PINEHURST, N.C. - Maybe it's harder for smarter guys to figure out when to call it quits.

And maybe that explains why Olin Browne is still chasing a golf ball long after his head, a short list of victories (two) and a whole lot of hurt suggested he should be doing something else.

"The older we get, the wiser we get," Browne said Thursday, "more or less."

But Browne was sharp to begin with. The 46-year-old journeyman who is tied for the lead after the first round of the U.S. Open was on track once to become a marine biologist. And an economist, anthropologist, English, Spanish or political science teacher.

This was back in the early 1980s, when Browne was wearing out the carpeting in the career counseling office at Occidental College and working part-time in the bag room of a golf club nearby. He had played no more than a half-dozen or so rounds in his life. So naturally, he settled on golf.

"I had eight or nine majors, a couple of them twice. I ended up majoring in anthropology," he said, "which has all kinds of value out here on tour."

Browne once delivered a victory speech in Spanish, which is even more impressive considering how rarely he reaches the podium. That was at a minor-league tour stop in Monterrey, Mexico, a dozen years ago.

"You could have heard a pin drop when this gringo started talking," he said. "They didn't see it coming."

Nobody saw Browne coming here, either, but maybe we should have. Fellow touring pro and part-time philosopher Peter Jacobsen once said, only half-jokingly, the slums of Chicago were full of guys who held a share of the first-round lead at the Open. After all, in 104 previous Opens, the first-round leader went on to win just 19 times.

Yet Browne fits perfectly inside the tradition of wannabes and never-weres who bubble to the top of the leaderboard on the opening day of what, after all, is a grueling four-day exam. Because of the punitive course setup and the lightning-fast greens, anybody can get hot - once. Which happens to be a fair summation not just of Browne's last two weeks, but his 21-year career.

He shot 73 in his first round of U.S. Open qualifying at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md., and asked U.S. Golf Association officials about the proper procedures for withdrawing. He figured he would need 62 the second day just to qualify. And, after losing his PGA Tour exempt status each of the two previous seasons, Browne has been scrambling for tournament invites and desperately wanted to start well in the Booz Allen Classic at the end of that week.

Somehow he talked himself into showing up for the second round of qualifying, "to play nine and see how it went."

He shot 30 on the front, birdied No. 16 and holed a wedge from 111 yards at No. 17. At the par-5 18th Browne rolled in a second straight eagle from 25 feet. Then he signed for a magical 59.

"There's absolutely no correlation between qualifying for the Open and playing in the Open," Browne said, "other than it gets you here."

Except that it also marks one of the few times he's been able to sustain some momentum. He turned pro in 1984 and didn't make it onto the PGA Tour for eight years. He reached the finals at tour qualifying schools 10 times, and wound up qualifying exactly once. The two times Browne actually played his way up from the Nike Tour to the bigs, he dropped back down the next season.

His career is littered with promising beginnings derailed by injuries or an inability to play solid golf for long enough.

Browne kept his PGA Tour card for seven years, but lost it in 2003 by shooting 75 in the final round of the final tournament. In 2004, he all but had the card back, but missed the cut at the last two tournaments. His two wins on tour came within a year of each other - the last at the Colonial in 1999, on Browne's 40th birthday - and seem all the more remarkable because he spent most of the months between them unable to pick up a golf club or hit anything but a small bucket of balls on the practice range.

"I'm on a first-name basis with a lot of orthopedic surgeons," Browne said.

What Browne has going for him, perhaps more than anything else, is perspective. Given his late start, he reasons he's closer to the middle of his career than the end, and he was smart enough to marry a lawyer whose income helps keep the wolves from the door.

"I found something I really love to do and I'm very grateful for that. I've had moderate success, enough anyway to keep me in it and enough not to kill my sense of desire, which is important," he said, "because this game will do that to you."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.