Tuesday Temblors

So, what did you think of yesterday's U.S. Open post?  Not that I've taken the time to reread it, but I'm struggling to understand my own reaction to the Bryson Experience, and I assume that has to be evident from my blogging thereof.  I'm hardly alone in that, so I think we should consider this a joint journey of discovery....  I'll play Lewis, you be that Clark fellow.

The Game Plan - Perhaps you'll find this an interesting point of entry, otherwise the Page Down key is at the lower-right of your keyboard.  Apply as required...

Young punk Dylan Dethier walked nine holes with DeChambeau during a practice round and filed this dispatch on his war planning.  You'll be shocked... shocked, I tell you, at this:

1. Hit lots of drivers

Yes, DeChambeau is planning on bashing lots of drivers this week. The goal, obviously, is to hit the
ball straight, but if he sprays a drive here or there, the benefits of hitting driver outweigh the pitfalls of finding the rough. DeChambeau said the rough is deep but manageable, especially when you’re coming out of it with a shorter iron or wedge. He feels he’ll rarely encounter a lie from which he can’t hit the green with a scoring iron.

 

“I plan to hit driver as much as I possibly can,” Bryson says. “It’s a tremendous advantage when you’re that far up, and you can hit a pitching wedge out of it. When you’ve got a 5-iron or 6-iron, it’s nearly impossible. You’ll be pitching it back into the fairway.”

Bryson is notoriously data-driven, so this should be read in conjunction with the above:

2. Rough is a 20-yard penalty

Word is that tournament officials plan to cut the rough once more this week, early, and then not again for the rest of the week. I can vouch personally that the rough looks especially juicy this week, more so than in past U.S. Opens. But how severe is the penalty for hitting it in the spinach? DeChambeau spent lots of time on Monday testing various conditions of the rough. It’s lie dependent, of course, but from an average lie, there’s an almost two-club penalty when hitting from the rough.

“So to put it in perspective, there’s about a a 20-yard penalty, for hitting into the rough. For me, that means about 12 to 15 percent extra on each club.”

Dylan seems to miss the obvious follow-up question, but I'm assuming he hits his driver way more than 20 yards past his three-wood.

This is bomb-and-gouge, quantified.  A twenty yard penalty adds a potential maximum of 280 yards to an hypothetical golf course, which equates to...well, a poorly-struck 4-iron?  But that penalty is if one misses all fourteen fairways, the actual penalty incurred from hitting driver every hole (and even Bryson doesn't, literally, do that) is a flip wedge....  and that's the Winged Foot rough.  Your mileage may vary...

James Colgan talks with a couple of knowledgeable sources, first the current Champion Golfer of the Year:

Shane Lowry, who has a bit of experience in golf tournaments with penal setups, has a theory of his own. The 2019 Open Championship winner thinks DeChambeau and Wolff have managed to avoid the carnage by simply out-driving it.

 

“I think the long, long hitters are hitting it past where the rough has been juiced up,” Lowry said after his round Sunday. “I think if you’re out late in the afternoon the rough is going to be trampled down a little bit long, they’re hitting shorter clubs because they’re hitting it longer … Matthew Wolff, I think he’s hit 12 fairways over the first few days and he’s five under, and he only hit two yesterday and shot five under. But there’s a lot of luck involved out there.”

As far as Lowry is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether the bombers are lucky or the beneficiaries of an advantageous setup, they’re getting something he isn’t.

“It’s just so difficult out there,” he said. “I get frustrated watching the golf in the afternoon when I go home because every time I see people in the rough they’re hitting on the greens and every time I hit in the rough I can’t seem to get anywhere near the green.”

Boo-friggin' -hoo, Shane.  They're not getting something you're not, they're just better than you are.  OK, I just said that to break up the pity party, because I assume that bit about the rough not being "juiced up" is nonsense.  It's really rather simple, Shane, they have shorter clubs in, therefore they hit more greens from the rough.

But there is this from a man who, while only playing two rounds there, maximized his exposure to that Winged Foot rough:

Yes, and Bryson hit some of those very shots with great success.  Phil, of course, spent his time mostly in those "Other Sites".

