The Crushers captain shot a seven-under 63 on Saturday to launch himself up to eight-under overall and in T-4 on the leaderboard. That has him lurking just four strokes behind his old rival Koepka.

The pair underwent a back-and-forth verbal feud in 2021, but have since buried the hatchet — as evidenced by the pat on the back as DeChambeau gave Koepka  after the latter’s press conference on Saturday evening in Jeddah.

“It was about shooting low today, as low as I could,” DeChambeau said after that pat on the back. “I knew Brooks and a few others were going to play well, and I needed to get it deep today.  I did that, but I would have liked to have finish off with a birdie or two coming in, have a better chance. But being four back as it is, this golf course, you can definitely do it.”

The Crushers are the trending team at the minute, coming off a win in Chicago and leading at 22-under ahead of the final round in Jeddah ahead of next week’s Team Championship final in Miami, and are second in the standings behind last year’s winners, the 4 Aces. DeChambeau has a simple plan to claim the crown this year.

“I just want the boys [Paul. Casey, Anirban Lahiri and Charles Howell III] to keep playing the way they are,” he said. “They’re a special bunch of guys, and they know how to get the job done when it matters.

“This year is going to be a lot different than last year, I believe, if we bring this form into next week. Very excited for the guys and seeing what we can do next week in Miami.”

DeChambeau was very clear on team-before-individual success.

“It’s about the team,” he insisted. “I definitely want to win the team championship [in Jeddah] and be first in the points list going to Miami. We’re that good of a team, and my boys have worked really hard this year. If we play well tomorrow, we definitely deserve to be up in that No. 1 spot. I’m definitely focused on that, focused on playing well tomorrow individually for the Crushers, and just going to give it my all.”

A win over Koepka probably wouldn’t go amiss either, though …

Main image: Bryson DeChambeau. LIV Golf

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Within the scorecard holder which sits in my back pocket every time I play golf is a piece of paper. On that piece of paper are 13 different numbers, one for each club in my bag. It’s been there since last year, after I went through a relatively painstaking process of hitting 20 shots with each club, on a launch monitor, and averaging out the distances for every club in my bag (minus my putter, of course).

I’ve come to depend on it. I’d probably surrender half the clubs in my bag before that piece of paper. Knowing my exact yardages with every club has legitimately helped me — until last week.

Sneaking in a few rounds in the neighbouring links courses around Royal Liverpool with some fellow Golf Digest staffers (we call these “research rounds”), it immediately became clear how worthless that piece of paper was on those courses. For the first time since I jotted those numbers down, I played golf never bothering to consider it.

So much golf, from the PGA Tour et al. is a game of execution. Picking a spot, and trying to hit it to that number. Like throwing a dart at the centre of a dartboard, your success or failure starts and ends with you alone.

Links golf is different. A certain wind will send a driver across a fairway, rather than down it. Or float it high and away into nowhere. Links courses can turn a 9-iron into a 5-iron, and a 5-iron into the best sand wedge in your bag.

Mastering most golf courses means imposing your will as a golfer on to the layout. Links golf requires a meshing with what’s in front of you, in that current moment. Sometimes that means putting the driver away for good, as Tiger Woods did when he won at Royal Liverpool in 2006. Other times, it may mean calling upon a shot you may have never played before. Never does it require scribbling numbers on to a piece of paper.

“There are several different options to play each golf hole,” Brian Harman said of Royal Liverpool. “If you’re into the wind you can hit way more club and send it up in the air to try to stop it, or you can try to finesse something lower. I enjoy the variety of shots you have to hit.”

There’s a famous quote from the legendary British golf writer, Bernard Darwin, that the elements at Hoylake make Royal Liverpool a “breeder of great champions”. The history certainly backs it up, from Walter Hagan to Bobby Jones, to Peter Thompson, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

Brian Harman isn’t the name you’d expect to follow on that list. But standing in the rain as the 36 year-old hoisted the claret jug, Hoylake had done it again. Brian Harman was the man who forsook the formulas and mastered his feel instead. It’s the only way to conquer the elements of links golf. And in doing so Harman proved he is, undoubtedly, a great champion.

1. Good putting is boring putting

There was a lot of talk about putting at Royal Liverpool. Scottie Scheffler couldn’t make putts. Neither could Rory McIlroy, or Tommy Fleetwood. Brian Harman could, so he won.
Harman was, indeed, a tremendous putter at Royal Liverpool. But what, exactly, does that mean?
When most of us think about “good putting”, we think of draining long putts, and walking in 20-footers for birdie. Harman’s stats tell a different story. He gained 11.57 strokes on the green last week, but the longest putt he dropped all week was just over 30 feet. Rory McIlroy dropped two putts longer than that over those same 72 holes. So did Scheffler, and 29 other players.
Harman’s elite putting performance instead was predicated on making the boring, extraordinary. He didn’t have a three putt. He missed just one putt inside 10 feet, and none inside of five feet. When you do that, no one else can stand a chance.
“I expect to make those putts,” he said.
The problem the rest of us have is that we expect to make the wrong putts. Sure, it’s fun to drop 15 and 20 footers, but missing those doesn’t really matter, in the scheme of things. Making more of those putts five and 10 feet. Missing those are the killer of good rounds, and the key to avoiding bad ones.
Good putting doesn’t mean dropping bombs. It means making lots of little ones.

