How The Masters Saved Golf From The Bomber-- For The Time Being

Q: Were you involved in the search for Bryson's ball at all? 

Jon Rahm: Which one?

This slice of insouciance from the Spanish pro sums up the assault on golf that wasn’t this past weekend at the delayed Masters in Augusta. Rahm played with Mad Scientist Bryson DeChambeau for the first two rounds, 

So Rahm had an eyewitness view as the wheels came off DeChambeau’s wagon, spinning wildly in all directions. With everyone expecting him to take apart Augusta National on Thursday, the venerable layout bit back, saying, “Not so fast, Willis.”

After bulking up 40 pounds and incorporating all the classroom physics he’d absorbed in his education, DeChambeau has made it clear that he wants to take his sport to hyper-speed. Using his same-length clubs and a massive 47.5-inch driver he has scorched the Tour since its return from Covid-19, winning the U.S. Open and making Top 10s a common occurrence. 

More than that, he’s savaged the imagination of his fellow competitors. Tossing off 400-yard drives and laser approaches he made plain that he was going to revolutionize the sport. When he showed up in Augusta last week he would, like the Starship Enterprise, “go where no man has gone before” at the revered Masters’ course. He would pursue his strategy, his destiny, and the critics be damned with their “laying up” recommendations.

In practice rounds he was over-flying loblolly pines thought unassailable since the tournament began in 1934. He was driving the 350-yard third. How many eagles he would make was a popular wager going in. As a result, there was much talk that DeChambeau was about to make the course obsolete, unable to hold his brute power without extra land to stretch the holes.

Then the tournament began on a soggy morning with DeChambeau starting off with Rahm and Louis Oosthuisen. Employing his pedal-to-the-metal strategy, he quickly came a-cropper. It began innocuously on the 7th with a booming drive just to the left of the green into what seemed like casual grass— minus the usual “patrons". 

But the ball was like Waldo, and no one knew where in the world it went. Including Rahm. Unstrung by having to go back to the tee DeChambeau registered a bogey. Then, spraying his irons into the magnolia bushes, he added a double bogey 7 on 13. And while he pulled it together for a 70 in the first round he was mentally scarred. 

Missing greens, putts and fairways the rest of the way he ended up two under for the delayed event, an afterthought as Dustin Johnson sped away to the win at  record -20. As DeChambeau whacked himself on the noggin following his final putt, the assault on Augusta was a bitter joke. Even his 63-year-old playing partner Bernhard Langer had beaten him by a shot.

Bryson claimed dizzy spells at the root of his problems, but was defiant after being humbled by the indomitable fairways and greens. And while the 2020 version of the Masters was not the clarion call to bulk up, no one is fooling themselves that DeChambeau is a spent force.

While DeChambeau’s blitz strategy went pear-shaped, the players at the top of the list are almost all bombers, too. Winner Johnson can crush them in the 350-yard-plus zone (although he often played conservatively in the win.) Rory McIlroy is a rocket launcher. So are Rahm, Brooks Kopeka, Dylan Fratelli, Cameron Champ, Cameron Smith and a battalion of young lions who have left the old chip-and-putt artists in their wake.

As the Tour stars now pause till January, how many who saw DeChambeau’s bombing run since June are not going to hit the supplements and the gym to stay in the game? If they demur, they could be like the players who saw an athletic, driven Tiger Woods arrive in the 1990s and missed the message to get fit, hit the range and lose the beer bellies.  Of course it’ll be hard bodies all the time from now on.

Which leaves the Tour in a quandary as it runs out of courses that can reasonably stage a DeChambeau Long-Drive assault. Many of the traditional layouts have adjusted as much as they can, moving traps and trees to restrain the artillery. But DeChambeau can blow through all that when he’s on— which seems to be much of the time.

The easiest solution is to de-nuclearize the golf ball, but the manufacturers have the Tour by the dimples. Any reduction in power and distance could reduce the millions they pay in sponsorships to players and events.

Just a final word about a couple if Canadians who were not over-awed by Augusta National. Corey Connors finished six shots ahead of DeChambeau, making birdie on his last two holes to finish ninth overall and earn a berth in the next Masters in April 2021. After a dispiriting 74 in Rd. 1 Conners came storming back, picking up 11 strokes over three days on the famously difficult course. His star is in the ascendency.

Then there’s 50-year-old former Masters champ Mike Weir, who’s playing the best golf in his last decade, a time punctuated by injury. The first lefty to ever win a green jacket, he made it as high as -3 on Saturday before settling at +4. He had a nears-miss for win on the Champions Tour recently, losing to Phil Mickelson, but he too has shown he might be back on form for serious golf again. 

Just remember to wear a helmet when Bryson starts bombing again.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx