DUBLIN, Ohio – Bryson DeChambeau would be John Daly if he had majored in barefoot beer-swilling instead of physics. If he knew nothing instead of trying to know everything. If Hooters was his favorite hangout spot. And if he smoked Marlboros instead of Bridgestones.
Other than those tiny differences – ahem – the two blonde bombers are pretty much alike. At least off the tee, where their calling card is/was being able to hit a golf ball the length of three football fields.
Or four. During the opening round of the Memorial Tournament on Thursday, DeChambeau powdered his 5.5-degree Cobra King Speedzone driver (Branding!) a mesmerizing 423 yards on the par-4 first hole at Muirfield Village.
He had 46 yards left to the pin. You can pick your jaw off the floor now.
“I sometimes can’t believe it. There were years where I hit 5-iron into that hole, and now I’m hitting a 30-yard little shot,” he said after shooting a 1-over-par 73.
At hole 17, DeChambeau smacked his drive, watched it climb toward the jet stream and ordered his Bridgestone Tour BX golf ball — Branding! — to “Sit down” for fear it might end up in the creek 437 yards away. It came to rest 30 yards short.
DeChambeau’s straight-armed Moe Norman-ish golf swing is a sight to behold, if your eyesight is strong enough to track 350-yard drives.
Just as challenging is tracking DeChambeau as he describes air density, body mass – the 26-year-old has added 30 pounds over the past six months to weigh in at 240, still 40 pounds short of Daly as his heftiest – and his 200-mph ball speed that would win the Indy 500. But there are enough times — here again is where he and Daly become one — when the No. 7-ranked player in the world speaks plainly and honestly.
“I would say as time went on, I just realized that I’ve really got nothing to lose, and what if I could hit it just as far as the longest players out here but hit it straighter,” DeChambeau said, explaining his reasoning for switching full-time to the go-for-broke swing he calls “The Kraken.”
DeChambeau, despite having five PGA Tour wins entering 2020, also became bored with playing it safe.
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“I kind of get tired of playing the same game over and over again,” he said. “My game that I was playing, I wanted to just spice things up a little bit and see if I could make an impact.”
He has. In his own way, DeChambeau is trying to change golf like Daly did nearly two decades ago, when Big John burst onto the scene by winning the 1991 PGA Championship with his “grip it and rip it” style of golf. DeChambeau is more “analyze it and rip it,” but the concept is similar: hit your first shot as far as you can so your next shot with a shorter iron becomes easier.
Not everyone agrees with the approach, or the player who is promoting it. There is murmuring on tour – or tweeting, in the case of Brooks Koepka, who enjoys ribbing DeChambeau on social media – that the Kraken is overrated.
Dustin Johnson addressed whether he might follow DeChambeau’s lead and go all-in off the tee.
“Until I feel like I need to hit it further to compete or beat these guys, then that’s what I’ll do,” Johnson said. “But for right now I feel like if I’m playing my game, he can hit it as far as he wants to, and I don’t think he’s going to beat me.”
Alrighty then. Except DeChambeau is beating people. His shtick with a stick has resulted in seven consecutive top-10 finishes, including a win two weeks ago at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, when he averaged 351 yards off the two measured driving holes.
Jealousy is afoot, no doubt, as is a purist view that bomb-it-then-bunt-it is hurting golf. Bah. DeChambeau is good for the game, as Daly was. True, the latter is much more of a character, while the former is more about marketing his character (creating and protecting his brand is big with Bryson), but neither are cardboard cutouts. Thank goodness.
DeChambeau may not be your cup of tea, but at least he’s not lukewarm water.
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