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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | There was Davis Love III, whose graceful power made him one of the game’s longest hitters 30 years ago, leaning over to look at what club Bryson DeChambeau hit on Harbour Town’s par-3 17th hole Thursday afternoon, knowing when it was his turn to play he would add two clubs to whatever he saw.
“Holy moly,” Love said after seeing DeChambeau’s power from close range.
There was Rory McIlroy a week earlier playing the par-5 11th hole at Colonial Country Club, having hit a 313-yard tee shot into the wind and seeing DeChambeau’s drive rocket 41 yards past his, prompting McIlroy to say to his caddie, Harry Diamond, “Holy s---, it’s unbelievable.”
There was Jason Dufner, ambling past Harbour Town’s 10th tee Friday morning as DeChambeau was teeing off, unleashing the driver he calls “the Kraken,” and Dufner deadpanning his reaction in his deadpan dude kind of way.
The fascination with DeChambeau, whose 26-year-old body is now shaped like a refrigerator and may be just as sturdy, has been the most captivating story since the PGA Tour returned to competition two weeks ago.
Could DeChambeau be transformative or has he merely transformed himself?
“He's got a conviction, and he's following it. That's what he's done,” McIlroy said. “He's always thought outside the box and thought a little differently to most people. He's really put his mind at wanting to get longer, and he's definitely done that.”
Watching DeChambeau swing his driver is like watching a guy playing home run derby. His swing is a whirl of muscular motion, his left foot spinning loose from the ground as he finishes because of the torque he creates. It is graceful in a pile-driving kind of way.
It is also uniquely DeChambeau. He is an acquired taste for some people but he’s undeniably magnetic. From the snap-bill cap he once referred to as his superhero cape to his one-length irons and mechanical methods, DeChambeau operates on a different frequency from other tour players.
He has taken his quirks and formulas, wrapped them in approximately 40 pounds (since last fall) of mostly new muscle and set out to bludgeon his way to the top, intent on proving that conviction is more important than convention.
He’s smart but sometimes comes off like a guy who thinks he knows more than everyone else. Maybe he does.
Last summer, he was the No. 1 target in the conversation about slow play and wasn’t afraid to push back at his critics. He also picked up his pace.
DeChambeau was a putt away from a sudden-death playoff at Colonial and he finished T8 at the RBC Heritage, on two courses that skew more toward straight than strong. When DeChambeau gets to a place that looks more like an airport than a coat closet, the full effects of his speed-driven transformation are likely to be more apparent.
“What he did at Colonial, I was blown away,” said Jim McLean, long considered one of the game’s top instructors. “He hit it ridiculous lengths and he hit it relatively straight. Just think of what this guy is going to do.”
A season ago, DeChambeau averaged 302.5 yards off the tee. This year, he’s averaging 321.3 yards off the tee, having added approximately 20 mph in swing speed since he was an amateur star. His distance average declined at Harbour Town where he hit only a handful of drivers through the week.
“There was a sense when Tiger Woods came out that … you could do what he did and you couldn’t get there,” Brandel Chamblee said on a recent podcast. “We’re beginning to realize that speed is a skill you can acquire.
“(DeChambeau) has just showed us he acquired speed in a few months.”
DeChambeau is reinforcing what players and swing coaches have argued in recent years – it’s not just equipment changes that have led to this new era of power golf.
“We as teachers have been saying all along that you can’t dismiss the athletic component of players regardless of how far the ball is going,” Peter Kostis said. “You can’t just blame the ball.”
What DeChambeau has done to his body and to his game is by design. If every mile per hour of swing speed translates into roughly 2½ yards in length, the difference in 120 and 130 mph is 25 yards. McLean said when he met DeChambeau six years ago, his swing speed was 109 mph.
Generating that kind of enormous swing speed is the tricky part. DeChambeau embarked on an ultra-aggressive fitness program late in 2019 and doubled down on it during the tour’s three-month break. When he showed up at Colonial two weeks ago, DeChambeau had gone from big to bigger.
“I got bored,” DeChambeau said when asked about his decision to bulk up to 240 pounds. “I love the game of golf, and I love the journey that it takes me on, and I want to keep pursuing different avenues to try to get better, be the best that I can possibly be, and I felt like this is one that I could accomplish.”
DeChambeau devoted himself to his aggressive, intense workout routine and a diet that includes drinking multiple protein shakes as well as eating with the purpose of gaining weight. He eats as much as he wants with a 2-to-1 carb-to-protein ratio and said he lost weight in the heat at Harbour Town.
In adding muscle, DeChambeau has maintained his flexibility. He also has taken the calculated gamble that changing his body won’t negatively impact his swing.
Through the years, players have made dramatic changes to their bodies – Craig Stadler, Johnny Miller, Keith Clearwater and David Duval come to mind – and lost some of what they had. Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods both bulked up in their chest and shoulders before deciding to scale back.
“My dad literally pulled me out of organized basketball because they were lifting weights,” Love said, citing the difference in how athleticism is viewed today compared to previous generations. “There's a lot of reasons I wish (my dad) was around, but I would love to see him see this happen. …
“You have to be fit and in shape. You might not have to be as big as Bryson … I just think that's the future. They're going to roll something back, but they're not rolling him back.”
Pure power isn’t enough to win consistently. There’s the old saying that the woods are full of long hitters but DeChambeau is bending that adage. There is an abundance of research that shows the benefits of hitting it long more than offset a sacrifice in accuracy.
“There’s a lot of other factors it takes to win events other than hitting it nine miles, ” Chamblee said on the podcast. “But, if he continues on and puts the other pieces of the puzzle together, it has the chance to change the game of golf.”
In DeChambeau’s case, accuracy is still critical at a place like Harbour Town where his tee shot at the par-5 second hole Saturday lodged in a tree, costing him two strokes.
For DeChambeau, improved wedge play and putting can make the difference in good weeks and potentially dominating weeks. He ranks outside the top 130 on tour in proximity to the hole on approach shots from 50 to 125 yards, but there can be an advantage to continually giving himself shorter approach shots.
“For 20 years I’ve been saying the ball goes too far,” McLean said. “But you can’t hold this back. He can hit his driver 340 and his 9-iron 170.
“You just have to realize this is the era we are in. When he gets to the long courses, where other guys are hitting 3-irons, he may be hitting 9-irons. That’s an unfair game.”
Is DeChambeau a pioneer or an outlier?
“I'm not going to say much on that other than the fact that I think that I've proven my point, that when I want to do something, I can go do it,” DeChambeau said. “That's not cockiness at all. That's just perseverance and dedication.
“I hope that's an inspiration to a lot of people. I want that to be an inspiration because whoever’s struggling right now, whoever's not doing their best, I want that to be a light for their future to say, ‘Hey, look, if he can do it ... he was a nothing burger. If he can do it, anybody can do it.’ ”
An inspiration?
We’ll see.
A fascination?
For sure.
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