Travis Smyth. The Open Twitter

2. Know how to ditch spin in a hurry

Every time a golfer hits a ball, it flies into the air with backspin. It’s backspin that keeps the ball in the air. Of course, that’s not what you want when the wind starts gusting, as it did early during Open Championship week.
Killing lots of spin in a hurry strikes me as a pretty essential skill, for all golfers. This week, most pros I talked to said they generally settle on a combination of taking more club, swinging softer, and teeing the ball slightly higher (the ball being propped up in the rough has the same effect).
“When you’re trying to hit a low one, you are coming in quite steep. It’s easier off a tee, so you’re not catching the ground instantly at impact, which will create spin, which into the wind you don’t want to do,” said Travis Smyth after his hole-in-one on the 17th hole. “I took an extra club and chipped it.”
Simple enough, and something to keep in mind the next time you find yourself facing a stiff breeze.

3. Distance varies way more than you think

Of course, reducing your spin only mitigates the effects of an into wind shot. Ultimately, if you’re into wind, the ball is going to go shorter. Same with if it’s raining. Watching the pros slog it out on Sunday made me realise that the rest of us have a woeful under-appreciation for how much the rain, or wind, will affect our shots.
The reality is a player could be capable of hitting it 320 yards one day, but put that same player in certain elements, and they may struggle to crack 250 yards — as Rory McIlroy proved.

Rory's drive on the first hole in calm weather yesterday:

316 yards, 132 yards in

Rory's drive on the first hole in pouring rain today:

250 yards, 208 yards in pic.twitter.com/WMeOLASphr

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) July 23, 2023

“If it’s raining a little heavier, an iron could easily go 20 yards shorter,” Sepp Straka, who finished T-2.
Sure, into the wind, the rest of us will take an extra club. Maybe two. Really, there should be time when we take five extra clubs, or expect a 70-yard decrease on a given drive. It’s uncomfortable to think about, but it’s half the battle when playing in the elements. And it’s something pros don’t think twice about.

4. It’s the external factors that kill you

If you’ve noticed so far, a lot of the things I learnt have to do with external factors. All the stuff that’s out there. There are lots of things out there, especially during Opens, and it’s easy to let them screw us up.
Even for pros.
For Emiliano Grillo, it was the wind on the driving range. It was blowing left-to-right most days. Perfect to counteract his draw. Then he stands up on the second hole, and for the first time, finds the wind blowing right-to-left toward out of bounds. That baby draw which was flying straight on the range is about to turn into a hook.
“It’s so hard to make the switch,” he said. “Standing on the second hole, I bailed out right both days. I probably hit my ball 100 yards right.”
For Max Homa, it was the hassle of moving everything around in the rain.
“The umbrella to the glove to the yardage book to the umbrella, it just gets tiring holding the dang thing and shuffling it around,” he said after I asked him the most difficult part of playing in the rain. “You just feel very out of sorts. It takes a few holes to get going.”
Yet both those players had their best Open Championship finish ever. As did Ben An, who says it was always unlucky bounces that would often send his rounds into a mental, downhill spiral. He said things only started to change recently, when he accepted those will happen and there’s nothing he’ll be able to do about it. The central skill in golf isn’t avoiding them altogether, but sucking them up and moving on when they do happen.
“I realised I usually get beaten by the golf course, not by other players,” he says. “I still have to work very hard on it, but I don’t lose my mind as much as I did before … It’s not perfect, but you have to learn to let it go, like what are you going to do next.”

5. Go short or long of trouble, but never around

The third hole is a quirky layout where an old racetrack used to be. A wall signifying out of bounds cuts in from the right at about 250 yards. During the previous two Opens at Royal Liverpool, players would hit a no-brainer iron miles short of it. This year, for the first time, players had introduced a third strategy: Sending a driver over the out of bounds, over the fairway, into the rough. Amateur Christo Lamprecht, who won the silver medal for low amateur after leading through 18 hole, opted for that strategy on day one. He birdied the hole.