The implication being that the way to make the rough more penal is to make every green a forced carry....Bryson plays here once every fourteen (or perhaps eight) years, whereas the membership has to play there every day.  Who is the golf course for?

Bryson, The Reckoning - Really just the start of the reckoning, as this is way beyond the scope of one little blog post.  Let's begin with Mike Bamberger, a man I've frequently referred to as the conscience of our game:

Enter Bryson DeChambeau: Truly contending for the first time in a major, he was in complete control. Of himself.

Do you love his swing as you do Rory’s and Watson’s? Likely not.

Are you fascinated by his life story, as you are Tiger’s? Unlikely.

Would you trade body types with him as you might with Dustin Johnson? Probably not.

All the above is true, though Mike is being kind here.  Bryson is an off-putting personality, as he demonstrated in accosting that GC cameraman early after the reset.  The best case is that he's just awkwardly eccentric....but the worst case is that he reeks of entitlement.  I can't adjudicate between those possibilities, at least not yet, but we'll see how he grows into adulthood and copes with his success.

As Mike notes, his golf game is equally off-putting.  It's overly-mechanical and lacks any of that silkiness that we enjoy in our favorite players.  And the only thing more painful than watching him swing a club is watching him putt...  Of course that's just one man's opinion, perhaps you see it differently.  But I know one that couldn't care less:

DeChambeau, your new U.S. Open champion, does not care, and why should he? Think about the mental strength that requires, to do everything your own way, different from every other card-carrying member of the PGA Tour, and not care what anyone thinks or says.

Yeah, I get it, and golf is too stodgy and needs to be shaken up, but in this package it simply leaves me cold.  But please, Bryson, tell me more about your brand...

DeChambeau plans to gain 15 or so more pounds between now and the Masters, in mid-November. (Morikawa won’t.) He might have a driver there that is three inches longer than his current model. He’s not making changes because he’s looking for something to do. He’s redefining how to think about his game, much as Hogan did. It’s no wonder that Phil Mickelson says that DeChambeau is the most interesting thinker in golf.

Everybody likes praise, but DeChambeau, you can tell, does not turn to others for affirmation. He’s never shown that he really cares what anyone else thinks. (Let’s bring in Brooks Koepka for some play-by-play.) Hence, B.A.D.’s tree-trunk putter grip, his single-length irons, his robotic straight-armed putting stroke. Hence, his Hogan cap (who else is wearing one?), his 8 p.m. alone-in-the-dark driving-range session Saturday night, his two-minute analysis to pull a club on the short par-3 13th. About 210 yards on Sunday and, when all the math was done, a 7-iron for him.

I do respect it, I just don't like or enjoy it much.

Do give Mike a read, as his reference points for Bryson include Hogan and Nicklaus.   

If this Max Adler header is accurate, I'm far from the only one thinking this way:

U.S. Open 2020: Winged Foot members can embrace Bryson DeChambeau’s place in history more than they can the player

I can't not share this bit:

The USGA controlled the rough height and what time the bar opened, two things where it’s impossible to please everybody.

I'm a bit surprised that at a Gentile club the bar ever closes...

Here's a good Bryson take:

DeChambeau made his first impression on Winged Foot during the summer of 2016. Seeing some hacker guests duff their tee shots on the first hole, he decided he couldn’t suffer playing behind them and left his group as a three-ball. Shortly after in the grill room, a former club champion made small talk and inquired if he might like to get a game the next day. DeChambeau didn’t. “I don’t play golf,” he said. “I practice golf.”

Not every elite player has demonstrated an appreciation for the timeless charms of our game, though most have the good sense to at least pretend to.  Off course, he would not endeared himself to club members with this:

If the greens weren’t insulted by his rigidly unorthodox putting stance, they were when a hot mic caught his opinion of them (“These greens suck.”) during Round 1. Never mind that several other players voiced quite the opposite view of the course and conditioning. Tiger Woods grouped Winged Foot with Oakmont and Carnoustie when saying, “I think those three golf courses can host major championships without ever doing anything to them.”

