Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Tests negative, but DeChambeau feeling positively awful
Dizzy spell, errant shots plague betting favorite
AUGUSTA, Ga. — After struggling to make the cut at the Masters, Bryson DeChambeau said he’s just not feeling well.
He’s not sure what the problem is, but he did get tested for COVID-19 again just to make sure that wasn’t the issue.
It came back negative. DeChambeau, who was the betting favorite to win the Masters after a dominating triumph at the U.S. Open, did manage to shoot a 3-under 69 in the third round Saturday.
But that left him a whopping 13 shots behind leader Dustin Johnson, with no chance of claiming a second major title in 2020.
“Not good, to say the least,” DeChambeau said after finishing up his second round Saturday morning, before heading back out to play the third. “As I kept going through the round, I started getting a little dizzy. I don’t know what was going on, a little something weird.”
DeChambeau played 12 holes in the second round Friday before play was halted by darkness. He then got tested to make sure he didn’t have the illness caused by the coronavirus.
“I had to do the right thing and make sure there was nothing more serious than that,” he said. “I don’t know what it is or what happened, but these past couple days, I’ve felt really, really odd and just not 100 percent.”
DeChambeau, who is capable of hitting drives approaching 400 yards, raised eyebrows when he said he considered par at Augusta National to be 67 instead of 72.
The bulked-up player hasn’t lived up his boasts.
DeChambeau had a double-bogey 7 at the 13th hole on Thursday when he hit his ball into some azalea bushes. He took another 7 on Friday at No. 3 — a triple bogey at the shortest par-4 on the course — when his ball plugged deeply in the wet rough and couldn’t be found within the three-minute time limit.
“I just feel kind of dull and numb out there, just not fully aware of everything, and making some silly, silly mistakes for sure,” DeChambeau said.
A gallery guard found the lost ball about 10 minutes after DeChambeau took a penalty and hit another tee shot, which seemed to shake the player even more.
“I mean, it definitely throws you for a loop when the guy goes and gives you the ball on the fourth tee box, ‘Oh, I found it,’ ” DeChambeau said. “You know, I struggle whenever we know it’s in that area and it’s all wet and it’s a plugged lie, guaranteed.
“I’m like, ‘Well, I know it’s in this area that’s plugged, so I would think I would get some relief,’ but clearly not. The three minutes was up, so I took a penalty and went back to the tee box and proceeded to hit in the same spot and had a really bad lie after that.”
DeChambeau was clearly shaken by the first two rounds.
“It just seems like there’s a lot of things going not in the right way,” he said. “I’ve certainly played worse golf than this and won golf tournaments. So, you know, it’s one of those things where it’s golf. You can’t control everything as much as you try.”
DeChambeau plans to finish the Masters, but he’ll get more extensive testing after he returns home.
“Every time I’d bend over and come back up, I’d like lose my stance a little bit,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got to go and do some bloodwork and get checked out and figure out what’s going on for this offseason.”