NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Two of LIV Golf’s biggest stars are quietly plummeting down the rankings – and we’re not talking about the Official World Golf Ranking.
Let’s start with Bryson DeChambeau. We recently reported on DeChambeau’s precipitous fall, but equipment decisions and continued poor performance necessitate an update.
To recap, it was only two years ago when DeChambeau won the Arnold Palmer Invitational and then finished tied for third at the Players Championship, reaching No. 3 in the Data Golf Ranking.
Now DeChambeau is No. 103 in the ranking, an overall strokes gained metric that continues to track the progress of LIV players. Since losing an epic playoff to Patrick Cantlay in the 2021 BMW Championship, DeChambeau has not registered a single top-five finish anywhere in professional golf.
DeChambeau has been a total non-factor in LIV competitions, missing out on the top 20 in half of the eight events contested to this point – the spiral reached a low point this weekend in Arizona when he opened 72-75 and beat only two players in the 48-man tournament through 36 holes.
When DeChambeau parted ways from Cobra earlier this year, he made a visit to Ping’s F.O.C.A.L. Room (Fast Optical Capture Analysis Lab) where high-speed motion-capture cameras could detect granular details about his swing. Ping created a custom one-length set of i230 irons and Glide 4.0 wedges for DeChambeau to test.
It was a pain-staking process for Ping engineers who used heavy grinding on each of the club toe sections to help create a right-to-left shot shape. They also had a conundrum on their hands because DeChambeau measures all of his clubs by total weight and not swing weight, so they were tasked with figuring out how to create a 275-gram clubhead out of longer irons, which are typically lighter. Injection molding, gram weights and lengthy trial and error were required. With the wedges, they had to use a wide sole, bending the club weak to add bounce before shaving down the head to reduce weight.
And then they needed to sort through loft and bounce issues. DeChambeau’s previous 4-iron had 16 degrees of loft, while Ping’s standard 4-iron loft is 22.5 degrees. Bending an iron that much isn’t a realistic possibility because of a compromise in turf interaction.
That meant Ping club makers had to use other iron heads to create each club. For instance, DeChambeau’s 4-iron came from a 3-iron clubhead. In some cases, the Ping irons were two clubs apart. DeChambeau’s 6-iron came from a 4-iron clubhead, for example.
DeChambeau used the new irons in his first two LIV starts this year. For the moment, he seems lost regardless of what clubs he is playing.
The second player worth mentioning is Brooks Koepka. About 18 months ago, Data Golf had Koepka rated as the No. 11 player in the world. From 2015 to ’21, Koepka finished every calendar year in the top 16 of the Official World Golf Ranking – twice he finished the year ranked No. 1.
But Koepka is No. 107 at the moment. He had no top-50 finishes in majors a year ago and has continued with an array of pedestrian finishes in LIV events outside of his lone victory in Saudi Arabia.
Koepka also has been on a search for the right gear fit. The longtime gear free agent signed with Srixon in the fall of 2021 and hasn’t been settled with his clubs since then.
During the 2021 Ryder Cup – how long ago does it feel since that took place? – Koepka had a TaylorMade SIM 2 driver and M2 Tour HL 3-wood, an old Nike Vapor Pro 3-iron, Srixon ZX7 irons, Titleist Vokey wedges, a Scotty Cameron Teryllium TNP2 putter and a Titleist Pro V1x ball. Since then, his driver has changed (Srixon ZX7 LS MK II), so have his wedges (Cleveland RTX ZipCore) and he used a Srixon Z-Star Diamond golf ball much of the time in between. At one point last year, he had a TaylorMade M5 driver, a club that first came out in 2019.
Regardless of how you slice it, DeChambeau’s and Koepka’s place among the game’s elite is essentially gone – and there aren’t any signs of a revival from either of them.
Sean Fairholm