Mark me down as in Maltbie's camp:

No one likes to hear another golfer say they’ve figured out the riddle of the game. That doesn’t fly in the grill room at Winged Foot, which might explain why that applause on 18 was restrained even by no-fans-during-a-pandemic standards. The club seemed to be echoing the sentiments of NBC’s Roger Maltbie, who Saturday night confided, “Every part of me wants to not like this,” before allowing, “but this is impressive.”

Every part of me still doesn't like it, but that takes nothing away from how staggeringly impressive that Sunday performance was.

Now let's spend some time with Daniel Rappaport, who has a series of trenchant observations.  These go way beyond Bryson, and I hope to circle back for those later in the post.  First, Bryson hits the ball a mile, but he's not out there alone:

1. We start, as always, with the winner. Yes, Bryson overpowered Winged Foot. There’s no other way to putit. He hit just 23 of 56 fairways (41.4 percent) for the week, four less than any previous U.S. Open champion in 40 years. He had no time for playing for position. He walloped driver wherever feasible. Course architect A.W. Tillinghast would have shuddered not just at DeChambeau’s final tally of six under, but at how he arrived there and where he hit it. The Winged Foot members weren’t exactly thrilled with what he did to their golf course, either, and surely the USGA thought its famed “U.S. Open rough” would have had a bigger effect on DeChambeau than it did.

 

 

But we have to give DeChambeau his due, because he wasn’t the only guy hitting the ball miles this week—he actually finished seventh overall in driving distance—yet he’s the one with the trophy. He was also the only player to shoot under par on Sunday, his three-under 67 three shots better than the next best guy. It was, without hyperbole, one of the best rounds in recent major championship history. And it was a surprisingly balanced attack all week—yes, he picked up 5.38 shots off the tee, third best in the field. But he actually gained more ground on his approach shots (6.98, third) and around the green (5.42, second), plus an additional 4.59 on the greens for good measure.

And that’s the thing with Bryson. He’s one of the longest guys on tour, and he may even be the longest, but it’s not like he’s playing a different ballgame than McIlroy or runner-up Matthew Wolff or World No. 1 Dustin Johnson. To reduce his performance to his driving distance misses the fuller picture. He played well-rounded golf all week, and he won it with his approach play, which typically is the weakest part of his game.

Seventh.  That's the reason I used the evolutionary vs. revolutionary distinction yesterday.  But the really scary part is how good he is with those other thirteen clubs...

As I discussed yesterday and a bit above with Phil's comments, how do we set up our golf courses?  Here's Daniel's take:

2. In hindsight, the course setup at Winged Foot played into the bombers’ hands. Length is always an advantage, and there’s a temptation to combat it by making the fairways super narrow and the rough super long. The problem is, when fairways are that narrow, everyone’s going to miss their share. The field only hit 39.6 percent of fairways this week—that’s the lowest percentage of any PGA Tour event over the last 30 years, per stats oracle Jason Ray. (DeChambeau might have hit only 23 fairways, but he ranked a respectable T-26 in the category.) And when everyone is missing fairways, the guys closer to the green are going to fare so much better than the guys further away.

DeChambeau was well aware of this, maybe more so than anyone in the field. Here’s what he said in his post-round presser: “[Statistician] Mark Broadie was talking to [coach] Chris Como, and they were talking about how they just made the fairways too small this week to have it be an advantage for guys hitting the fairway. So what I mean by that—let’s take an example of you going like a yard wide. Nobody’s hitting the fairway. OK, length’s going to win. You make the fairways too wide, length’s going to win.”

The takeaway: length is always going to win.

No, length is always an advantage, but it shouldn't and doesn't always win.   But there is a body of thought that, based upon a certain Ryder Cup in Paris, that the way to control the bombers is Winged Foot.  Narrow, bending fairways with long rough... How did that work out for us?

Of course One of Daniels colleagues had this rebuttal:

Well, when you put it like that...

