Science Over Art at the U.S. Open

Full disclosure, heading into the final round of the U.S. Open, here is my list of desired winners at Winged Foot.

1. Louis Oosthiuzen

2. Rory McIlroy

3. Xander Schauffele

4. Matthew Wolff

5. Anyone besides Bryson DeChambeau

There are myriad reasons for number five, among them the fact that DeChambeau looks like he is having absolutely no fun on the golf course, he takes forever to play, he looks like a robot or a cartoon character when he swings, he is disheveled to a fault, and he has turned the game, which can be very artistic, into a science project. He also has completely embraced the bomb and gouge form of golf, which I believe has taken a whole lot of fun out of watching.

All that being said, and I could say a lot more, however begrudgingly, I will forthrightly say DeChambeau deserves any accolade sent his way after his dominating performance in winning the U.S. Open. In a tournament where no one else finished under par, he was six under. On a day when no one else shot under par, he was three under. He covered every base of the game, or at least the game that he has created. He drove the ball better than he had all week, and when he was in the rough, which he was almost all the time in the first three rounds, less so in the final, he recovered brilliantly. When he didn’t recover quite so well, his scrambling was superb, and he putted masterfully.

He now has accomplished things only reserved for the greatest players in the game. That includes being only the third player to win the NCAA individual title, the U.S. Amateur, and the U.S. Open. The other two? Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. The man (barely, he’s 21) that he vanquished in the final group, Wolff, could have achieved the same feat, but like any other potential challengers, he faded away, while Bryson stomped forward. DeChambeau also became the only player to navigate Winged Foot in a U.S. Open without an over par round. This from someone who had never even finished in the top fifteen in his previous sixteen majors.

He won the first two prestigious titles in more standard, but still quirky fashion. He has played irons of the same length for a long time, and he has always taken a scientific approach to the game, but about a year ago, he cooked up a plan to add in a massive change to his body, which he dialed up even further during the shutdown of golf. He bulked up immensely, putting on fifty pounds. But not in a Tiger Woods of Jason Day type of way, looking extra fit and ripped. He just wanted bulk, and a big trunk, trying to sort of create a slightly taller Jack Nicklaus type of body. He really is kind of fat by design, and he pretty much looks like a slob out there.

But he could care less, and it has worked. Swinging the driver as hard as possible, he has wailed away to the tune of ten top 10’s and two wins in the last calendar year. His rigid and robotic putting setup, which looks about as comfortable as a straight jacket, has holed putt after putt. And his strategy of hitting it as far as possible and then dealing with the consequences, has become the number one talking point in golf. And that will only ratchet up further after taking down Winged Foot and the USGA.

This wasn’t the Rocket Mortgage classic, and it wasn’t on some track with wide fairways and limited rough. This was the place where “Massacres” had taken place. This was the place where in the runup to the tournament, people scoffed at his idea that you could deal with five inch rough when you missed a bunch of fairways. But both he AND Wolff were making a lie of it. Byron was the 36-hole leader despite hitting the least fairways ever, Wolff was the 54-hole leader and HE had missed the most ever. Wolff toured the dreaded track in the third round in 65 despite hitting two fairways. And at the end it was DeChambeau gleefully bragging about how his method had proved everyone wrong. He may finally be the trigger for a real discussion about where the game is at.

The argument about distance has raged for a long time. Jack Nicklaus said just a couple months ago that he has touted dialing back the golf ball for forty years, and he was the longest hitter of his era. The question has become whether this is a problem. Many people just say that length will always be an advantage, and that is true. But I feel like the highly respected golf writer and analyst Jaime Diaz said it best after the U.S. Open. Driving the ball long has become too important and created an imbalance in the game that should be addressed, as imbalances in other sports have been. When nobody could hit in baseball, they lowered the mound. When basketball became a low post wrestling match, the 3-point shot was brought in. It is not a full test of a player’s abilities if all he is doing is hitting drivers and wedges. And you can’t just keep making golf courses longer, and actually when you do that and make no other adjustments, that favors bombers even more. The old golf saying “Drive for show, putt for dough” is obsolete.

Even a dialed back golf ball would not take away the inherent advantage of the big hitter. But at the very least, making mid to long irons something that are hit in competition sometime besides on the second shot at par 5’s would be refreshing. That would immediately put more of a premium on accuracy. A major part of DeChambeau’s analysis and strategy was that he would be hitting wedges out of the deep stuff. Even he would not be able to do much with a six iron out of it.

But the discussion about the ball, or driver heads, or any other idea is likely not going to produce anything soon. Equipment companies cast such a shadow over the game and provide a natural impediment to change. So for now, if someone works relentlessly to find a different, and effective way to get the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes, they deserve the credit, and the hardware. And DeChambeau has, and does. I don’t have to like it, I don’t have to root for it, but I can’t demean it.

DeChambeau certainly looks like a candidate for burnout and injury, but I would not wish either on him. One thing I will say is that how he goes about his business during a round is almost a perfect antidote to pressure. His almost manic, obsessive compulsive preparation for every shot and putt (he famously took two minutes and nine seconds to hit a ten footer last year), is a natural distraction. His tinkering won’t stop. He just won the U.S. Open, and he announced at his winning press conference that he wants his equipment company to come up with a 48-inch (maximum length allowed) driver.

DeChambeau seems to have found a formula that works perfectly for him, but he is too curious, too driven, to just stop right there. He will no doubt try to find new ways that he believes will be better. That many times has backfired on players, but Tiger Woods changed his swing three times when he was the best player in the world, and it worked. We’ll see.

But I likely will be grimacing as he grimaces his way around….slowly, and root on some others.