Rory admits game went south as he fell into Bryson distance trap
AUGUSTA, Ga.
Rory McIlory stepped to the fifth tee at Austin Country Club last month in the WGC Match Play having just three-putted from 18 feet. He swung his trusted driver and watched the little white ball turn left like a heat-seeking missile before disappearing into a stand of trees.
The ball clicked off the cart path and bounded high in the air, sailing over a fence of a neighborhood home and — splash — landing in a swimming pool.
It sank.
Sort of like his game.
Ian Poulter eliminated McIlroy in the match with five holes to go, the most lopsided loss by the former world No. 1 and four-time major champion in a decade. In his last seven tour starts, he has no top-five finishes and two missed cuts.
That one of golf ’s most money swings went broke so quickly — and remains a construction zone as McIlroy chases the only major title eluding him this week at the Masters — is a surprise. That he admitted why it did is an even bigger one.
It was an extraordinary confession, made last month after shooting 79-75 and missing the cut at The Players Championship in Florida.
“Probably the swing issues and where it all stems from, probably like October last year,” McIlroy, already one of the longest hitters on tour, told stunned media, “doing a little bit of speed training, started getting sucked into that stuff, swing got flat, long and too rotational. Obviously, I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn’t a good thing, so I’m sort of fighting to get back out of that.”
Then he added this: “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t anything to do with what Bryson did at the U.S. Open. I think a lot of people saw that and were like, whoa.” Bryson.
One word.
That’s Bryon DeChambeau, golf ’s Mad Scientist who is revolutionizing the game with his pumped-up physique and 5-degree driver. He won the U.S. Open at supposedly impregnable Winged Foot by a staggering six strokes, but it might have been an ordinary tour stop earlier in the year, when they were paired together, that stoked McIlroy’s
infatuation. “He hit a couple drives that Harry (his caddie) and I just looked at each other,” McIlroy said, “and we're like, ‘Holy (bleep), that was unbelievable.' ”
It's not so much what DeChambeau is doing to golf balls, then. It's what he's doing to golfers, sending them down the same rabbit holes, but at 5-foot-10, 160 pounds instead of 6-1, 240 (or whatever he's up to these days).
“I wasn't trying to change anybody else's game,” DeChambeau said here this week, almost sheepishly. “I was just trying to play the best golf I could. I knew there would be people (who would) be influenced. I didn't think it would be Rory. I think he's a pretty smart, talented individual that knows how to play the game potentially better than me.
“I mean, I'm still going down numerous rabbit holes, and I will never stop, not only to win golf tournaments but to definitely win this tournament.”
At the most recent Masters in November, he experimented with a 48-inch driver and several aggressive lines off tees, finishing tied for 34th, 18 strokes behind champion Dustin Johnson's record 20 under. This week, he has a new Cobra RadSpeed Prototype driver head that was added to the U.S. Golf Association's conforming list on Monday; it has a thicker face and reduced toe radius for tighter dispersion when the ball is leaving the club at 200-plus mph.
He has put on a daily show at the range this week, reminiscent of Mark McGwire in batting practice, blasting drives into the humid afternoon air every 10 seconds as part of his “speed work,” one after another, 330, 350, 380. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. The ball-picking tractor at Augusta National had to make a special pass at the far end of the range, past the pine trees, almost to the
azaleas, to retrieve them.
Vijay Singh, once one of the game's longest hitters, leaned on a club to the side and stared in awe. “Told him he wasn't swinging fast enough,” Singh later tweeted sarcastically.
During his practice round Tuesday, DeChambeau pounded two drives cutting the corner on the first hole, experimenting, testing the limits of comprehension.
What else might he try? “I have to think about that,” DeChambeau replied, the wheels turning in his mind, the possibilities endless.
“No. 11, I can squeeze it down the right side pretty far.”
“No. 9, I can take it over the left trees and get into that big expansive grass, which is cool.”
“No. 5, I may hit it over the bunkers.”
“No. 3, try and drive the green this year.”
That's “Flowering Peach,” a par-4, 350 yards,
slightly uphill, with four bunkers guarding the left side of the fairway and trees squeezing in from the right at the usual landing area in what legendary course architect Alister MacKenzie, according to the Masters website, believed “nearly perfect in design.”
Bryson will just blow it over all that.
McIlroy, meanwhile, is busy picking up the pieces of his broken swing, Humpty Dumpty with a 4-iron. He hired a new swing coach and talks about simplifying his motion, about not being so technical, about not letting too many swing thoughts creep into his mind, about this being a “journey” and focusing on the “big picture.”
A few hours after splashing his ball into a pool, he was on the range in Austin. Hit 11 bags of balls.
He talks about “being more in control,” playing “a little more conservatively,” taking an extra club or two and hitting it “softer,”
playing “a few more threequarter shots, not hitting everything flat-out.”
“That's,” he said, “the sort of golfer I want to be going forward.”
He's been noticeably absent from the range when DeChambeau shows up. So have most golfers, leaving the stage to him alone, resisting the urges of temptation.
Also absent is Xander Schauffele, who's paired with McIlroy in today's opening round, who's 5-10 as well.
Schauffele admits it, too. The San Diegan was captivated by DeChambeau's destruction of Winged Foot in September.
“Bryson said he was going to do exactly what he did,” Schauffele said. “He said, ‘Screw everyone, I'm going to put on a bunch of weight, I'm going to hit it further than everybody and I'm going to make the U.S. Open look like a pitch-andputt.' … It's not surprising that people are chasing and
doing the distance thing. I was going to be in that boat floating with everyone.”
Then he got COVID-19 in December.
“Maybe it was a blessing in disguise,” he said. “I couldn't speed train when I was lying in bed.”
Schauffele has gained some distance off the tee in recent months but he understands the limits of human performance, or at least a key figure in his inner circle does. That's the only coach he's ever had. That's also his dad.
“Chasing distance, like Rory said, can be a trap at times,” Schauffele said. “It worked for Bryson, but it's not for everyone. I'm more Rory's stature. I'm not 6-1. You know, Bryson's wrists are probably as thick as my forearms. He can do things that I can't do, and I have to accept that and find my own path.”
One, presumably, that avoids swimming pools.