 

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“It makes sense,” Bryson DeChambeau says. “You can take the OB out of play every time that way.”
While some players opted for ‘over it’ strategy the first two days, they abandoned it once the weekend rain came. But this was an interesting insight how they think about avoiding absolute, no-go areas like out of bounds: When trying to avoid a hazard, you need to either hit something short that has no chance of going into the hazard long, or something so long that it has no chance of catching the hazard short. Don’t flirt with it, and don’t try going around it.
On a slightly separate note, many proponents of a golf ball rollback would point to something like this as evidence the golf ball does need to get rolled back. I’m not unconvinced by that argument, but in this case, I’m just not sure that would tell the entire story.
Being able to go over everything does give this hole different shot options, which is the guiding principle for so much of the rollback debate. And because that ‘go for it’ option only requires a carry of about 260 yards, it’s a feat most long hitters could accomplish even with a persimmon driver — especially with the right wind.
Rather, this strategy exists now and not before because golfers in 2023 understand the statistical value of being in the rough, if it means being closer to the hole.
“There is typically something bad in play, constantly, so you might as well get it as close to the hole as you can,” says Scott Fawcett, the founder of Decade Golf. “Especially in major championship golf.”
Intentionally trying to hit your ball in the rough is simply not an idea which made sense until we had data that proved why it can. Wherever you may land on the rollback debate, that genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

6. Fully commit to a feeling that works

As often happens with these articles, I’m quickly approaching my word limit, so a quick note on how much I love that Adrian Otegui put this rehearsal practice backswing move into play because he liked the feeling of it in a practice round. He noticed his backswing getting too short. This helped him commit to the feeling of a full turn, in the final seconds it was time to swing.

Instead of waggles, Adrián Otaegui makes a full backswing while he’s over the ball. Then stops, resets, and swings.

“It’s new. It’s a feeling I had in practice rounds. I quite like the feeling, used it on the driving range, then introduced it into my routine.”

Practice vs real pic.twitter.com/QEBWIDHnLd

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) July 21, 2023

A good reminder, that it doesn’t matter how something looks if it helps your swing feels.

7. Trust the process

I find it increasingly weird how, whenever Rory McIlroy gets into major contention and doesn’t win, pundits immediately reach for some mental platitude. It’s always some variation of Rory not being able to handle the pressure, or wanting it too much, or not wanting it enough, or lacking the killer instinct.
But what, exactly, does that mean?
Rory isn’t standing over a golf ball, thinking about how much making this putt would mean to him. None of these guys are, and they shouldn’t be, either. They may feel nervous, but that’s natural and normal. Even when they feel the nerves, they’re not trying to do anything different. “Process” was the word Rory McIlroy kept returning to during his Hoylake victory in 2014. It’s the same process he’s focusing on in 2023.
The truth is, the whole ‘he can’t handle the heat’ mental stuff is just a thing that people say who don’t want to look at the real reasons, so they make up catchy ones instead.
As far as I can see it, in Rory’s case, he’s a very, very good player (obviously). The key reason McIlroy is so good is because of his golf swing. He’s not the biggest guy, but he can hit his ball enormous distances because of how dynamic his golf swing is. But that dynamism also leads to occasional streaky ball-striking patches, especially off the tee. That’s what we saw during the early part of this season. That’s why to some outsiders, Rory can run hot and cold from round to round. It’s worth the trade.
Other times, he’ll struggle with consistent contact on his putting — that’s what happened on Saturday. Every player has different tendencies which pop up from time to time. This is Rory’s.

 

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Occasionally Rory also has a tendency, I think, to play too safe at certain times. Some variation of all of the above can explain most of McIlroy’s recent major near-misses.
The only way to win majors in the modern era is to fire on all cylinders. The fields are just too deep not to, as Brian Harman proved this week. Rory is one of the few exceptions: A player good enough to get himself into contention, even when he’s not firing on all cylinders. Just as Jack Nicklaus did, whose record doesn’t just include 18 major wins, but 19 other major top threes.
It’s not a bad thing, so save the mental game platitudes about Rory. Any minute now things will align, and Rory will get his major. Then many more after that.

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While preparing to hit his tee shot on the 18th hole during the first round, Pigman heard a “FORE!” call and ducked. But it didn’t keep a golf ball from hitting him on his right arm. Pigman looked stunned for a few seconds before shaking it off and getting back into his pre-shot routine. He found out moments later that it was Bryson DeChambeau who had clocked him. Have a look:

Bryson Dechambeau just absolutely drilled Kenny Pigman with a drive.

When asked he said…Guy shouldn’t have been standing there ? #pgachampionship pic.twitter.com/rdtpft10Dv

— Ryley E Fitzsimmons (@ryleyfitz) May 18, 2023

That could have been much worse, but thankfully, Pigman seems OK. Although he found a fairway bunker with the ensuing tee shot and made bogey.

