Bryson DeChambeau may raise some other trophies before the end of his season.
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While Bryson DeChambeau was dangerous to enter the week, it now appears official. He won the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
The 26-year-old Extreme Distance Tracker paid off in victory at the Detroit Golf Club, and so well that it is easy to imagine him steering on similar courses that we see throughout the PGA Tour. Courses that test his peers at a significantly higher level than what they are currently experiencing. Detroit GC, with trees and crude for best defense, simply limited itself to Bryson’s 350-yard records. They were in 19.
That DeChambeau was approaching the green – an anomaly in the Tour victory – simply didn’t matter. Distance, distance and more distance have beaten everything. So the putter completed it. DeChambeau ended the week before with strokes earned: off the shirt and strokes earned: mass. This is his new model: hit a mile, use that distance to hit multiple loft clubs, keep greener as a result and if the putter is fantastic, you will most likely win.
What could be more frightening is that DeChambeau has apparently raised the floor. This is what the best players do during their tops. They continue to lose their bad rounds at par. With what he described as his game ‘B’ on Friday, DeChambeau fired 67. On Sunday, despite having sent more greens with wedges by air, he still signed for a 65. His model creates enough benefits over the course of the par 72 that he is playing is truly a par 70. For the rest of the tour – players like Troy Merritt, who was dangerously off-road on Sunday – must be worrying.
As we move forward, keeping all things up to date, there is more Bryson dominance to come. Particular courses will be susceptible to its rash in the same way that Detroit Golf Club was and is. It is not long, its par 5s are all accessible and its fairways were solid enough that the units regularly rolled over 340 meters. In Detroit GC, there aren’t enough problems in most of Bryson’s landing areas – for which designer Donald Ross jokingly mocked earlier this week – and there aren’t enough problems elsewhere. Poor drive, like the one that hit Sunday 17, in the rough should theoretically make life difficult for him. But from 231 yards, he grabbed his 8-iron and threw it. He would have ended up with an easy two-pointed bird. Some courses fail to respond.
What could it remind you of? On driving statistics alone, DeChambeau’s advantage over most of the course was similar to Tiger Woods’ distance advantage to the 1997 Masters. Woods was the longest 23-yard player that week and practically perfect for the 63 holes finals. DeChambeau was 24 yards longer than this week’s longest next player (Matthew Wolff) and fielded everything he could reasonably do. The model is difficult to ignore.
Would it be successful at the British Open? Maybe not. But throughout the park the stages of the tour in America – Columbus, Ohio, Minneapolis, Memphis, etc. – Most of Bryson’s perks will go up to Detroit this week. DeChambeau will take a break next week and return to the Memorial Tournament, where he won two years ago. The PGA championship rests on the horizon, just four weeks away. Although TPC Harding Park will have reduced its fairways and strengthened its rough, if you drive it well there, it will find contention in a major for the first time in its career. In the meantime, we will get him out, praise DeChambeau and interrogate him at the same time. We will ask: is it sustainable? A favorable course line and good health make the answer obvious.
