For someone who led the field this week in pre-tournament babble, Bryson DeChambeau discovered Thursday there is less to talk about when you’re waist-deep in shrubbery. He hits Augusta National on Friday morning five shots down, the marvel being that he is that close at all.
The game’s most volatile swing sprung a leak in its gyroscope.
“Yeah, not great. Not my best,” he said. “I got a little, I guess you could say, tight. I wasn’t comfortable with my golf swing. Normally when I’m really comfortable, I can keep going faster and faster and today, I felt like I got a little tighter.”
His first-round 70, accomplished only via a birdie-birdie finish, left him tied for 15th with a group including the varied likes of Dustin Johnson and 50-year-old Mike Weir. There have been bigger comebacks in Masters history and that DeChambeau spent much time on the range late in the day relayed the reigning U.S. Open champ’s concerns about what might happen next.
“This golf course, as much as I’m trying to attack it, it can bite back,” he said. "It’s still Augusta National and it’s the Masters. It’s an amazing test of golf no matter what way you play it. I tried to take on some risk today. It didn’t work out as well as I thought it would have.
“But at the end of the day, I’m proud of myself the way I handled myself and finished off. Birdieing 8 and 9 was a testament to my focus level and wanting to contend here.”
His problems weren’t so bad when the ball was in the air; his 334.6-yard driving average was, as usual, among the three longest in the field. The trouble came when he landed. He hit only 8-of-14 (57.1%) fairways and 11 greens (61.1%) in regulation. Augusta National will put up with a bit of wildness but don’t press your luck. For much of the day, that’s what DeChambeau did.
Starting on the back nine, he was scrambling right away, somehow managing to salvage par on No. 11 after driving deep into the brush down the left side. He then turned No. 13 into a Punch and Judy deal, set off by a drive into the pine straw in the right rough. Faced with a 194-yard approach to perhaps set up an eagle, he yanked his shot into heavy shrubbery to the left of the green. He next hit a provisional into the creek fronting the green but was bailed out when his caddie found his first ball deep in the undergrowth.
In sequence: drop after declaring unplayable lie; dubbed recovery shot after club hit brush on the backswing; punch out to 12 feet; two-putt double-bogey 7. After his first four holes, he was 2 over and soon seven shots behind Paul Casey.
“I’m greedy,” he said. “Sometimes I can get a little greedy and I like taking risks. You’ve got to take risks to win tournaments and, albeit I made double from it, I still think over the course of four days, I can get that back to under par.”
He did so over the rest of the round, including back-to-back birdies on Nos. 15 and 16 and two more birdies to close out. But if the round does not square with DeChambeau’s eight top-5 finishes in this calendar year, it fits a pattern at Augusta National. He has broken 70 only once in his 13 competitive rounds here and that 66, shot in the first round last year, led to a 21st-place finish after playing the rest of the tournament in 2 over.
On Augusta’s four par-5s, where this championship is often won or lost, he was 1-under on Thursday. Over his career, he has played the course in 2-over par. Oh, and after toying all week with switching to a 48-inch shafted driver, he stuck to his 45-inch regular club, his lack of accuracy notwithstanding.
“I think today proves that no matter how far you hit it, you still need to make the putts,” said Jon Rahm, who played in DeChambeau’s group. “He got a 2‑under‑par round because he also got a lot of up‑and‑downs and scrambling done. I think his short game is being drastically elevated right now.”
Players have come from further back to win the Masters. Both Nick Faldo in 1990 and Tiger Woods in 2005 were seven shots off the lead after the first round and still won. Suffice to say, those deeds were not accomplished from out of the shrubbery.
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