KEY POINTS:
Mark Brown's fiancee, Helen Quirke, was concerned about flying out to Kuala Lumpur this week.
Friends half-joked that her arrival while Brown was preparing for the Malaysian Open might lead to an unwelcome change in his fortunes - So far he has scored consecutive tournament wins in India, including at the European tour-sanctioned Johnnie Walker Classic.
As it turned out, Quirke, a former TAB bookie who now employs her lawyer skills at the Rugby Players' Association, had no need to worry about Brown's attitude to her arrival.
Besides, hard work rather than mind games had provided the foundation for the 33-year-old's charge up the world rankings to a scarcely believable 64.
After clearing the mind via a three-year break, Brown has mounted a professional golf comeback by thoroughly preparing the body. He even eschews the modern penchant for the mumbo jumbo of sports psychology. What a sensible and alarmingly rare chap.
Brown's has been the come-from-nowhere New Zealand sports story of the year so far, even though in his younger days many believed that he was indeed a golfer heading somewhere.
Brown is itching to test his ability against the bigger names. But second-time-around promise is certainly in store.
The Johnnie Walker triumph was a career-changing moment, winning Brown vital exemption status on the European and Australian tours until 2010. It also propelled him to a healthy lead in the Asian tour standings. If he hangs on to that for the year, it will mean automatic entry into the next British Open.
There was also a slim chance of a quick and timely entry into the world's top 50 and thus a place in this year's Masters at Augusta. A longshot dream, perhaps, but still representative of a remarkable re-birth for a golfer who had quit touring in despair five years ago.
Brown, from Petone, was an amateur youth star whose initial foray into the world of professional golf turned into the school of hard knocks from which he rang the home-time bell on himself.
His golf experiences began at the age of 7, alongside his father Jimmy at the Shandon course. He also played rugby and cricket as a kid. While he plays down his ability in these, spies report that he was a junior club batting star, compiling many big scores with many singles. As for rugby, Brown was "the skinny little boy standing at first five". Golf was therefore the winner.
His name was never in the major golf headlines of the time, which were reserved for the 1992 Eisenhower Trophy winners and particularly Michael Campbell and Philip Tataurangi. But Brown was a serious talent in the trail.
He had the ability, had been part of his local Shandon club's highly rated coaching schemes, and mingled with and was influenced by stars on the rise such as Campbell and Stephen Scahill.
His potential was confirmed in 1994 by a fourth individual placing in the Eisenhower - the world amateur team champs - where he finished a shot ahead of a certain Tiger Woods.
Yet Brown became better know as a self-professed failure when he publicly declared both his aim to be the World No 1 and a yearly income of $600 on a TV advertisement for his chief backers AMP.
The figure actually referred to Brown's winnings on a Canadian tour.
"I remember the Sports Cafe TV host Marc Ellis suggesting that I'd got myself into a pretty useful tax bracket," Brown says, recalling the advertisement.
"A bit of licence was taken in the ad. I was never completely broke, but I wasn't exactly rolling in it either.
"I had no qualms about doing it. AMP were such a good supporter of mine in the first few years. It was a good promotion for them and myself. It's a pity they were sponsoring such a dud golfer at the time."
The dud is now heading the Asian Tour standings, is seventh on the European order of merit, has just been named European Tour player of the month, might sneak into this year's Masters field, should qualify for the World Golf Championships in Florida, and has figured in the same newspaper sentences as Woods by virtue of winning consecutive tournaments.
Yet until last year, the question around Mark Brown was where did it all go wrong. Heading into 2003, with his father dying from cancer and after nearly a decade of struggling on the Australian and Canadian tours, Brown decided to head home to Wellington to teach golf, working as a development officer.
"Twenty was a tough age to turn professional," he says from Kuala Lumpur.
"I'd not settled, I hadn't experienced a lot of things, I hadn't played a lot of golf courses, and the age thing is so crucial.