DeChambeau, who was playing the 17th hole, made bogey as well after the wayward approach from Oak Hill’s thick rough. But a bounce-back birdie on 18 had him make the turn at one-under. And for those wondering, DeChambeau, who has been criticised for not calling “FORE!” in the past, came over to make sure the club pro was OK. Pigman was gracious in his response:

 

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A slimmed-down DeChambeau is back at the PGA Championship after missing the event last year at Southern Hills while recovering from a wrist surgery. But the loss of bulk doesn’t seem to have sapped him of any power as both his good shots and misses still go a long way. Just ask Kenny Pigman. Hey, at least it wasn’t a drive (as suggested in the first tweet above — it was a second shot).

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The former US Open champ, who’s spent most of the past 18 months in the golf wilderness in more ways than one, turned in a four-under 66 to take the clubhouse lead at Oak Hill — some of the afternoon wave are still to finish due to the early frost delay.

“I mean, it’s a fantastic round of golf,” DeChambeau said. “It’s a prestigious place. Very difficult golf course. As I was looking at it throughout the week, I’m like, ‘Man, I don’t know how shooting under par is even possible out here on some of the golf holes.’ But, luckily, I was able to play some really good golf, hit a lot of fairways, did my job and made some putts.”

In a sense we should have known this was coming. Oak Hill was designed by Donald Ross, the architect DeChambeau apologised to (despite, you know, Ross passing away in 1948) at the 2020 Rocket Mortgage Classic for beating Detroit Golf Club into submission. Moreover, a common Oak Hill comp from players this week has been Winged Foot, where DeChambeau won the US Open in a style that raised the question of where golf was going that left the sport at large in dazed resignation.

“It is, right, but it is more nuanced,” DeChambeau said of the Oak Hill-Winged Foot parallels. “I’ve said that a couple times now where you can’t just run it up every single green. There’s some forced carries, right. It’s different, a different test and a test that I’m willing take on. If you’re driving it well and hitting your irons well, you can play out here, but it can get pretty nasty pretty quick if you’re not hitting it straight.”

DeChambeau also came to Western New York with a revived sense of brashness, exclaiming that his new diet has him back on track to live, well, a long time. “A year and a half ago I was like: ‘Oh, man, that thing that I talked about living to 120, I don’t know if I can get there now with the weight I put on,’” DeChambeau said last week. “A little different now.”

Bryson DeChambeau. Kevin C Cox

Just for context, DeChambeau is 29. Meaning, those final years would be (putting numbers into calculator) 91 years from now. That is a special type of confidence.

It was a confidence that was on display on Thursday afternoon. With the course playing long and mean, most of the field did their best to withstand Oak Hill’s punches, doing just enough to stay up and survive until Day 2. DeChambeau was the rare competitor who fought back, racking up six birdies on the round. Even without the bulk, the power endures (leading the field in SG/off-the-tee and distance), and his muscles — which remain many — helped blast out from a rough that is not so much high as it is plentiful and thick.

Conversely, a lot has happened since the days when DeChambeau was seen as a paradigm shifter and though “Bryson” and “break” remained intertwined, the connotation and context have changed.

Figuratively, he’s attempting to disrupt not how the game is played but how it is run at the professional level, moving to LIV Golf. As one of its marquee attractions, DeChambeau has railed against the establishment, sounding off on the Official World Golf Ranking and delivering a pizza joint analogy that linguists are still trying to decipher. He also lent his name to an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour and until last week was the last remaining player attached to the complaint.

But, literally speaking, DeChambeau suffered a break in his hand in the winter of 2022, a fracture so bad he played against doctor’s wishes at the 2022 Masters (en route to a quick exit) with the injury ultimately sidelining him at last year’s PGA Championship at Southern Hills. When he returned his performance lacked consistency and vigour, and a good weekend at the Open Championship (leading to a T-8) was the lone bright spot in a sea of darkness. The struggles have carried into 2023, missing the weekend in the only two events with cuts — the Saudi International and Masters — he’s played in, and he is ranked 28th out of 48 players in LIV Golf’s individual season standings halfway through its season.

Between LIV’s failure to resonate with the public and his uninspiring play, the paradigm shifter had become somewhat of an afterthought.

Which, frankly, is a bummer. He may be, ahem, a divisive figure, yet DeChambeau is never vanilla, and golf is better with some colour. Whatever criticisms aimed at those joining LIV, DeChambeau has not channelled the exuberant riches into early retirement, changing coaches and retooling his swing to return to the results he knows he can still achieve.

To get to where he wants to go, he had to ditch what spurred him to such heights. Deciding the weight gain had not only run its course but was being an active deterrent to his game and life, DeChambeau embraced a diet that cut down on calories and wheat and dairy, believing whatever issues would come in the short term would pay off in the long. Maybe that’s why he stayed steadfast through the struggles, through the doubts, believing his direction was true.

“Each day I had always this glimmer of hope that I could get back to it,” DeChambeau said. “It was never like I’ve got nothing, I’m done. I could have easily been like, you know what, I had a great career, I’m good. But I didn’t because I knew I had it in me to do it every single day, and I worked as hard as I could every single day. There were times I doubted myself, severe doubts, but never got to a point where I was done. Maybe for like a day I was done, I’m just going to take a day off, whatever and the next day, I came back, all right. I think I got something.”

