Brandon Robinson Thompson graduated from what is now called the HotelPlanner Tour in 2024 to earn his DP World Tour stripes in 2025.
It didn’t take him long to make his presence felt with his shiny new tour card at the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship, as he steamed to an 11-under-par 61 in the first round.
It was a course record, but he also nearly joined the DP World Tour record books with just the second 59 in the circuit’s history. He needed a birdie on the par-4 18th hole at Royal GC to join Oliver Fisher in the most exclusive of clubs, but it wasn’t to be.
A bogey denied Robinson Thompson an even more memorable day, but the Englishman was forced to settle for the best score in his professional career and what he believes is his first double-digit score under par in professional completion as well.
“I’d say a lot of today stemmed from last Friday. Although I missed the cut by a couple last week, my Friday round, if you looked at the round, I made eight birdies and I got into a nice flow and rhythm,” Robinson Thompson told NCG. “That’s what’s crazy, you know. A lot of people look at it from the outside and they’re quite shocked or they go, ‘How did you go from that to that?’
“For us, we know when it feels good and we know when it’s close, we know. It’s hard to go out and predict a course-record 11-under, but you know when it feels good. It did feel good coming away from last week. Would I say it was on the cards this morning as it was raining?
“Literally, it was raining this morning on the way to the course, and there were predicted super-high winds, so I’m not sure I quite saw it at about 30 minutes before my tee time, but once you get going, you never know.”
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Robinson Thompson has played three times on the DP World Tour so far in the 2024/2025 season. He came tied for 42nd in Mauritius but missed the cut in the other two events. But as he said, eight birdies in the second round of the Ras Al Khaimah Championship suggested there was more to come in the coming weeks, and hopefully months.
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Who is Brandon Robinson Thompson?
Robinson Thompson attended the University of South Carolina on a scholarship. There, he was a two-time All-American and majored in marketing. He told NCG that his time in South Carolina made his US Open debut at Pinehurst in 2024 even more special.
He won on the EuroPro Tour in 2022 and he also competed on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica. He is also a previous winner on the MENA Tour. Robinson Thompson is a two-time winner on the Clutch Tour, one time which came at The County Garage BMW NI Open in 2023 at Galgorm. This earned him eight HotelPlanner Tour starts and a DP World Tour start.
He turned professional in 2017. In 2020, he made his debut on the DP World Tour at the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters. He is a two-time winner of the HotelPlanner Tour, which was formerly known as the Challenge Tour.
His first win on the HotelPlanner Tour came in July 2023 at the Irish Challenge at the K Club and his second win came at the Farmfoods Scottish Challenge at Newmachar Golf Club in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
So far, Robinson Thompson has played in two majors. He qualified for the 2023 Open at Royal Liverpool through Final Qualifying at Royal Porthcawl when he was ranked 883rd in the world. He came out right 59th.
Then in 2024, Robinson Thompson qualified for the US Open at Pinehurst by qualifying at Walton Heath. His two-round score of 10-under put him at the top of the leaderboard with Grant Forrest and Richard Mansell.
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