"I just felt that I lost my way early on and didn't have a lot of confidence in my ability. I still don't really - I've never had as much belief as you should or as much as some people have.
"I was just struggling all the way through and I was lucky to have a few decent sponsorships - otherwise I would have gone bust pretty quickly.
"It was just a grind and I never played well in Australia. I played a smallish tour in Canada and played okay, finishing second in one tournament. But it was just hard, week to week knowing that you weren't quite good enough.
"I remember playing a couple of times when I was hitting the ball so badly that it was almost embarrassing. That's a pretty low point, when you're playing with other guys on tour and you are playing that badly.
"I had no consistency, especially off the tee. A huge part of professional golf is being able to drive the ball well."
"To me it was a waste of time to keep playing if you weren't going to crack it."
So he took a break. It was his coach Mal Tongue - whose most famous protege was Campbell - who encouraged the comeback. After a three-year hiatus during which he played little and took stock, Brown returned with a promising hiss, winning the New Zealand order of merit, qualifying for the Asian tour, then finishing 15th with four top-10 finishes last year.
It gave him a belief he might win on the Asian tour this year, but says to do so in a European co-sanctioned event came as a "complete shock".
Brown roared past Japan's Taichiro Kiyota at the course near Delhi, overcoming a poor start in the last round to win a Johnnie Walker trophy etched with the names Woods, Els, Faldo, Norman, Couples and Campbell.
He played the final nine in a blur of calm brilliance, overcoming a four-shot deficit by stringing four birdies together and hitting a zone where he didn't want the tournament to stop.
The $600 man now finds that he has the word million attached to his name, which is a nice problem but not one that he is overly happy about.
"Why is it that every time a golfer plays well, the first thing that is mentioned is how much he made?" says Brown.
"You never see `Roger Federer lost the Australian Open semifinal and made $500,000.
"Why is it with golf ... it's a bit of a gripe of mine. I've just read an internet story which says `Brown bags half a million'. It blows me away. We've been busting our gut for 12 years and we're only just starting to make a profit now.
"I've got $100,000 a year in expenses, a caddy to pay, coaches to pay, and that's the first thing that comes out. It kind of grates with me.
"I'd love to see a few other sports people pay for their own hotel rooms and flights - it would give a few of them a shock."
He spent the middle of this week tucked away in his Kuala Lumpur hotel room, trying to regather himself for the tournament at hand, and contemplating the sudden change of schedule that lies ahead. He's already talked to Campbell, seeking tips as he sets about re-organising his career.
When he and Quirke return to Auckland, there will be more meetings to assess the future. He is also planning a visit to Wellington, where his mother Anne and friends live, to watch the Hurricanes. Then it will be back into the fray.
Brown says golfers are pessimists, knowing that a loss of form is always stalking up a parallel fairway. But his father - who passed away in early 2003 - insisted that perseverance pays off, and Brown is starting to believe it.
"This has been great for me and the people who have supported me," Brown says.
"I made the most of what starts I had early on and it snowballed. I guess that's what sport is all about, taking your chances. The big thing is I practise harder than I used to. The fact is, I've now got a game that is a lot better and will stand up under pressure.
"I'm not much of a sports psychologist fan. If your technique is good enough, it will hold up. During my first time as a pro, I had none of that. Winning a couple of tournaments has given me confidence that I can be half decent at this game."
KIWI'S GOOD RUN CONTINUES
New Zealand golfer Mark Brown's good form continued in Malaysia with a strong under par round but compatriot Michael Campbell's 84 has left him languishing at the bottom of the leaderboard.
Campbell had a solid start to his opening round of the Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpur and was even with the card until the seventh hole before bogeying or double bogeying eight of the remaining 11 holes.
The 2005 US Open winner double bogeyed the par four eighth and ninth holes and did the same on the 16th and 17th.
Coupled with four bogeys on the back nine, Campbell left the course in last place - six shots behind the next highest scorer.
Brown was tied for eighth with a six under 66 - four shots behind leader, England's Nick Dougherty.
- NZPA