I'm going to leave you with two more items on Bryson, then segue out.  First, this Dylan Dethier piece on Bryson's Sunday evening celebration might amuse.   You might be surprised by where the party moved in the dead of night, which will cause all the right heads to explode.

Lastly, this Stephen Hennessy items is well worth a scan.  he merely recounts a series of oddities about our Open Champion:

5. His autograph is the most unusual on tour. Though he's right-handed, Bryson can sign his autograph backward with his left hand. He spent hours perfecting his handwriting left-handed. "If I wanted to learn Arabic or Russian, I could. Or tie my shoes in a new way, I could. Why? Dedication," he told our Jaime Diaz in 2016. "I'm not really smart, but I'm dedicated. I can be good at anything if I love it and dedicate myself. And I love history. I love science. I love music. I love golf. I love learning. I love life. I love trying to be the best at anything and everything."

 

You always have to watch the guys that tell you that they're not very smart.

I'm sure I'll have more on Bryson Thursday (the regular Wednesday game will take precedence tomorrow), but I certainly need a break from this guy by now.  Perhaps you do as well.

Udder Stuff - U.S. Open Edition - First, I've been remiss on not giving Matthew Wolff his due.  Here's Daniel Rappaport's take:

5: Matthew Wolff showed incredibly well in his first U.S. Open. He never seemed at all overwhelmed by the history at his fingertips, probably because he doesn’t concern himself too much with golf history. On Thursday, he told me he wasn’t really aware of Winged Foot’s past, either the Massacre in 1974 or Phil Mickelson’s failure in 2006. He did notice all the pictures and memorabilia when walking through the clubhouse, but he didn’t want to get caught up in it because, as he put it, he “doesn’t want to make this tournament any bigger than it already is.”

 

As incredibly talented as he is—two major starts, two top-five finishes—Wolff was aided in that effort by the absence of fans. As has been the case at every fan-less event since the restart, there were only a smattering of volunteers, media, swing coaches and trainers on the grounds watching him chase the U.S. Open. It felt quite similar to a college tournament—not completely quiet, but pretty darn close. Wolff has played the vast majority of his golf tournaments in this type of atmosphere. (Remember, 16 months ago, he was a student at Oklahoma State).

It also led to a fun moment just before the start of the final round. Six minutes before he teed off with the lead in a major, Wolff was traipsing around the first-tee area, on the phone with a friend named Zach. As he saw a number of people staring at him—myself included—he cut the tension with a knife, flashing a cheeky smile and saying “hey guys! Hey everyone!” The opposite of nervous. You have to think he wouldn’t have made that phone call, or felt so at ease, if there were 10,000 people in a grandstand yelling his name.

I'm agnostic on the subject of who was helped or hurt by the absence of fans, which seems speculative.  Patrick Reed was alleged to be one major beneficiary, but that benefit lapsed on Saturday...

He is a good young player that hits it a mile, so one assumes his time is coming.  Of course, this was true as well:

6: Never an excuse, and it evens out over time, but man did Wolff get some tough breaks on Sunday. His lip-out on 4 could have dropped for the same price. On 10, his ball hangs up in the rough above the bunker, leaving a virtually impossible up and down. On 12, just after DeChambeau hit a drive into the right rough that bounced into the fairway, Wolff’s ball landed in the exact same spot and didn’t get the same bounce. On 17, his drive down the center of the fairway found a divot hole. This stuff happens to everyone, and it likely wouldn’t have made a difference given DeChambeau’s margin of victory, but Wolff had to feel like someone was against him. As he put it: “wasn’t meant to be.”

7: One more on Wolff. He violated one of the sacred commandments of golf: Thou shalt not giveth thee golf ball conflicting instructions. On the 14th hole, he asked his ball to SIT! And then, when it pitched on the very front edge of the green, he yelled GO! Everyone knows the ball only listens to the first instructions it hears. Not sure what Mr. Wolff was expecting here.

And where do I buys those balls that listen to even the first instruction?  He did get some bad bounces on Sunday, but he also shot 65 on Saturday when hitting two fairways.... So, it likely all balanced out, plus the margin of victory exceeded any effect of said bad bounces.

