For better or worse, golf is pumped up

Back in 2001, then-Master chairman Hootie Johnson was sitting in a cart, watching secondround play on the 11th hole with architect Tom Fazio. A ball came bounding past him toward the green on what was then a 455-yard par-4.

Johnson thought the shot had been hit from out of the woods. It wasn't. It was Phil Mickelson's drive.

Incredulous, Hootie ducked inside the ropes to check out the divot, determining it was a mere 94 yards from the hole.

“The time has come,” he told Fazio, and in 2002, the first real lengthening of the course began.

Wonder what the green jackets think now?

Bryson DeChambeau will be setting his sights on overpowering Augusta National come November after destroying Winged Foot with his length. And golf may never be the same.

“I think I'm definitely changing the way people think about the game,” he said. “Now, whether you can do it, that's a whole different situation. There are 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.'”

That's what scares some people who think golf should be more than hitting the ball as hard as you can, no matter the obstacles. Now the debate will be whether DeChambeau's approach is good or bad for the game. Rory McIlroy brought that up after Chambeau turned Winged Foot into a relative pitch and putt.

But this has been the natural progression since Tiger Woods overpowered Augusta National in 1997. He turned golf into an athletic pursuit instead of a game of skill and strategy and chased everyone into the weight room. Brooks Koepka was the first monster Tiger created. Now there is DeChambeau – and a bunch of guys like Dustin Johnson, who hit it a mile, not to mention the big hitters in the pipeline.

“If you look at people that have dominated, it's always been distance,” Xander Schauffele noted. “Obviously, Tiger had the mix of touch and feel and everything. If you look back at he was sort of the first guy to really hit it far with those clubs. Jack hit it really far as well. All the greats hit it pretty far for the most part. It's no longer sort of a touchy-feely game.”

But DeChambeau is bolder than them all. His utter disdain for the sticky five-inch rough at Winged Foot set him apart from the field. They watered the rough Saturday night, but that was a futile defense. DeChambeau hit six of 14 fairways and still hit 11 greens.

He's also more than just a bomber, the way his mind breaks down every situation. He correctly noted that his putting Sunday was “immaculate” and his speed control “incredible.” He's constantly working on his putting, the same way he works on his entire game.

When he had a “pathetic” driving day Saturday, he was on the range in 42-degree weather hitting drivers and 3-woods into the night.

Incredibly, the transformation has been swift. It was a little less than a year ago last October when DeChambeau told everyone his plans for getting bigger and stronger, that he would look like “a different person” after working with trainer Greg Roskopf. When COVID-19 shut down the PGA Tour, he saw it as “an opportunity to do something great — change my lifestyle, make it healthier, make it better. When you have time, when you have that little free moment, don't squander it.

“And I'm not going to stop,” he promised Sunday.

He says he hopes to get up to 245 by the Masters (he was 190 last October). Next week, he said, he'll be experimenting with a 48-inch driver he plans to use at Augusta National.

“We're going to be messing with some head designs and do some amazing with things with Cobra (his club company) to make it feasible to hit these drives maybe 360, 370, maybe even farther. I don't know,” he said.

“My goal in playing golf 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.”

Maybe it's better than Hootie isn't around. The time has come, this time for a new generation of golfers that no course can hold.