Tag: harbour town golf links

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Now that Bryson DeChambeau has become Paul Bunyan wielding a 5.5-degree axe, the golf world is stepping back and taking measure of what they are seeing.

Last week, he chopped down Colonial Country Club into a pitch-and-putt in the PGA Tour’s return to play. With a quarantine-added 20 pounds on his already large frame – the result of five protein shakes a day and three intense workouts per 24 hours – DeChambeau tipped the scales at 240 pounds, challenged the limitations of XL golf shirts and hammered the revered, tree-lined course into submission in the Charles Schwab Challenge.

Thwack. 365 yards. Thump. 355 yards. Kaboom. 366 yards.

He had 19 drives that reached at least 330 yards. He averaged 340.5 yards off the tee (in his rookie year in 2016, he averaged 299.4 for the entire season). During one round, he was within 100 yards of the green on 10 occasions.

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And he finished in a tie for third, one shot out of the playoff.

During the telecast, Colin Montgomerie told the BBC the PGA Tour should adopt a tournament golf ball and dial down the distance.

“I’m an advocate of what Jack Nicklaus proposes – a tournament ball for professionals, that goes only 80 to 85 percent as far,” he said. “It’s now brute force and a sand wedge.”

And DeChambeau said he’s not done growing – or adding ball speed and distance. He continues to pound protein shakes. A couple hours after his 72^nd-hole putt lipped out to deny him a spot in a playoff, he worked out for 90 minutes. When he arrived here for this week’s RBC Heritage, he hit the gym. And he’s still chasing more speed despite adding 15 mph and hovering in the 190-195 range.

As players arrived at tight, quirky, tree-lined Harbour Town Golf Links for the PGA Tour’s second tournament of its restart, DeChambeau, who made his pro debut here in 2016 and finished in a tie for fourth while weighing about 200 pounds, was a main topic of conversation.

“My only concern would be keeping (his weight) up but also staying healthy because it is a lot of speed,” Rickie Fowler said. “It’s a lot of pressure being put on the body in certain areas. I’m not worried about him creating the speed. We know he can, and he’s obviously put on plenty of muscle and weight to where he can create that, but, yeah, my only concern would be him staying healthy with it being a lot more repetitive.

“Where does it become almost counterproductive as far as like too much speed, where dispersion becomes too great. There has to be some sort of peak in there. It seems like it may be around the 190 (mph) area. It gets tough to control the ball going straight once you get to the 200-plus area.

“The long drive guys, obviously, have a lot of speed, but they can get away with 1 in 8 in the grid. One in 8 won’t do very well out here on Tour.”

So don’t expect Fowler to go all Hulk. Yes, he’s trying to get stronger and a bit longer but knows what lugging around a lot of extra weight feels like. During workouts, he sometimes puts on a weight vest that weighs 50 pounds.

“Just walking a golf course with that extra weight, let alone doing some work out at the house, that’s enough for 45 minutes to an hour,” he said. “I’ll stick at my 155. I could probably use a little more muscle, but that will be something to work on continuously from here on.”

Webb Simpson joked he’d add 75 pounds to add 20 mph ball speed. Instead, he’ll seek incremental increases in both.

“I put my hands on (DeChambeau’s) shoulders last week, just because he looks like a different person,” Simpson said. “It’s really impressive to be able to change your body that fast and put on that that much weight and still not have it affect your game in a negative way. He was tearing apart Colonial in terms of distance and still hitting it really straight.

“I’ve definitely set out the last couple of years of trying to get stronger and trying to add ball speed, and I have. I’ve added three or four miles an hour of ball speed, certainly not at the rate Bryson’s going. But our games are different. I have to rely on shot making, distance control, more than Bryson. He was already long before he did all this. I’ve never really been long.

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“So I’ve got to go about it in a more methodical way than he’s doing.”

Defending RBC Heritage champion C.T. Pan smiled when he said he’d have to talk to his wife before gaining any weight.

“But 20 miles more swing speed, that sounds terrific to me, so I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “But my team and I need to discuss that next time we meet, and hopefully my wife can be a part of it.

“I was very impressed about his dedication and the goals he’s trying to achieve because we played a bunch of tournaments together in college golf, and he was pretty skinny back then. Now he’s just a totally different guy. He’s hitting bombs out there. His stroke is still good. His putting is still good.

“I think he’s got the game figured out, I guess.”

Jim Furyk built his possible World Golf Hall of Fame career on grit and accuracy. Any attempt to change speed and add weight would get him worrying.

“It’s always great to improve your weaknesses but not at the risk of hurting your strengths,” he said. “The best players in the world attack the golf course differently than I do right now at 50 years old because that’s the way I grew up. It’s fun to watch. Fairways hit really isn’t an important stat anymore.”

Furyk said he was startled when he saw DeChambeau hit his tee shot off of No. 1 in the second round at Colonial. DeChambeau’s ball speed was 185. In the group was Dustin Johnson, who hit 177 on the ball speed radar.

“That was kind of an eye raiser,” Furyk said. “Dustin is pretty big, pretty strong, athletic, hits it pretty far. If you’re gaining 8 miles an hour on Dustin Johnson, that’s moving it. But I think there’s going to come a point where enough is enough, but the difference is you can’t regulate how big and strong a person gets or how well they train.

“I remember when 7,000 yards was long, and I’m 50 right now, and 7,000 yards isn’t scaring me. I’m thinking that’s pretty short. I think the bodies that be are trying to find the right way to regulate, but there will be a time where we’ll have to kind of make sure we cap things off.

“We can’t build 8,000, 9,000, and 10,000-yard golf courses.”

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