Golf
Originally Posted: February 29, 2016
It’s been easy to turn Bryson DeChambeau into a caricature. Last summer, as he was on his way to becoming just the fifth person to win the NCAA Championship and U.S. Amateur in the same year, the SMU physics major with the funny clubs and the quirky swing was portrayed as Victor Frankenstein with a sharp short game. It’s true that DeChambeau is a disciple of Homer Kelley’s The Golfing Machine, the dense, scholarly tome that scientifically breaks down the swing into 24 components with endless variables. And it took tremendous mechanical know-how and extensive testing to perfect DeChambeau’s one-of a-kind set of Edel irons, each of which is the same weight and length (37.5″, a typical 7-iron). But to call DeChambeau a mad scientist ignores the artist within. On the wall of his bedroom in his family’s home in Fresno, Calif., hangs a stippled drawing depicting Ben Hogan’s famous 1-iron at Merion; it took DeChambeau four months to create it. He brings the same creativity to the links, having shaped a dazzling array of shots last summer en route to the historic double-dip that had previously been achieved only by Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Ryan Moore. READ MORE