Other takes from Rappaport worth our consideration:

8: Tiger Woods’ chances of making the weekend died on the dramatic ridge that guards the front of Winged Foot’s 18th green. On Thursday, on his final hole of the day, his second came up just short of it, and he chunked his chip, nuked his fourth well past the flag and two-putted for double to finish with a 73. On Friday, on his ninth hole of the day, his second came up just short of it, and he chunked his chip, nuked his fourth well past the flag and two-putted for double en route to a 77.

 

That it happened in the same exact spot on both days is a curiosity worth noting.  To me the more disturbing thing is Tiger's inability to finish his rounds.  He wasn't in bad shape on Saturday, at even on the back nine, and then it all went pear-shaped.  Problem is, we're seeing this very same movie every time he tees it up.

Memo to all of the hotheads on Tour...This is how it's done:

11: The 18th tee was the site of maybe the coolest club-break in history. It was there on Friday that Henrik Stenson pulled a long iron into the left rough. It was his last hole of the day, and he was already nine over and knew he was missing the cut. He proceeded to stick the toe of the club in the ground, snap the shaft with his foot, then hand the remains to his caddie saying with a wry smile, “Oops.” We’d never glorify such a behavior—think of the children!—but man, that was swaggy.

 Swaggy?  I'm familiar with the word as a noun, but as an adjective?

Good to know.

And this on the limitations of television:

12: Despite living in New York for three-plus years, this week was my first time on the grounds at Winged Foot. On Monday afternoon, after finishing up some housekeeping stuff in the Media Center, I headed out to see the course for an initial look. I watched highlights of the 2006 U.S. Open on the weekend and had done my share of preparation, so I knew the greens were going to be something to behold.

And then I saw the 18th green and I stopped dead in my tracks. Couldn’t believe it was real. It is, without exaggeration, the most severe, the most wonderfully bizarre putting surface I have ever seen in my life. All the ultra-HD drone flyovers and topography graphics simply do not do the Winged Foot greens justice. They are way, way more dramatic than you could ever expect. One of those things you just have to see in person to believe.

My one visit was years ago, long before the Gil Hanse restoration.  This actually takes place on the 15th green, tentatively filed under the "When bad things happen to good people" category:

I bet Rory Sabbatini wishes he could take this putt again 🤷‍♂️😩 #nothisbest ⁦@usopengolf⁩ ⁦@WingedFoot_GC⁩ ⁦@GolfChannel⁩ ⁦@ttfgolf⁩ ⁦@PGATOUR⁩ ⁦@SkySportsGolf⁩ ⁦@eamonlynch⁩ pic.twitter.com/zUm1cnY5K3

— Fraser Cromarty (@CromartyFraser) September 20, 2020

Strike that good people bit, it's Sabbatini...

You know my thoughts on this guy:

17: Danny Lee didn’t quite go full Phil Mickelson, but it was close. On Saturday, after birdieing the brutal par-4 17th to get to a very respectable three over for the round, he hit his second shot just short and right of the 18th green. His pitch was perfect, leaving about a four footer for par. And then mayhem broke loose.

Lee six-putted. He tried on the first one and the second one, and then he stopped trying completely and went full whack-a-mole. He was obviously frustrated and ostensibly fed up with the trying greens at Winged Foot. But it wasn’t like he was playing a terrible round or anything like that. Video of the episode emerged on Sunday morning, and it wasn’t pretty. Neither was him slamming his putter against his bag twice afterward.

 

Lee then withdrew from the tournament on Saturday night, citing a wrist injury. Maybe his that was a problem, and that contributed to the frustration. Or maybe the Powers That Be politely suggested he pull out of the tournament after that childish tantrum. Who knows. But until Lee does something great in the game of golf, that’s what he’s going to be known for. And it’s not a good look.

He should have been immediately DQ'd.  I don't see why the USGA would allow him to save face by an injury WD.

I can't think of a better thought on which to exit than this:

18: Only 53 days until the Masters. See you all in Augusta.

That long?

OK, kids, I'll see you Thursday.