On June 11th, the PGA had its first professional event since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. That morning a beefed-up Bryson DeChambeau stepped up to the tee, twenty pounds heavier than he was prior to quarantine and forty pounds heavier than he was at the end of the golf season last September. Since then he has redefined driving the golf ball, leading the tour in driving distance and shots gained off the tee. Though he missed the cut at the Memorial in Dublin, Ohio, he wowed the golf world with drives of 407 and 423 yards.
Dechambeu as been referred to as golf’s "Bash Brother" and golf’s “bruh,” but in reality, his decision to beef up and prioritize driving the golf ball longer than anyone has ever done in professional competition is as calculated as he has always been. It's more Dr. Frankenstein than it is Jose Canseco or Mark McGwire. Since he came out on tour, he has been the PGA tour’s mad scientist. He earned a physics degree from SMU before turning professional and challenging most every golf trope possible.
He and the golf club manufacturer Cobra came out with a set of one-length irons that are now sold side-by-side on their website with their irons of normal tapering-length. Although he was chastised by nearly every commentator for having wedges that were the same length as his four-iron, he has stuck with his philosophy, convinced that being able to consistently strike a golf ball with a stick of the same length increases the repeatability of a swing. He put the largest grips possible on his irons and wedges, letting him grip the club in his palms, not his fingers and he removed all wrist hinge from his swing, basically eliminating as many variables as possible in order to make a repeatable swing every time.
He reduced the variability on his putter as well. With ultra-stiff shafts, jumbo grips, and a length long enough to allow him to fixate (I won’t use the word anchor) the butt of the club against his forearm, he removed “feel” out of the putting stroke. Instead he rocks his larger shoulder and back muscles to deliver a calculated amount of energy to the ball each time.
He developed his critics along the way. Although he had a stellar college career, becoming the fifth player to ever win the NCAA Individual Championship and the U.S. Amateur in the same year (in the same company as Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Phil Mickelson), it was thought that his scientific approach to the game would never pan out in the professional ranks. “His wedges are too long. He is too mechanical. He’s taken the artistry out of the game,” were common concerns.
Then he started winning.
After turning pro following the 2016 Masters, DeChambeau won the 2017 John Deere and the 2018 Memorial. During the FedEx Cup Playoffs in 2018 -- when only the best 125 golfers for the year are invited and then whittled down week by week -- he won back-to-back events against the best golfers in the world.
So now DeChambeau has taken his unwavering quest for improvement back to the lab and to the gym to make his game even better. He is drinking six to eight protein shakes and consuming 3,500 calories a day to have larger shoulders, lats, quads, and glutes for pummeling the golf ball. But his quest is not a “bruh"-like attempt to be a Bash Brother; it is as calculated as any decision as any he has made.
Terry Gannon, the Golf Channel’s host for early round and early afternoon coverage of the PGA Tour, posited the question to Hall of Famers Nick Faldo and Davis Love: "If you could pick any two golfing statistics to determine who will a top-10 player for the next 10 years, what would they be?"
Proximity to the hole was the immediate response from the commentators, along with putting, and finally strokes gained off the tee was mentioned. After all, isn’t the old adage “Drive for show, Putt for dough” the hallmark of all of golf?
Maybe not. A look at the Top 12 golfers in the Official World Golf Rankings reveals that the two statistical categories that correlate the most to success are driving distance and strokes gained off the tee. Eight of the top 12 golfers in the world rank in the top 30 for driving distance. Also eight of the top 12 golfers in the OWGR also rank in the top 20 for strokes gained off-the-tee. Compare that to putting where only four of the top 12 golfers are in the top 30 of strokes-gained putting. And although it’s great to be a good ballstriker, only five of the top 12 golfers in the OWGR breach the top 30 in strokes gained approaching the greens and only two of the top 12 rank in the top 30 for proximity to the hole. Qualities like driving accuracy, chipping, and play around the greens are at even less of a premium.
A selective look at the top players in the world (as of 7/20) is a bomber’s paradise right now.
OWGR Driving Distance in Yds (Rank) Shots Gained off Tee
1 Rory McIlroy 314 (5) 4
2 Jon Rahm 305 (T28) 7
3 Justin Thomas 302 (T55) 19
4 Dustin Johnson 306 (T24) 11
6 Brooks Koepka 308 (15) 20
7 Bryson DeChambeau 323 (1) 1
9 Adam Scott 310 (12) 121
11 Xander Schauffele 305 (30) 14
12 Tommy Fleetwood 310 (14) 10
The outliers Webb Simpson (#5) and Patrick Reed (#8) are excellent putters, and Patrick Cantlay(#10) is a deadly accurate ballstriker. But for the most part now, if you are looking for an advantage on the course, it seems to be worthwhile to invest in driving the golf ball very far. This is just what Bryson DeChambeu has done to the tune of top-eight finishes in his last seven consecutive tournaments before missing the cut week at the Memorial. He won his sixth PGA event at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and has earned more than $2.1 million in the first four weeks since golf returned.
With the PGA tour back in full swing, will DeChambeau’s latest experiment yield a "major" return on investment?