LIKE ALMOST EVERY FACET OF LIFE, THERE IS NO DEFINITIVE WAY OF WINNING GOLF. SOME WILL BLAST THEIR WAY AROUND A GOLF COURSE, OVERPOWERING IT AND THEIR OPPONENTS BY FIRING EXPLOSIVE, HEAVY ARTILLERY. OTHERS WILL PLAN AND PLOT THEIR WAY, DEFTLY AND STEALTHILY NAVIGATING THEIR WAY AROUND, USING ALL THE MEANS AT THEIR DISPOSAL TO A WINNING SCORE.
BUT IS BRYSON DECHAMBEAU THE START OF THE END OF THE LATTER SPECIES?
As a golf fan or a player, you pays your money and takes your choice, some preferring the subtler approach to the game, others relishing the more muscular angle of attack. Bunker Mentality is an unashamed advocate of mind over body, style over brute force, the cerebral approach compared to the physical attack, but others, quite legitimately, may prefer raw power over patience.
But the bulking-up of US star Bryson DeChambeau and the additional power and distance he generates, has now split the game into two schools of thought; same game, different modus operandi and it’s a debate that looks certain to run and run, probably as far as the American now hits his drives.
DeChambeau’s stylistic U-turn is in and of itself intriguing; the Californian-born Texan resident’s change of style perhaps mirroring his geographical journey, from the compassionate tree-hugging west coast state to the high-octane petrol-head mindset of Dallas.
27-year-old Bryson James Aldrich DeChambeau has been a PGA Tour professional for a mere four years; from the get-go, he fashioned himself as something a bit different, the thinking golfer’s golfer, the physics graduate’s moniker, ‘The Scientist’, suggesting a more theoretical, thoughtful and analytical approach to golf. Up to a point, it worked.
A maiden PGA Tour victory in the 2017 John Deere Classic in his full rookie season suggested promise and potential, but 2018 was to be his breakthrough calendar year, four wins on the US circuit, equally divided between two PGA Tour seasons, 2017/18 and 2018/19, then a victory at the European Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic suggesting global aspirations and worldwide success.
But DeChambeu’s performances on the biggest stages of all, the Majors, had proved underwhelming; one solitary top-20 finish in his first 14 Major starts between 2016 and 2019, not where the somewhat arrogant, outspoken American either wanted to be or saw himself. So something had to change.
And that something to be changed was to be his physique; beginning in late 2019, presumably founded on the laws of physics he had studied at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, DeChambeau set out to add muscle mass – 20lbs (9.1kg) before the tour’s break due to the Covid-19 pandemic and another 20 during the hiatus – in order, his physics theory told him, to increase his swing speed and therefore hit the golf ball further and further.
The 6’1” (1.85m) DeChambeau had been variously described as ‘skinny’ and ‘slight’ during his early days on tour, weighing in at around 90kg, just under 200lb (approx. 14.4st). But following the President’s Cup and the 2019/2020 Christmas/New Year break, he had bulked up to 99kg (220lb) by the time he played the WGC Mexico where he finished runner-up.
The PGA Tour hiatus between early March and mid-June afforded ‘The Scientist’ a further 15 weeks to bulk up even more, returning at the Charles Schwab Challenge more than 9.1kg (20lb) heavier than when lockdown began, carrying a full 20kg more than he had nine months earlier.
When the tour resumed, he recorded four consecutive top-10 finishes, including a win at the Rocket Mortgage, followed by a best-yet 4th in a Major, the rescheduled PGA Championship and, hey presto, a maiden Major title, winning the delayed US Open at Winged Foot. DeChambeau quickly moved up to 5th on the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), into a three-figure lead on the FedExCup and well ahead in PGA Tour driving distance, a full 12 yards ahead of next best Rory McIlroy.
Given golf’s aversion to routine drug testing, DeChambeau must be given the benefit of the doubt concerning his prodigious weight gain/muscle mass methodology; indeed, according to his trainer, Greg Roskopf, his client had been consuming “up to 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day” to pack on the additional poundage.
But even Roskopf – who also works with the NFL team Denver Broncos – was surprised at DeChambeau’s ability to change his body so much over such a short period of time, observing: “I’ve never seen the type of changes in an athlete like the ones he’s made in this last six-month period.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the locker-room and golf’s commentariat is split by the added bulk; some in the chasing pack, the likes of a now emasculated McIlroy playing catch-up, admitting to journalists he can’t let DeChambeau get too far ahead.
The Irishman, without a Major title now for more than six years and 21 Grand Slam tournaments without a win, has admitted he’s experimenting, adding speed and distance to his game ahead of this month’s Masters.
“Having length is an advantage and I’ve always been pretty long, but I think what I want to do is at least know that I have it if I need it,” was as much as McIlroy would reveal. “I’m not going to try to do it all the time, I’m not trying to get my ball speed into the 190s every time I hit a driver, but at least I know that if I need to do it, I can do it.”
But, standing 10cm shorter than DeChambeau and weighing in at a dramatic weight disadvantage approaching 30kg, McIlroy resembled a mid-range family car compared to a bullet-proof Humvee; nice to look at and perfectly serviceable, but short on power and light on gravitas.
Others, current and former players as well as golf journalists and coaches, argue that bulked-up, big-hitting bombers like DeChambeau are shifting the dial on the game and taking some of the skill out of golf.
Commenting at the European Tour’s flagship BMW PGA Championship, World No 9 Matt Fitzpatrick said: “It’s not a skill to hit the ball a long way in my opinion. I could put on 40 pounds. I could go and see a biomechanist, and I could gain 40 yards, that’s actually a fact.
“I could put another two inches [shaft] on my driver, I could gain that, but the skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight, that’s the skill,” noted the 155-pound Englishman.
Of the man 15 places above him on the OWGR but 48 yards ahead of him off the tee, Fitzpatrick said: “He’s just taking the skill out of it, in my opinion.”
Strangely, one of the elder statesmen of the game, the venerable Jack Nicklaus, the all-time Majors record holder with 18 titles, was less than censorious when asked about DeChambeau’s heavy bombing campaign foreshortening the world’s best golf courses.
“I have nothing but respect for what Bryson DeChambeau has done. I think it takes a tremendous amount of skill, a tremendous amount of hard work,” said the Golden Bear, insisting the onus on protecting courses falls on the governing bodies, not the players.
Nicklaus added: “If the stewards of the game want to defend courses, they need to dial back the [golf] ball.”
One wonders what his compatriot and contemporary Tom Watson, one of the most subtle ‘touch-and-feel’ players ever to step onto the tee, might make of it all.
But let’s not – in the rest of the world that isn’t America – get too distressed about the power and distance debate; in the USA, big is invariably beautiful, from burgers and SUVs to baseball shots and NFL quarterbacks, but for the rest of us, style, strategy and subtlety matter every bit as much as size.
