeping at the top of the Open Championship leaderboard.

On a couple of occasions he sat alone atop the yellow scoreboards dotted around the course, after a birdie at the 12th and again at the par-five 16th.

If he could have just had a bit of luck on those closing two holes he would have had a lead in the Open to sleep on just three rounds into his major championship career.

Instead, he found a bunker on the par-three 17th and even worse on the final hole, the edge of the bunker which forced him to stand in the sand to bunt his second shot up the fairway. He would eventually record a double bogey, dropping out of the lead and the final group and into a six-way tie in second place, one behind Horschel.

“That finish is why it’s a little bit deflating as I’ve ground it out today and through not hitting a bad golf shot I’ve dropped three,” lamented Brown.

It set up a final-round pairing that neatly summed up just how far he has come at Troon this week – the world’s 272nd-ranked golfer playing alongside two-time Masters champion and a six-time winner in America this year, Scheffler.

After bouncing back from a bogey on the first with a birdie on the second, gravity finally caught up with Brown as the man from Romanby Golf Club bogeyed four of the next five holes to fall off the first page of a leaderboard he had occupied since his rousing back nine in the dwindling light of the first-round’s play on Thursday night.

Still, what a week it has been for the unassuming Northallerton professional.

Six missed cuts, a withdrawal from a tournament through injury and 61st place at the Scottish Open seven days earlier were no indicators of what was to come.

But what we have seen over the course of the four days shows a man in form and now comfortable at the top table.

He just need to make sure this is no flash in the pan.

Brown has shown in the past he knows how to win.

He made 24 of 28 cuts in his maiden season on the DP World Tour last year, but it was a trip to America to play in an event co-sanctioned with the PGA Tour this time last year that acted as the springboard for his season.

A seventh-place finish at the Barbasol Championship gave him a belief in his game that he converted into a breakthrough win at the ISPS Handa World Invitational in County Antrim the following month, going wire-to-wire to record a dominant win with fellow Yorkshireman Alex Fitzpatrick his closest challenger.

And as he has shown this week, with the nerveless speeds he hits putts and how little time he spends over the ball second guessing himself, he has the game for the big occasion.

He should even be back at the Open next year when it heads across the Irish Sea to Royal Portrush, because his closing 74 meant he finished in a tie for 10th on level pal.

“If you would have told me that at the start of the week, obviously I would have been very pleased,” said Brown.

"It's a little bit -- I wanted to do better and be higher up the board.

"At the minute it's probably a little bit more disappointment, but when I reflect on it, I'll be obviously very pleased I would have thought. But just the front nine just didn't quite get it going all week really.

“It's quite big. I had like seven weeks out with an injury with my knee not long ago, and then I haven't really got firing since. So it's nice to have a good result under my belt again.

"Friends and family have been big this week, obviously. It's been quite overwhelming, the amount of messages I've had. It’ll be nice to see them all and reflect on a good week.”

Asked if trying to secure a top-10 finish to earn a return to the Open was playing on his mind on the back nine, one he played in level par with a birdie on 15 and a bogey on 18, Brown said: “Yeah, it was a little bit towards the back nine.

"Obviously I took myself out of it quite early. So that was playing on my mind a little bit. But still didn't really affect me in terms of hitting shots and what have you.”