NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Bryson DeChambeau will be back on the radar this week in the last major of the season, and his relationship with technology remains an ongoing adventure.
LIV Golf has proven to be a nice setup for DeChambeau and his constant interest in equipment. Ben Giunta, who spent nearly a decade as a PGA Tour rep for Nike, keeps his The Tour Van trailer on site for the duration of every stateside LIV event week instead of bugging out when the tournament starts like the trucks do on the PGA Tour. It’s a bonus for equipment geeks like DeChambeau.
“Most trailers during my time over on the tour, they would leave every Wednesday, so it’s nice that we’re able to have him out here for the full week every week, which has been great for all of us to prep and get ready for events and then majors, as well,” DeChambeau said at the recent LIV Dallas event. “You come after a tough day of golf or something and you’re struggling with some irons, they can make some adjustments to help you out.
“It’s a tremendous benefit to us, and quite honestly, with LA Golf, he’s been helping us out with a lot of LA Golf product, which is another tremendous benefit.”
After missing the cut in the U.S. Open at Oakmont, DeChambeau expressed his frustration at not being able to get his clubs and his ball (Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash) to cooperate with each other.
“What I really think needs to happen, being pretty transparent here, is just get a golf ball that flies a little straighter,” he said after missing more than half the fairways and hitting only 20 of 26 greens in regulation at Oakmont. “Everybody talks about how straight the golf ball flies. Well, upwards of 190 [mph] like Rory [McIlroy] and myself, it’s actually quite difficult to control the golf ball. The ball sidespins quite a bit and it gets hit by the wind quite a bit because our golf balls are just longer in the air.
“So I’m looking at ways of how to rectify that so that my wedges can be even tighter so it can fly straighter. I feel like there are times where I hit wedges and it just over curves, depending how high and how much time it is in the air and how much spin is on the ball.
“So I think that’s really what I’m going to be looking at now along with some equipment stuff to just make myself a little more precise the next time so we don’t have what happened this week happen.”
With only five weeks between Opens, would that be enough time to resolve the ball issue? DeChambeau wasn’t sure back in June.
“I’m going to work my butt to make that happen. It’s all up to manufacturing,” he said. “We’ll see what happens but I’m keen on finding something and I’m keen on improving. I'm excited for that.
“The golf ball is a longer discussion. That’s going to be a bit of time. I’m still working on it. We think later this year I’ll have a golf ball that will be very interesting to test. If it helps, who knows. It’s a test. But I’m excited to keep researching and trying and experimenting and optimizing. My goal right now is just to optimize myself to another level, and if I can’t, so be it. If I can in some areas, great.”
DeChambeau had already made equipment tweaks between the PGA Championship, where he contended, and the U.S. Open. He’s deployed his own LA Golf BAD V3-W irons (5-9) with LA Golf Prototype BAD shafts (the BAD are his initials including his middle name, Aldrich). His prototype irons feature what he calls “bulge and roll” technology with a face that appears slightly curved at address and can help mis-hits stay straighter. Before winning the LIV Golf Korea event, his irons were altered on the heel to aid his predominant miss.
“I’ve got some new irons in the bag, which have been great,” he said at Oakmont. “I’ve optimized it a little bit more, so hopefully that helps with those overdraws in my irons. You never know.
“We iterated on the design of the face. The heel is a little bit flatter on the curvature. My face obviously has some curvature on the irons. So we’re just optimizing for the gear effect on the heel and on the toe based on the mass properties that are there. Like the heel doesn’t gear effect as much in an iron at my speeds, so hitting it on the heel, I’ve got to be a little flatter, and then the toe has a little bit more roundness on it to account for that out there, and then I moved the CG out towards the toe.
“I’ve got such heavy grips and heavy golf shaft that it moves the CG of the club all the way to the heel so we try to offset that with that tungsten weight on the toe. That’s very simply what it is. … We had to [3D] print another version. This is version 3.”
It will be interesting to see what versions of irons and potentially golf ball DeChambeau breaks out at Royal Portrush.
Scott Michaux