Bryson DeChambeau is expected to play this week in his first event on the PGA Tour in two months.
DeChambeau, 28, the brash, bulked-up bomber who is No. 12 in the world ranking, has committed to play in this week’s WGC Dell Technologies Match Play in Austin, Texas. He has not competed on the PGA Tour since he missed the cut at the Farmers Insurance Open in late January. The next week, he withdrew from the Asian Tour’s Saudi International, citing a sore wrist.
DeChambeau, whose eight PGA Tour victories include the 2020 U.S. Open, has not won in more than a year. He has been prominently linked to the new LIV Golf Invitational Series, which will be run by Greg Norman and seeded with money from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The new series, which recently announced an eight-tournament, $255 million schedule to begin in June, has met criticism because of the Saudis’ record on human rights. Virtually all of golf’s top players have come out in support of the PGA Tour (READ MORE).
Liang-huan Lu, the Taiwanese golfer known as “Mr. Lu” who surged to popular acclaim for his jovial play en route to a runner-up finish to Lee Trevino in the 1971 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, died March 15 in his native Taipei. He was 85 and recently had suffered from undisclosed health issues, according to the PGA of Taiwan.
Lu, in his distinctive pork-pie hat, elevated Taiwanese golf not only with his play but via his rapport with the crowds and his competitors during that week in Southport, England.
Lu and Trevino dated their lifelong friendship to their days in military service – Lu in China’s air force and Trevino in the U.S. Marines – to a round they played together in Okinawa, Japan, in 1959, according to Golfweek’s Adam Schupak, who has written extensively about Trevino over the years (READ MORE).
The U.S. Golf Association and the R&A have updated their areas of interest and research topics on hitting distance in golf, the governing bodies announced March 16.
The effort is part of the USGA and the R&A’s continuing assessment on the effects of the long-term cycle of increases in hitting distances and how they affect the game.
The update comes after discussions with the golf industry and includes three proposals: a reduction in club length to 46 inches; an update on the testing method for golf balls; and a revision to the testing tolerance for measuring the characteristic time, or CT, using the pendulum test.
Comments are due to the USGA and R&A by Sept. 2 (READ MORE).
TAP-INS
Gregor Jamieson, who has served as the director of golf at Lake Nona in Orlando, Florida, since the club opened in 1988, announced his retirement in a note to members on March 17. Jamieson, a native of Scotland, intends to return to his homeland with his wife, Julie, to the Turnberry home that they used to own and recently repurchased. Lake Nona is home to a number of PGA Tour and LPGA professionals, including Annika Sörenstam, Graeme McDowell and Ian Poulter. Jamieson's late father, Bob, was the head pro at Turnberry Resort for 32 years. In 2019, Global Golf Post’s John Steinbreder wrote about Jamieson and his ascension in the game (READ MORE). … A fire that swept through the clubhouse at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, likely started from construction workers’ use of a propane torch against a wall, the Detroit Free Press reported, citing fire officials. In addition to the century-old clubhouse that was left in ashes, memorabilia from the club, which has played host to six U.S. Opens and three PGAs and a Ryder Cup, was lost to the blaze (READ MORE). … The Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA Tour’s top developmental circuit, will livestream the 72nd hole of all non-televised events, the tour announced. Final-hole action can be viewed on the KFT’s Twitter and Facebook channels (READ MORE). ... The Eisenhower Golf Course at the U.S. Air Force Academy will get a chance to host a USGA event, after all. The U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship, which had been scheduled to be played at the Blue Course at the military academy’s 36-course facility in Colorado Springs in 2020 before COVID-19 canceled the event, will be played at Eisenhower in 2023, the USGA announced. Eisenhower, a 1959 Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, will be the first course affiliated with a U.S. military academy to host a USGA championship (READ MORE).
Staff and Wire Reports