Yes, the eccentricities that engulf him at all times are still here, evidenced by DeChambeau plunking a PGA club pro with an errant shot and a sponsor’s name misspelled on his hat. Those oddities are part of his story, and the story is richer for them. It is only one round, and against the output of the past two years that round is the outlier. DeChambeau is well aware. “It’s been a while,” DeChambeau said. “So nice to come back and start to finally figure out what’s going on with my golf swing. As I’ve told you guys before, I’ve struggled with my driving. You see me out there on the range. That’s something I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be out there all night, but I’ve had to to figure out what I did so well in 2018 and what made me so successful then. I feel like I’m catching on and trending that direction.”

Then again, DeChambeau has always been an outlier. Through 18 holes, the outlier is back in the fold.

The post PGA Championship 2023: Bryson DeChambeau is back appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio Garcia have been interviewed by the United States Department of Justice, along with lawyers from the PGA Tour, according to a report from the New York Times.

The PGA Tour remains involved in a probe by the Justice Department that was spurred by the advent of LIV Golf, as the new circuit has accused the tour of anti-competitive behaviour and joined an antitrust lawsuit first filed by LIV golfers Mickelson and DeChambeau in US District Court last August. In July, players’ agents received inquiries from the DOJ’s antitrust division regarding laws about participating in non-tour events and the tour’s actions related to LIV.

The PGA Tour has countersued LIV, asserting that the case is not about unfair competition — “if anyone is competing unfairly, it is LIV, not the tour” — and contends the LIV-backed lawsuit is a “cynical effort to avoid competition and to freeride off of the tour’s investment in the development of professional golf.”

The probe has also spread to include other golf entities, including Augusta National Golf Club, the USGA and PGA of America, which is hosting this week’s PGA Championship that includes Mickelson and DeChambeau in its field.

Mickelson, DeChambeau and Garcia have all been suspended from the PGA Tour following their moves to the new league.

This is not the first time the tour has faced antitrust claims. In the early 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission concluded a four-year investigation into whether the tour violated antitrust laws — partially due to a rule stipulating permission for a conflicting-event release, which the tour has invoked this year to suspend those who have defected to LIV Golf. At the time, the FTC recommended federal action, but none was ultimately taken, a circumstance credited to the work of then-PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem (a lawyer himself who worked in President Jimmy Carter’s administration) and the tour’s lobbying mastery. Coincidentally, this clashed with LIV Golf CEO Greg Norman’s first try to challenge the PGA Tour through his attempt to launch the World Tour.

LIV Golf recently lost a legal battle against the DP World Tour, as a UK arbitration panel upheld the DP World Tour’s right to suspend and fine its members for joining LIV.

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The two had quite a bromance going a couple years ago, bonding over their love of putting in hard work — both on the course and in the gym — and perhaps even a bit of physics. That included a pairing — albeit an unsuccessful one — at the 2018 Ryder Cup.

But things have changed since DeChambeau went to LIV Golf last year. And the 2020 US Open champ confirmed with Golfweek’s Adam Schupak that Woods has cut off communication with him.

“Yeah, I’m not going to throw anyone under the bus,” DeChambeau told Schupak ahead of this week’s LIV event in Orlando. “He’s been a great friend. I texted him on his birthday.”

No text back after a birthday wish is tough. Then again, that also has shades of Ian Poulter complaining about the DP World Tour not tweeting him and other LIV golfers a happy birthday earlier this year. And to be fair, Tiger probably gets a lot of texts on his birthday.

“It is what it is,” DeChambeau continued. “He has his viewpoints on it and thinks we’re potentially hurting his record. If anything, nobody is ever going to touch his record. That’s just it, that’s the bottom line. There’s a chance to grow the game even more and I hope one day he’ll see the vision that we all have out here.”

Woods has made his anti-LIV thoughts well known in the past year. And even his agent, Mark Steinberg, recently dropped Thomas Pieters as a client as soon as he left the PGA Tour for the new league. In other words, don’t expect a Tiger-Bryson fuzzy friends reunion when the two cross paths next week at Augusta National.

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By Christopher Powers
Bryson DeChambeau is a notorious complicator of matters, most often after a poor round. It’s never just “I played bad,” but rather, the equation was off, there were too many variables he was not adequately prepared for, his quadratus lumborum wasn’t working, etc., etc.

But after a one-over 71 in which he hit just four of 14 fairways, DeChambeau took a page out of the book of his good buddy Brooks Koepka, summing up the day in a short but sweet manner.

“I said it yesterday or a couple days ago. If I can hit it down the middle of the fairway, that’s great,” he said. “But with the driver right now, the driver sucks.”

