Dechambeau

How good was Dechambeau compared with everyone else? In the pressure of the final group in the final round, he shot a nearly flawless 3-under-par 67 — the only round under par by anyone at Winged Foot on Sunday.

“It’s not about hitting fairways,” said Xander Schauffele, who finished fifth. “It’s about hitting on the correct side of the hole and hitting it far so you can kind of hit a wedge instead of a 6 iron out of the rough.”

That’s not the kind of game that usually wins U.S. Opens, which are set up to reward players who drive it in the fairway and keep their approaches below the hole. But that formula may be outdated now that a player who set about to change the parameters of the game did just that in winning the national championship.

“I don’t really know what to say because that’s just the complete opposite of what you think a U.S. Open champion does,” said Mcilroy, the 2011 champion. “Look, he’s found a way to do it. Whether that’s good or bad for the game, I don’t know. But it’s not the way I saw this golf course being played or this tournament being played. It’s kind of hard to really wrap my head around it.”

Turns out bulking up isn’t just good on Sundays in the NFL. It works on the golf course, too.

“This is validation on steroids for Bryson and the second-guessers are going to have to rethink,” NBC analyst Paul Azinger said as Dechambeau made his way up the 18th fairway with a six-shot lead.

That there’s a distance debate in golf is nothing new, of course. It’s been ongoing since John Daly overwhelmed the field to win the PGA Championship in 1991 and intensified with the arrival of Tiger Woods, who was so long that they lengthened Augusta National to try and make things fairer for everyone else.

The USGA, as well as the Royal & Ancient in Europe, are so concerned about the impact of long hitting on the game that they issued a report earlier this year that said, in part, that advances in distance off the tee were threatening to “undermine the core principle that the challenge of golf is about needing to demonstrate a broad range of skills to be successful.”

Now they may have to update that report. It was done before Dechambeau added 40 pounds during the pandemic break and began swinging at every tee shot like Barry Bonds used to swing at baseballs.

It was impressive to some, worrying to others. The fact is, golf has always evolved, from the days of hickory shafted clubs and gutta percha balls to today’s big-headed drivers and balls that fly far and stop fast. But the beatdown Dechambeau gave Winged Foot might have been a tipping point in the debate over just how far the evolution of the game is allowed to go.

“It’s tough to rein in athleticism,” Dechambeau said. “We’re always going to be trying to get fitter, stronger, more athletic. Tiger inspired this whole generation to do this, and we’re going to keep going after it. I don’t think it’s going to stop.

“Will they rein it back? I’m sure. I’m sure something might happen. But I don’t know what it will be. I just know that length is always going to be an advantage.”

That figures to be the case in November at the Masters, where Dechambeau is already the betting favorite. And the distance debate will get even louder if he starts adding major championships almost as quickly as he gained his recent pounds.

His first major championship came in relative silence, applauded by only a smattering of workers and officials off the 18th green at Winged Foot.

But the way he won it sent a loud message through the sport.