It may be the most impressive example yet of Bryson DeChambeau’s command of distance that he can dominate a golf tournament being contested more than 5,000 miles away from the event he’s actually competing in.
On Thursday, DeChambeau made his first start since winning the U.S. Open by six strokes, and promptly shot 62 to grab the first-round lead at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas. By Friday, he was scarcely less a factor at the BMW PGA Championship, the flagship event on the flagging European Tour. That’s when the man leading at Wentworth—England’s Matt Fitzpatrick—remarked that the world No. 6 was making “a bit of a mockery of the game” with the prodigious distance he now commands.
“It’s not a skill to hit the ball a long way in my opinion,” Fitzpatrick said. “I could put on 40 pounds. I could go and see a bio-mechanist and I could gain 40 yards; that’s actually a fact. I could put another two inches on my driver. I could gain that, but the skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight. That’s the skill, he’s just taking the skill out of it in my opinion. I’m sure lots will disagree. It’s just daft.”
Fitzpatrick, a man so slender of build that he might have to jog around the shower to get wet, is spotting 85 pounds to DeChambeau, whose bulk might soon demand he shower in a car wash. Fitzpatrick averages just shy of 295 yards off the tee, a respectable number but still typically a Walmart or so behind the hulk.
Responding to those comments, DeChambeau exhibited more restraint than is his custom when addressing small white things.
“I would say it actually takes more skill to do what I’m doing,” he said. “I still believe I’m hitting it straighter than what I was last year with the distances that I was hitting back then. So I actually appreciate those comments.”
It’s easy to dismiss Fitzpatrick’s comments as sour grapes. Every generation sees players get left behind, condemned by their physique to keep faith with a style of golf that other elite competitors have moved beyond. He’s Corey Pavin with an accent. But even if that’s true, Fitzpatrick is correct in his assessment that professional golf is increasingly one-dimensional and lacking nuance, dominated by what my old high school woodworking teacher used to refer to as “BF and I” — brute force and ignorance.
Blame for that doesn’t rest at DeChambeau’s door. He’s doing everything permitted within the parameters governing the sport to gain a competitive edge. It just happens that those parameters as constituted are diminishing the value of golf course architecture, reducing the concept of course management to a simple matter of player preference on the day rather than a considered response to what is being asked of them. Professional golf is becoming less a battle of strategy — player versus course — and more a tussle over governance, man against regulations. Fitzpatrick is not alone in believing the current statutes have proven woefully deficient in protecting the sport.
It was only last February — a lifetime ago in 2020 terms — that the USGA and R&A published their Distance Insights Report, which nudged the governing bodies from the dithering phase to the deliberating one. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed subsequent action until March 2021. In the meantime we are left in the midst of a tiresome tweeting standoff between those who think there is no problem and those who think there are no other problems.
DeChambeau added more kindling to the conflagration in his second round at TPC Summerlin by pummeling a 373-yard drive onto the green at the par-4 7th hole and making eagle (he drove the green on Thursday too). Impressive, to be sure, but the only thing PGA Tour players receive on Fridays is a ride back to their hotel. By Sunday morning, DeChambeau was in a tie for 31st, seven shots back. This week, like most weeks, he won’t win. He may be dominating headlines, but DeChambeau has a ways to go before he’s dominating the game.
This is not a week that ought to be entered in the book of evidence on the distance debate. On the day DeChambeau shot his effortless 62, four other men shot 63 and another five logged 64s. On Saturday, Matthew Wolff added a 61 to previous rounds of 68 and 66, and he’s still not leading! PGA Tour setups in Vegas are easier pickings than the rubes chasing a busted straight down on the Strip. But we should hope that what happened in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.
The next real evidentiary phase commences in 32 days with the Masters Tournament, at which DeChambeau is mulling using a 48-inch driver in the quest to put even more distance between himself and Fitzpatrick. Gimmicks and showmanship are a popular play in Las Vegas, but might get a markedly cooler reception at Augusta National.
Still, purists should cheer DeChambeau on in the hope that he pulverizes Alistair Mackenzie’s masterpiece, that he blasts tee shots over the Tiger-proofing trees planted two decades ago, that he reduces to a flip wedge the par 5s that once required career-defining long iron shots from legends. That might be the final indignity necessary to galvanize the powers-that-be from dithering to deliberation to, at last, decisive action.
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