DeChambeau wins Open
Bryson DeChambeau leaves Matthew Wolff behind for U.S. Open title.
Call him a mad scientist in a tam o’shanter cap. Call him a game-changer in golf. Any description of Bryson DeChambeau now starts with U.S. Open champion.
In a breathtaking performance Sunday at Winged Foot, on a course so demanding no one else broke par, DeChambeau blasted away with his driver and had short irons from the ankle-deep rough on his way to a 3-under 67.
When his 7-foot par putt fell on the 18th, DeChambeau thrust those two powerful arms into the air. This was validation that his idea to add 40 pounds of mass, to produce an incredible amount of speed and power, would lead to moments like this.
Two shots behind Matthew Wolff going into the final round, he passed him in five holes, pulled away to start the back nine and wound up winning by six shots.
Wolff, trying to become the first player since Francis Ouimet in 1913 to win the U.S. Open in his debut, closed with a 75.
Just under a year ago, DeChambeau closed out his 2019 season in Las Vegas and said, “I’m going to come back next year and look like a different person.”
He lived up to his word among skeptics who wondered if the smash factor would work at a major, especially one at Winged Foot where the keeping it in the short grass was tantamount. DeChambeau pledged to keep hitting it as far as he could, even if that meant being in the rough.
And it worked. He hit only three fairways Saturday, six Sunday, and 23 for the week.
Louis Oosthuizen birdied the 18th to finish alone in third.
In the five previous U.S. Opens at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York, only two out of 750 competitors ever broke par over 72 holes, and that was in the same year of 1984 when Fuzzy Zoeller and Greg Norman finished at 4-under 276.
DeChambeau finished at 6-under 274, a score no one saw coming.