As PGA begins, let’s hear it for public golf courses.
Bulkedup DeChambeau hits aweinspiring drives
Bryson DeChambeau would be having an easier time of it right now were he a cartoon superhero.
Guys like Popeye the Sailor Man, the Incredible Hulk and Superman morph instantly from regularsized men into muscular superheroes, perform astounding feats and receive universal love and awe.
DeChambeau gained 50 pounds, seemingly overnight, and performs Hulkedup heroics on golf courses, but the reaction is mixed. Along with cheers from afar (no galleries, remember), he hears accusing whispers and sees snarky tweets
from rivals.
The world’s seventhranked golfer, who tees off Thursday afternoon as one of the favorites in the PGA Championship at Harding Park, has become the most talkedabout golfer, and maybe the most talkedabout athlete.
Here’s the story: DeChambeau, 26, gained 50 pounds of muscle over the past 10 months or so, 20 of those pounds added during golf ’s threemonth pandemic hiatus. He has gained about 20 yards off the tee and is the longest driver on the Tour (324.4 yards). He won the Rocket Mortgage Classic last month with cartoonish drives.
“It was crazy, it was nuts,” Rory McIlroy said of DeChambeau’s tee shots. “He hit it like 375 into the wind.”
DeChambeau, 6foot1 and now 240 pounds, didn’t turn green during his growth spurt, but he did expand his shirt size from M to XL, and he’s straining those XLs. The last athlete to pack on that much muscle that quickly and produce such dramatic results swinging a stick was Barry Bonds in 2001. Bonds, 61, puffed up to 238 (or so) pounds.
Another thing those two men have in common is that neither has flunked a PED test. But, you know, people talk. And they troll.
At the Rocket Mortgage tourney, DeChambeau had an angry moment in a bunker. After putting out, he stopped to berate at length a CBS TV camera operator, because ...
“He was literally watching me the whole entire way up after getting out of the bunker, walking up next to the green,” DeChambeau explained later. “And I was just like, ‘Sir, what is the need to watch me that long?’ ”
Later, Brooks Koepka tweeted a GIF of Kenny Powers, the fictional baseball player on HBO’s “Eastbound & Down.” In the GIF, Powers is furiously charging a TV cameraman. The crawl caption reads, “Kenny Powers confronts steroid accusations.” Subtle fellow, that Koepka. So if you’re a big fan of tension and drama, pray for a Sunday pairing of Koepka and DeChambeau, dealing with lovely Harding Park for golf ’s first major title of the year.
And if you’re a fan of Hulky sports feats, keep an eye on DeChambeau (but don’t let him see you watching). Harding has been set up by the PGA to punish wayward drives, but DeChambeau, No. 112 in drive accuracy (60.4% of fairways hit) this season, said
Tuesday he has no plans to dial it back.
“As the rough stands right now, I think the risk is definitely worth the reward,” he said in a quick TV interview. “If you hit it into the rough, I still think you can get to the front edge of the green . ... For me, as of right now, I’m going to hit it out there as far as I can, and hopefully wedge in and make those putts.”
DeChambeau, who grew up near Fresno, is attacking golf courses with brute science. He was a physics major at SMU, and is said to be obsessed with applying physics to golf. His irons have shafts of identical lengths. He has been known to soak golf balls in Epsom salts to determine their center of gravity. His weightlifting is unconventional and scientific, using isolation exercises to train individual muscles. His swing (single plane) and his grip (oversize grips, club held in palms, not fingers) are unconventional.
“I am an artist,” he has said. “I love creating things, and that’s ultimately why I’ve become so scientific.”
His tee power has become golf ’s nuclear weapon. Referring to bunkers and hazards designed to punish long drivers, he said, “I wanted to make those obsolete.”
Old Golf wisdom was that muscle building limits flexibility and increases injury risk, especially to the back (see: Tiger Woods). New Golf laughs at Old Golf. DeChambeau’s swing speed and ball speed have increased dramatically, and debilitating back pains have disappeared.
“Now I’ve got some meat ... and some size on me,” he said in a magazine interview. “And that’s what’s really allowed me to feel like I can be stable over the golf ball. And, from being stable, produce more force . ... I can rotate harder and punch more under the ball.”
That’s all good, but were DeChambeau’s gains gained in a kosher manner? His trainer, Greg Roskopf, in an interview with ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski, went right at the steroid issue. After stressing that the 50pound gain came in the wake of two years of preparation, Roskopf, who also works for the Denver Broncos, said:
“But under normal circumstances, you’d say the only way somebody could make those changes is by taking steroids. And I can guarantee you, that’s not been part of his process and not even a thought in his head. It’s just been part of the evolution of him being involved in this program and being able to tolerate the forces that his body’s been able to tolerate.
And those changes in strength have been amazing, but it’s all natural from this end of it.”
In fairness to DeChambeau, he is a victim of two circumstances beyond his control.
Suspicions are enhanced because the PGA Tour was laughably late to the drugtesting party, seeming to take the absurd position that golfers are above cheating. The NFL began PED testing in 1987, MLB in 2003, the PGA Tour in 2008, with no blood testing until the 2018 season. In the first eight years of testing, just three noname Tour players were busted for PEDs.
Since baseball’s BondsSosaMcGwire era, every muscledup athlete is under suspicion.
Do the fingerpointers and trollers bother DeChambeau? That’s unknown. He did only one quickie TV interview in the runup to this tourney. Golf writer Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times combed the transcripts of every DeChambeau news conference over the past four weeks and found nary a doping/testing question.
Whether he likes it or not, DeChambeau no longer flies under the radar. Like that CBS cameraman, you can’t take your eyes off him.
“I am an artist. I love creating things, and that’s ultimately why I’ve become so scientific.”
Bryson DeChambeau, on his physical transformation