The driver sucks. Rarely, if ever, does DeChambeau go the facts-only route, which was extremely refreshing to hear after watching him attempt his “hit-it/find-it/ hack-it-out” strategy at Royal St George’s. He simply said what we all saw and what we we’re all thinking—the driver sucks.

That’s not to say DeChambeau can’t turn it around or his strategy can’t work in this event. Like he said, if he straightens the driver out, there is no reason he can’t put up a low one on Friday and thrust himself back into the mix. As Louis Oosthuizen’s opening-round 64 proved, there are plenty of birdies to be had. DeChambeau has also overcome bad first-round performances in majors plenty of times before, like when he shot a five-under 67 following a Thursday 76 at the 2021 Masters, or when he bounced back with a Friday 69 after a first-round 73 at Torrey Pines last month.

For that to happen, though, the driver needs to stop sucking, which he, of course, expanded on as only he can.

“It’s not a good face for me and we’re still trying to figure out how to make it good on the mis-hits. I’m living on the razor’s edge, like I’ve told people for a long time. When I did get it outside of the fairway, like in the first cut and what not, I catch jumpers out of there and I couldn’t control my wedges.

“It’s literally the physics and the way that they build heads now. It’s not the right design, unfortunately, and we’ve been trying to fix it, just haven’t had the results yet.”

Ahhh, that’s more like it.

UPDATE: 2:30 p.m. ET — Cobra tour operations manager Ben Schomin, who caddied for DeChambeau at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, responded to DeChambeau’s complaint in an interview with Golfweek. “Everybody is bending over backwards. We’ve got multiple guys in R&D who are CAD’ing (computer-aided design) this and CAD-ing that, trying to get this and that into the pipeline faster. (Bryson) knows it,” Schomin said. “It’s just really, really painful when he says something that stupid.”

Schomin also said, “It’s like an 8-year-old that gets mad at you. They might fly off the handle and say, ‘I hate you.’ But then you go. ‘Whoa, no you don’t.’ We know as adults that they really don’t mean that and I know that if I got him cornered right now and said, ‘What the hell did you say that for,’ he would say that he was mad. He didn’t really mean to say it that harshly. He knows how much everyone bends over backwards for him, but it’s still not cool.”

UPDATE: 6:15 p.m. ET — DeChambeau took to social media later on Friday to apologise for his comments.

 

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By Daniel Rapaport
It’s tricky to pinpoint the exact origin of the Bryson Experiment, but your best bet would be a small gathering with reporters on Oct. 7, 2019. DeChambeau had just turned 26, he sat inside the top 10 of the World Ranking, and he’d just polished off a final-round 63 to finish tied for fourth in the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. All was fine and dandy. His figure didn’t look much different from the scribes questioning him—or, in simpler terms, he was smaller—and his calling cards were a set of single-length irons, a scientific approach to golf and a goofy hat. Bryson 1.0, so to speak.

That all changed, of course, with a comprehensive transformation of his body. DeChambeau teased his impending metamorphosis that Sunday in Las Vegas, which marked his last event before a six-week break.

“I’m going to come back next year and look like a different person,” he said. “You’re going to see some pretty big changes in my body, which is going to be a good thing. Going to be hitting it a lot further.”

Golf’s Great Bulk Up had begun. DeChambeau did indeed deliver on his vow; he turned up to the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship the following January hitting the ball comical distances. Despite a missed cut that week, DeChambeau quickly calibrated his new arsenal and finished T-5 or better in his last three starts before the world changed.

The beef-up reached a new, adrenaline-addled gear during the COVID lockdown. He’d post shirtless pictures and videos of “speed sessions” in his coach’s living room. There were launch-monitor readings north of 400 yards and peculiar day-in the-life style vlogs. Golf eventually returned, and DeChambeau’s first win as broad-shouldered behemoth followed soon after at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. The host venue that week was Detroit Golf Club, a golden-age-era Donald Ross design rendered toothless by his power.

“I think there’s a lot of bunkers that are around like 290 [yards], so hopefully I’ll be able to clear those and take those out of play,” he said early that week before shooting 23 under. “So, sorry, Mr. Ross, but, you know, it is what it is.”

Two months later, he overpowered another classic layout under a much brighter spotlight. His seismic six-shot victory at Winged Foot, perhaps the most U.S. Open-ey of all U.S. Open courses, prompted earnest discussions over whether he’d irreversibly altered the DNA of elite golf.

There is, however, one frontier the Bryson Experiment has not yet encountered: links golf. Last year’s Open Championship fell victim to the pandemic, and DeChambeau has not played in the United Kingdom since 2019. Next Thursday’s first round of the Open Championship at Royal St. George’s will present our first look at a fascinating dichotomy: DeChambeau’s distinctly modern game against the sport’s ancient venues. And he will confront this very different test of golf without the man who carried his bag during each of his eight PGA Tour victories.

Bryson 1.0 played his share of links golf. He featured prominently at the 2015 Walker Cup at Royal Lytham & St Annes, going 2-0-1 to emerge as one of the Americans’ only bright spots in a 19½-16½ loss to Great Britain & Ireland.

Warren Little/R&A
Bryson DeChambeau hits a tee shot during the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie.

“He was, by a mile, the best player on the American team,” says John Huggan, who covered those matches for Golf Digest. “He was impressive playing links golf then. Obviously, that was a very different body, a very different game. But he certainly knows how to do it.”

He knows how, but he simply hasn’t gotten many reps, and those since Lytham have not been pretty. DeChambeau qualified for his first Open Championship in 2017 by winning his first PGA Tour event, the John Deere Classic, the week before. Perhaps reeling from an emotionally taxing week, he posted 76-77 and beat just four players at Royal Birkdale. The following year, DeChambeau opted to defend his John Deere title rather than tune up for links golf at the Scottish Open. He did make the weekend at Carnoustie, finishing 12 shots back of winner Francesco Molinari in a tie for 51st, but the performance was overshadowed by a practice-range meltdown caught on Golf Channel cameras. He came into the 2019 Open in ideal form, with a T-8 at the Travelers and a T-2 at the 3M Open in his last two starts before heading across the pond … and missing the cut by four.

His only other tournament on a links-type course came at the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne, which played as firm and fiery as you’ll ever see. U.S. captain Tiger Woods opted to sit DeChambeau twice during the team sessions that week, and he finished with an 0-1-1 record.

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By Daniel Rapaport
The U.S. Open took a turn for the chaotic around 3 p.m. local time on Sunday at Torrey Pines. A star-studded leader board began to thin out rapidly, and a number of very strange things seemed to happen in quick succession. Bryson DeChambeau’s back-nine 44, which saw him drop from the solo lead to outside the top 25, served as the perfect case study.

“Unfortunately, just had bad break after bad break happen,” DeChambeau said after the round. “It is what it is. It’s golf, it’s life… I just didn’t have full confidence in my swing and I got some unlucky lies down the stretch.”

Allow us to explain. At five under total, the defending champion held the solo lead after 10 holes of his final round. He’d gone more than 30 holes without a bogey, and it all began to feel eerily similar to his performance last year at Winged Foot. He was bombing driver everywhere, missing a bunch of fairways but finding a way to save par when out of position. But a first misstep came at 11, when he wasn’t able to overcome a fanned tee shot on the par 3. Bogey. At 12, a three-putt from the front of the green resulted in another bogey.

Something to keep an eye on today – we’ve been seeing players slip on the 13th tee most of the week but even more today. The tee is so close to the water and the back foot has been slipping out from under players on the transition.

— Shane Bacon (@shanebacon) June 20, 2021

Still, with everyone around him making bogeys, DeChambeau was very much still in it as he stepped to the par-5 13th. He could easily reach it in two with his length, but he’d first need to find the fairway—a proposition made much more difficult given the condition of that teebox. NBC’s Shane Bacon had warned of this possibility earlier in the day, pointing out in a tweet that “we’ve been seeing players slip on the 13th tee most of the week but even more today. The tee is so close to the water and the back foot has been slipping out from under players on the transition.”

That’s exactly what happened to DeChambeau. His right foot gave out in transition, and it was enough to ruin the sequence of his powerful move. The drive went way right, and things only got weirder from there.

STREAKER ALERT!

THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

[Credit @beemerpga] pic.twitter.com/7jUwjS9LPp

— bunkered (@BunkeredOnline) June 20, 2021

With DeChambeau preparing to play his second, a scantily clad and “unruly” fan ran into the 13th fairway, with a club in his hand, and proceeded to hit a few golf shots before security tackled him.

Not exactly a ……….. Stella lie for Bryson pic.twitter.com/cSSZE03tQi

— Will Brinson (@WillBrinson) June 20, 2021

I’d pay an insane amount of money for that to have a been a Michelob Ultra box

— max homa (@maxhoma23) June 20, 2021

Once play resumed, DeChambeau’s third shot eventually found a bunker and he caught his fourth thin, sending it bounding over the green and finishing directly next to an empty Stella Artois box. Predictably, the internet collectively wished it would’ve been a different beer brand—the one that sponsors his arch-enemy Brooks Koepka.

DeChambeau got a free drop from there but couldn’t do much with his fourth, sending it to the front of the green. From there, a two-putt for double bogey that killed his chances of a successful title defense.

Would you believe us if we said it got worse from there? Because it got much, much worse from there. Four holes later, DeChambeau smothered his tee shot into the hazard left of 17. He took a drop and played his third just short of the green, only to cold-shank his fourth shot into Arizona. His fifth came up short again, this sixth found the green, and he two-putted for a quadruple-bogey 8. In the end, it added up to an eight-over 44 on the back-nine and a 77 that saw him drop all the way to T-26.

