70 GOLF.COM / S e p t ember 2019
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sknows what works for him, and he doesn’t give a f--- what anybody
thinks. He’s proved everybody wrong, and I think that’s awesome.”
Max Homa puts it another way: “You can’t science your way to
a trophy—you still have to play the game. He’s obviously very good
at that, which is maybe what people should focus on a little more.”
But for DeChambeau, the science keys his ability to separate
himself from the competition. “Everybody is practicing hard, you
can’t gain an advantage there,” he says. “It’s not about producing more
speed and power—that’s figured out. It’s a question of how can I repeat
motion at a higher percentage? How can my range of outcomes be
tighter than anyone else’s? These are the big questions. Rome wasn’t
built in a day. I’m not saying I’m building Rome, but we’re trying to
figure out stuff that hasn’t been figured out yet. Repeatability is the
next frontier. It’s just a question of who figures it out first.”
And this brings us back to DeChambeau’s quest to dial in his
wedges, what he calls “the most maddening thing ever.” In some
ways it is simple physics. In his groundbreaking set of single-
length irons, DeChambeau’s wedges are 2 ¼ inches longer than
standard. The heads are lighter but not enough to counterbalance
DeChambeau’s speed: He swings his lob wedge at up to 95 miles
per hour, whereas most Tour players rarely touch 80. He produces
so much spin (up to 13,000 RPM) that every now and then the ball
will crawl up the face of the club and fly
unpredictably. (In 2018, DeChambeau was
12th in Strokes Gained off the tee and fifth
in proximity on approaches from more
than 200 yards, but a pedestrian 80th on shots from 50-125 yards.)
All the changes to his gear that came out of the Match Play did
not solve the problem: DeChambeau was a non-factor at the Mas-
ters, then followed that with three straight missed cuts, the worst
funk since his breakthrough win in 2017 as a sophomore on Tour.
It is a sign of his desperation that at various points this year Bry-
son has experimented with standard-length wedges. “At Bay Hill,
he took Steve Sticker’s wedges and was hitting them better than
Stricker was,” says Johnson. But DeChambeau is such a believer in
single-length, and it is so fundamental to his identity, that he never
seriously considered making the switch. Instead, he tried every other
setup tweak imaginable, including pushing Bridgestone to invent for
him a brand new ball. (It’s a concept that DeChambeau calls “so pro-
prietary I can’t discuss it.”)
At the 3M Open, in July, the driving range was packed with DeCham-
beau acolytes. They had honed in on groove design as a possible fix,
and so Bryson was testing a variety of different makes and models.
(Each had a 37.5-inch shaft, like all of DeChambeau’s irons.) He found
a set of PXGs with less aggressive grooves that produced basically the
exact same amount of spin with every swing. Incredulous, DeCham-
beau hit ball after ball, and the numbers on the launch monitor kept
coming up aces. The PXGs were in the bag for his opening-round 66,
after which he said, “The wedges were flaw-
less. I hit one on 10 today that was one of
the best shots I’ve ever hit.” The next day
he shot a career-low 62 to roar into the lead.
In the final round, DeChambeau was part
of a thrilling dogfight with phenom Matt
Wolff, but despite a 72nd-hole eagle he came
up one shot short. Still, DeChambeau was
flying high on the way out of Minneapolis.
“That’s one big piece of the puzzle we’ve
figured out, or are closer to figuring out,”
he said. Loyal company man that he is, Bry-
son is eager to get Cobra wedges back in his
bag, so at press time a set was being built with grooves
identical to the PXGs.
The near-miss in Minneapolis pushed DeCham-
beau to sixth in the World Ranking. Only five more
spots to go.
Bryson’s revelation with his wedges calls to
mind Hans Gruber’s monologue in Die Hard, about
Alexander the Great weeping when he discovered
there were no more worlds left to conquer. Does
DeChambeau ever fret that someday he will figure
out all of golf ’s secrets, putting an abrupt end to the
quest that defines him? “No, no, no, no, no, I would
love that!” he says. “I’d be out there hitting every shot
perfect, just smilin’ at everybody, goin’, ‘Ha, I have
all the answers.’”
DeChambeau had a big grin picturing this in his
mind, but it quickly dissolved. “Actually,” he said,
“that would be cool for a little while, but then it would
get boring.”“IF PEOPLE KNEW THE
STRUGGLES I’VE BEEN
THROUGH TO FIGURE OUT
THIS STUFF, I THINK
THEY WOULD GAIN A BIT
MORE RESPECT FOR ME.”GOLF/Technology 2019
How tuned in to change is DeChambeau? Even his shades—Bose’s new music-
playing Alto audio frames—are on the leading edge of sunglass science and tech.