The Players Championship is in the record books, we’re just 19 days from the commencement of the 2021 Masters, and now is as good a time as any to review the arms race and the quest for clubhead speed on the PGA Tour. Bryson DeChambeau is the most talked about linkster on the PGA Tour and even those folks who are not true fans of the game willingly converse about his monster drives and bulked up body. Yet as evidenced by the fact that the golfer who is ranked 101st in driving distance, Justin Thomas, is the new Players champion, success in professional golf obviously isn’t limited to just bashing the golf ball out of sight.
DeChambeau is the long ball knocker on the PGA Tour. He is ranked No. 1 and his average tee shot flies a prodigious 337 yards. He won the previous week’s tournament at Bay Hill by one stroke over Englishman Lee Westwood. Westwood is 47 years old and is ranked 148th in driving distance, a noticeable 41 yards behind Bryson. In the past we’ve marveled at how far DeChambeau hits a golf ball, and yet the reason he is the reigning United States Open champion as well as a winner at Bay Hill is because he has an outstanding short game and is a rock-solid putter. He also has forced some of his fellow competitors into rethinking their strategy.
One of those who watched the metamorphosis of Bryson DeChambeau was power golfer and four-time major champion Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland. Following DeChabeau’s impressive Open victory at Winged Foot, Rory decided the time was ripe to try to match Bryson’s power. Now mind you, Rory was the No. 2-ranked driver on tour, but he was almost 20 yards behind DeChambeau and he wanted to close the power gap. It was a buyer-beware moment.
The end result some six months later? Nothing short of a disaster for the defending Players champ. Following rounds of 79-75 and a missed cut, Rory spoke to the press on Friday afternoon. He said that as of “October of last year I was doing a little bit of speed training and started getting sucked into that stuff. My swing got flat, long, and too rotational. Obviously I added some speed and am hitting the ball longer, but what that did to my swing as a whole probably wasn’t a good thing, so I’m fighting to get back out of that. That’s what I’m frustrated with.”
Rory added two telling comments. His first thought was about DeChambeau and the Winged Foot setup for the U.S. Open. Rory stated that his initial impression was, “Whoa, if this is the way they’re going to set golf courses up in the future, it really helps.” However. he countered with the comment, “I just need to maybe rein it back a little bit.”
Of course, there are lots of different ways to play great golf and win tournaments. In the case of Justin Thomas last weekend, his iron play catapulted him up the leader board. Television commentator Paul Azinger called his ball striking Hogan-esque, a tribute to former golfing great Ben Hogan who was noted for his precision ball striking. A similar formula was used three weeks ago when reigning PGA champion Collin Morikawa won the World Golf Championship at The Concession with stellar iron play and a new and improved putting stroke. As an aside, Morikawa is ranked 160th on tour with regard to driving distance.
While it’s easy to say that golfers should follow the Popeye the Sailor Man mantra of “I yam what I yam,” a number of top pros have shown a penchant for changing things up even when they’re at the height of their game. Now we have the second-ranked driver of the golf ball, Rory McIlroy, changing things up with his conditioning program to attempt to hit the golf ball farther. Along the way he lost his swing, his touch and his consistent ability to go low on the course. Masters champion Dustin Johnson, ranked fifth in driving distance, had similar thoughts about DeChambeau and power golf. Dustin acknowledges that he was intrigued by Bryson’s U.S. Open win and started thinking of how he could increase his distance off the tee. He stated, “I messed around a little bit back in October. I mean, if I want to, I could hit it further. Obviously the harder you swing, the bigger your misses are. For me, it just didn’t help.”
While the jury is still out, the injury factor has to be examined when it comes to the quest for clubhead speed and power. Bryson DeChambeau looks like the middle linebacker on your local college football team. Brooks Koepka is a great example of someone who radically changed his physique to become a member of the bomber brigade. Brooks met great success with his power game as he accumulated a pair of U.S. Opens and a pair of PGA Championships in just under two years. It’s great to be able to join a 20-something like Rory McIlroy and own four grand slam titles. Yet since that last major triumph in May of 2019 at the PGA, Brooks has been saddled by a litany of injuries and time off from the game. Perhaps it is too difficult to compete in 20-25 tournaments annually as well as practice as often as you need to in a quest to stay on top of the game. Golfers such as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson spent between 15-20 years at the top of the professional game. Now we’re seeing multiple major winners such as Rory and Brooks who have put together much shorter runs at the top.
The long ball knocker has always had an advantage in competitive golf. Hitting driver-wedge into a par-4 is a better formula for success in comparison to driver-5-iron. Over the course of 125 years, from Harry Vardon to Tiger Woods, the power guys have had the advantage. Yet if you consider the European domination of the 1980s and 1990s, bomber Greg Norman accumulated two majors while precision golfer Nick Faldo owned six and short-game wizard Seve Ballesteros took home five. The diminutive Gene Sarazen captured seven majors in the Walter Hagen-Bobby Jones era. and Gary Player won nine majors against the likes of Palmer and Nicklaus. As we stated earlier, there are lots of different ways to win at tournament golf.
The PGA Tour pros are at the Honda this weekend, travel to Texas for the World Match Play and the Texas Open in subsequent weeks, and are hopefully prepared for the 2021 Masters that will run from April 8-11. For those adherents of the bombs-away approach, here is a most telling statistic. Bryson DeChambeau is ranked No. 1 in the category of par-3 scoring this season. You don’t need a big drive to make birdie on a 170-yard hole. And perhaps the best piece of advice came from former PGA champion Paul Azinger. He said during Sunday’s broadcast that all that extra time spent in the gym could instead be used for working on one’s short game. Perhaps power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
