For Cullan Brown, there never was a choice about whether he would be a University of Kentucky fan.
“Mom went to UK and graduated there. I grew up in a University of Kentucky house,” said Brown, a former high school state golf champion from Lyon County who will be a freshman on UK’s golf team this year. “We watched basketball and football games. It was just a given if UK was on (TV), you cheered for them. There was no if, and or but about that. It’s just the way it was. I never knew any other way except being a UK fan.”
Yet perhaps his biggest mentor is Caldwell County’s Emma Talley, who grew up a Western Kentucky fan and then became a NCAA champion golfer at Alabama. She’s now having a successful rookie season on the LPGA Tour.
“That friendship happened through golf. We started talking to the Talleys and Emma when I was 10 or 11 and she was in high school. They had seen I had some potential to go forward with golf at a higher level,” Brown said.
“They only live about five miles down the road. They started to mentor us through the path a person needed to take to become a college golfer. They were just a very vital part of us going through that process and we got close during that time. Now we are together all the time. We go out to dinner, have them over, do things together. It’s great.”
Brown, who came to Lexington watch Talley play in the PGA Tour Barbasol Championship Pro-Am last month, started having chipping contests about four years go mainly because it was hard for either one to find a high-level practice partner at home.
“It was a welcome relief to be with somebody who was such good competition,” Brown said.
Talley could not beat Brown in the chipping contests. She won three high school titles, a NCAA title and a U.S. Amateur championship. But she never beat Brown in a chipping contest until recently — and he was practicing with an injured wrist that has limited his playing time the last four months.
“It was a clean sweep until my hand started hurting and then she beat me,” Brown said.
Talley calls Brown her “buddy” and thinks he’ll do well at UK and after that, too.
“He is a great kid, a great friend and he is going to do great at UK,” Talley said. “He can 100 percent be on (the PGA) tour. He has the mind for it. I wish I had his mind. He has the best mind for golf, is a good player and works hard. His ACT score beats me by a lot. He’s really a smart kid, one reason he’s a smart golfer.”
He also has one other talent Talley admires — he can cook.
Brown says he started cooking breakfast items because he “obviously loves eating good food” and thought it couldn’t be that hard to do.
“People cook good food all the time. I figured I would learn how to do it, and did,” Brown said.
Later he started grilling mainly because his high school Future Farmers of America chapter decide to cater its annual banquet for the first time. A Lyon County farmer donated the meat and the FFA advisor asked Brown if he could cook the meat.
“I told her I would try. I read up on grilling, watched the Food Network, made my best effort and it turned out well,” Brown said. “Then we started doing fundraiser cookouts for FFA and would cook for teachers in the school. I got to where I was cooking 5-6 cuts of beef, pork, chicken. I’ve probably cooked a few thousand steaks, pork, chicken breasts. I got pretty proficient at it.”
Not only can he cook, but he developed his own BBQ rub for the brisket he was cooking.
“I looked up recipes and thought I could do better myself,” Brown said. “I figured I could make a better rub myself. I put one together and people liked it.”
They liked it so well that his family markets the BBQ rub locally.
“It’s not a huge market where we sell, but we do well,” Brown said.
Talley says the Browns “always fix me a big fish fry” when she’s home. Brown says his dad is the one who fixes the fish, not him.
“But Cullan is a great cook. Don’t doubt that,” Talley said. “Somebody is going to be lucky (when they marry him). Great golfer, great cook. That’s a pretty hard combination to beat.”
So who wins if Talley and Brown play golf together? Brown says it depends on the day.
“There are days she would edge me and days I might get her. There’s not a significant advantage for either of us,” Brown said.
However, there is a “significant advantage” for him having Talley as a role mode/friend/mentor as he pursues his dream of becoming a professional golfer.
“It has a different level of confidence knowing it can happen because of what Emma has done,” Brown said. “It’s not a far-fetched idea that a small-town western Kentucky kid can go forward and be successful at the national collegiate level and then the professional level. What she has done gives me reassurance that you can do it, too, and that’s a huge confidence boost.”
(STORY BY LARRY VAUGHT)
