Bryson DeChambeau plans next hairbrained scheme as links struggles continue
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Some players roll over and accept that they will never get the hang of links golf. But this is Bryson DeChambeau, and that means it’s an excuse to create an elaborate testing regime…
Bryson DeChambeau’s problems with links golf are hardly a secret.
You just have to look at his record in The Open to know that. With three missed cuts interspersed with ties for 33rd, 51st and 60th, it’s one of the few locks of the game he has struggled to pick.
His main issue with seaside golf? Wind. Specifically “thick wind”, but we’ll come back to that. Indeed, his only top 10 in golf’s oldest major was at a benign St Andrews in 2022.
But DeChambeau is not willing to roll over and accept this. Instead, he’s planning his most elaborate testing regime yet.
So elaborate, in fact, that he almost didn’t want to go into it, such is his talent for creating headlines like the one at the top of this page.
First, though, the cause. DeChambeau found himself describing the kind of wind we experience on the array of world class links courses dotted around the British Isles in a way that only DeChambeau could.
“From terminology, ‘heavy’ wind is a great way to describe it,” he explained in his pre-Open press conference. “It’s thick. You go, ‘All right, this feels like a 15-mile-an-hour wind’, and all of a sudden it plays like a 30-mile-an-hour wind, and you’re like, ‘What the heck?’ So I think that’s the trick of it. If you grew up here, you play a lot of golf over here, you get quite comfortable and knowledgeable about that. I just need more reps in a sense.
“Hopefully it stays warm and my body stays warm. But yeah, it is a thick wind.”
The short-term plan is still – if you’ll excuse the pun – a bit up in the air as he plans to work on “using the wind” rather than trying to “ride the wind” like he does back home.
“I’m still working on that,” he added. “We’re doing some testing right now [and] continue working on how different types of wind affect the golf balls. It’s something I’m working on [as] a personal project, and it’s going to take time to understand it.”
That “personal project”? Strap in.
“This is going to be wild,” he said as a gaggle of reporters collectively leaned in to ensure they didn’t miss a single word.
”Imagine a scenario where you’ve got a 400-yard tent, and you can just hit any type of shot, with any wind, with all the fans. That’s what I imagine, like in a hangar, or in a big stadium. That would be cool to test.
“I do it every day in my head. A bunch of nothing going on up there.”
As for the ongoing talk of LIV Golf getting a links-based event on the calendar to get their stars prepared for The Open, DeChambeau insisted that “is what we need to do”.
“But,” he added, “it’s difficult to play links golf courses currently under what’s going on.”
“I think at some point we’ll be able to do that in the next few years. Until then, we’re just going to have to ride it out, but we definitely want to. We’ve thought about that from the inception of [LIV Golf]. Getting it onto a links golf course has been nearly impossible.”
That feels like another story for another day.