DeChambeau brings big swing back
Rivals ready for Cromwell
Bryson DeChambeau whacked and hacked his way through the back nine in the final round of the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in a way that would suggest he has arrived in Cromwell with some mental knots to untie before trying to split the TPC River Highlands fairways with his booming drives.
“I don’t even care,” DeChambeau said Sunday in San Diego after taking a one-shot lead through the turn in an attempt to repeat as our national champion, only to implode down the stretch, finishing 6-over-par for the round, 3-over for the tournament, tied for 26th. “I’ve changed a lot, attitude-wise and everything. It’s frustrating in the moment when it’s happening, but afterwards for me now, I don’t really care as much. I’ve already won it.”
So the most analytical player in golf, the sport’s “Mad Scientist,” a man who parlayed his idiosyncratic view of the game into dedi- cation to a physical transformation with the approach of hitting the ball as far as possible and worrying about the rest later … he’s actually worried about, well, nothing. He’s over it, a collapse at a major that looked and felt strange for the way it played out, even
for the notoriously unforgiving conditions for which the event is known.
“I didn’t get off the rails at all,” DeChambeau said. “It’s golf. People will say I did this or did that. It’s just golf. I’ve had plenty of times where I hit it way worse and won. … I just wasn’t fully confident with the golf swing and just got a little unlucky in the rough and a couple other places.”
He hit poor tee shots. Solid tee shots found divots. There were bad lies along the way. He skulled one out of the sand. He went sideways as his score went up. Bogeybogey-double bogey on holes 11-13. An agonizing 8 on the par-4 17th, the tournament already out of reach, became the exclamation point for the scorecard. He shot 44 on the back nine, 77 on the day.
If DeChambeau is, as he claims, unperturbed by what took place — if there’s peace in chalking it up to golf being golf and bad luck being a pronounced part of it — then maybe he’s mastered yet another phase of the game, perhaps the most important, the mental side, the ability to avoid taking one bad experience to the first tee of the next tournament.
DeChambeau, 27 and ranked No. 6 in the world, is in the Travelers Championship field for the sixth consecutive year since turning professional in 2016, after winning both the NCAA individual championship and the U.S. Amateur championship in 2015. He was just the fifth player to win those titles in the same year and in the years since has been one of a kind on the PGA Tour — so much science, now so much muscle.
Originally from Clovis, Calif., DeChambeau earned a physics degree at SMU. Don’t fool yourself into thinking a field of study becomes irrelevant to a student who goes on to a professional sports career. As a PGA Tour golfer as much as ever, DeChambeau has been fascinated by biomechanics. He has contributed to research studies with doctors on a body’s torque, force and stability.
He solves the Rubik’s Cube. His hobby: speed reading. He is the only player on tour with all his irons the same length, 37½ inches. He once rewrote a physics book because writing things down is another way to retain information.
And he knows that being stronger is a way to hit a golf ball farther. DeChambeau leads the PGA Tour with an average driving distance of 323.5 yards, slightly above his tour-leading average of 322.1 in 2020. He was tied for 34th in 2019, averaging 302.5.
DeChambeau used much of the pandemic to eat steak and potatoes and lift a lot of weights, re-emerging as a hulking face of the game with a very specific playing style.
“I think I’m definitely changing the way people think about the game,” he said after winning the U.S. Open in September. “Now, whether you can do it, that’s a whole different situation. There’s a lot of people that are going to be hitting it far . ... There’s a lot of young guns that are unbelievable players, and I think the next generation that’s coming up into golf hopefully will see this and go, hey, I can do that too.”
DeChambeau has won 10 PGA Tour events in his career, and his results at the Travelers are a small sample to showcase his rise. He finished T-47 in 2016, T-26 in 2017, T-9 in 2018, T-8 in 2019 and T-6 in 2020, when the tournament was held without fans due to COVID-19. He will be one of the biggest draws this week, starting with a 7:45 a.m. tee time on the 10th tee Thursday. DeChambeau will play with Stewart Cink and Patrick Reed.
Brooks Koepka was kept far away. He begins with, Dustin Johnson and Tony Finau, at 1 p.m. from the first tee. BrysonBrooks has become golf’s most entertaining rivalry, both petty and creative with a WWE-type feel to it. Who’s the heel is up to the fans, and DeChambeau has heard more taunting from the galleries as the drama escalates. He hears a lot of “Brooksy!”
“Hey, I love it,” DeChambeau said. “People think that it annoys me. If anything, it just creates a great atmosphere for golf. At first I didn’t really know how to handle it. You’re kind of thrown into a situation. But now I enjoy it. I think it’s great. You’ve got to embrace it. There’s going to be team Bryson, team Brooks out there, and hey, keep it up.”
DeChambeau (6 feet 1, 240 pounds) keeps hitting bombs. To him, contrary to the axiom, driving is for dough. Asked at the PGA Championship in May what category is most important for him to lead in, he said, “Driving, for sure.”
The way DeChambeau sees it, he can manage short irons out of the rough, when it comes to that. He’d rather be hitting his second shot, no matter the lie, from shorter distances than others. It doesn’t always work. It didn’t Sunday at Torrey Pines. But it has been working, with increasing efficiency, the past couple of years.
“I hope I can inspire some people,” he said at the 2020 U.S. Open. “My goal in playing golf and playing this game is to try and figure it out. I’m just trying to figure out this very complex, multivariable game, and multidimensional game as well. It’s very, very difficult. It’s a fun journey for me. I hope that inspires people to say, hey, look, maybe there is a different way to do it. Not everybody has to do it my way. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying in general that there are different ways to do things. If you can find your own way, find your passion — like Arnie said, swing your swing.”