The lesson? Golf is very hard, and 72 holes is a very long time.

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By Joel Beall
SAN DIEGO — Monday’s coastal fog was gone but the air remained heavy Tuesday, filled with the sighs of a sport aggrieved. Oh how we wanted it. We don’t ask for much. Just give us this. The USGA may have tried to deliver it, too, if certain folks are to be believed. But there will be no early pairing of Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, and that, in the parlance of the nearby La Jolla Shore Beach surfers, is a bummer.

A bummer in the moment, at least. But it is for the best. The truth is we know not the consequences of our desires.

We promise, this is not a life-gives-you-lemons, make-lemonade spin. This is recognising our want—to see the boiling feud between Bryson and Brooks spill out on, and possibly over, the Pacific cliffs of Torrey Pines Thursday and Friday—was myopic. You do not put the heavyweight championship on the undercard. Billy Joel does not open with “Piano Man.” The superhero faces the villain at the end of the movie. (We have no idea which golfer fills which role in that scenario.)

We were blinded by instant gratification. We were willing to trade in two years of buildup and animosity and theatre for 36 holes that would have ended this little production.

There would have been intrigue regarding the prospect of an initial handshake. Reporters would have noted a tense and unfriendly atmosphere. Maybe the cameras catch an eye-roll or two and Brooks makes a snarky tweet afterwards. But, more than likely, it would have went on without controversy, cooling the bickering between the beefy men. Any doubters need to look at the last “feud” that rolled through Torrey Pines, when Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed were paired together during the third round of the 2019 Farmers Insurance Open. It was the former dynamic duo’s first pairing since Reed threw Spieth under the bus following the 2018 Ryder Cup, and for all the hype surrounding the matchup it was defused before it began thanks to a hug and hasn’t been discussed since.

Part of that pacification can be chalked up to the one-sided nature of the Spieth-Reed spat. Part of it was because there wasn’t much on the line, the pair nine strokes back of the Farmers lead. It didn’t matter, which would have largely been the case with Brooks and Bryson in Rounds 1 and 2. Because on Thursdays and Fridays, even at major championships, players are just one of 156. Their foes are not each other but the course. These days can be memorable but they are mostly fleeting. The main goal of Thursday and Friday is to make it to Saturday and have a chance on Sunday. It’s a simple concept and one without flare.

Sundays are a different equation. Every shot, every decision and every misstep matters. It is where legacies are built, crumbled, complicated. A player battles not just the course but those near him on the board. This is where the fireworks happen, their brightness forever burned into our memories.

Brooks and Bryson are sitting on a mountain of explosives, but a Thursday and Friday pairing would have transformed that pile into Roman candles and sparklers.

It’s a pile that added another layer Tuesday morning. Former PGA Tour pro Brad Faxon said DeChambeau balked at an opportunity to be paired with Koepka. DeChambeau’s agent, the USGA and Koepka himself denied Faxon’s comments, and Faxon’s takes have been proven wrong in the very recent past. Unfortunately for DeChambeau, perception is not always parallel with the truth, and he now has to face the perception that he’s ducking Koepka, which he was already trying to combat Tuesday afternoon.

“I would be OK with that,” DeChambeau said about the Koepka pairing, “but there was never really anything that went through me.”

Vivien Killilea

It would be easy to dismiss that as DeChambeau trying to reframe the narrative, especially since he’s mostly been on the business end of it and has tried to call a truce. Make no mistake, there was a bit of that at play when the reigning U.S. Open champ was asked if he feels the feud is crossing the line. “Shoot, to be honest, people saying Brooksy’s name out there, I love it,” DeChambeau said. “I think it’s hilarious.” We’re not sure the fans tossed from the gallery at the Memorial and the PGA at Bryson’s behest share that perspective.

Still, DeChambeau did not shy away from how this squabble has resonated beyond the game, and asserted he’s enjoying it as well. “I personally love it. I think that, as time goes on, I hope on the weekend we can play against each other and compete,” DeChambeau said. “I think it would be fun and would be great for the game.”

See, DeChambeau gets it. Before this thing can truly fly it has to stay in the cocoon for a couple more days.

The odds of this happening organically this weekend are slim. But this is a major championship, one of those special tournaments where the ridiculous is routine. The letdown is real right now, but who knows what the Pacific fog will ultimately bring. For posterity, there was a hint, or more appropriately, a sign, of what that could be.

Paces from where DeChambeau stood Tuesday afternoon was a grounds crew installing a cable to the driving range. One of the crew members was wearing a Carl Spackler hat. And it brought to mind this wisdom from the Dalai Lama, which—while not as poetic as “Gunga galunga … gunga, gunga-lagunga”—feels very apropos:

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”

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