Bryson DeChambeau is the low amateur and high curiosity item of this Masters.
He is the 22-year-old with the Great Gatsby looks and the Three Musketeers name. There is a touch of mad scientist about the now-former physics major at SMU who helped design his revolutionary set of irons — all of them the same length.
And he names them: His 3-iron is Gamma, because that’s the third letter of the Greek alphabet. His 9-iron is Jackie because Jackie Robinson’s number was 42, which matches the degree of loft in that club. And so on.
He was the fellow who was out-playing his partner Jordan Spieth in Friday’s second round until being overcome by a powerful affinity for the trees and walkways far leftt of the 18th tee. An unplayable tee shot and a reload that went just as wrong cost him a triple bogey and the chance to be only the third amateur in the 2000s to stand under par at the halfway point of the Masters.
As it was, his even par 144 placed him securely in a tie for eighth, the kind of lofty base camp that an am so rarely occupies here.
His unique viewpoint seems to marry a mathematician’s mind and a romantic’s soul. Which means he’ll say some stuff you don’t often hear around the members’ grill. Such as this from earlier in the week: “If you can beautifully mesh the art and the science of (golf) to enhance your game, there’s no down side to it.”
He has the vocabulary to call his two badly pulled drives on 18 on Thursday “an anomaly.”
And the confidence to declare, “It won’t happen tomorrow.”
Can you say, “Next big thing?”
“Watch out for him,” Spieth said.
All that, and his caddie has quite the story, too.
The guy on DeChambeau’s bag here this week is Conyers-raised and has carried bags for more people than a skycap working a double shift. During a visit to Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club 16 years ago, Drew Hinesley accidentally discovered there was work to be had as a human pack mule. And off he went on a series of temp jobs — detouring briefly to try his hand at sports broadcasting — until here he is now, attached to the second-round sensation of the Masters.
And the best part of it is, next week in Hilton Head, the two of them get to play for profit as DeChambeau makes his professional debut.
Who knows where Hinesley would be now if he weren’t such a fastidious man?
His connection to DeChambeau was the product of happenstance. Both men stand upon a strong faith, so they might argue there was more to the meeting than that.
In last year’s U.S. Amateur, Hinesley worked the bag of Scottish amateur Grant Forrest. He picks up the story from there: “We were staying right next door to some kid named Bryson DeChambeau. I went over there to borrow an iron to iron my clothes, and that’s how we met. And here we are.”
As a kid whose interest in college waned about the time he was told he wasn’t good enough to walk on the baseball team at Georgia Southern, Hinesley drifted. Then one day he went with a friend who was picking up a check at East Lake, and a brief interview later, Hinesley was hired on the spot as a caddie.
Branching out, he threw himself into an itinerant existence, travelling between tours, often standing by in the club parking lot waiting to be plucked by some player. How flighty is this life? Hinesley figures he has worked for more than 50 players, both men and women.
Initially marriage and fatherhood was not good for such a career choice. He tried other work, training as a sports broadcaster and even getting a job in North Carolina. But that business is built on sand, too, and after a layoff, back he went to the caddie’s life. His wife, Hinesley said, is accepting his return “step by step.”
Caddies all look for some kind of stability with a player, look to build a relationship in which, Hinesley said, “You get to know each other, get to know every single shot the guy has.”
“But you don’t always get it.”
In trying to build something lasting with a thinking man’s player, Hinesley estimates he has read more mechanics-of-golf books in the past two months than he has during the rest of his life. He has worked doubly hard to comprehend the unique language this player brings to the course.
So, does he speak fluent DeChambeau yet? “I’m getting there. It’s one of those I can understand it, I just can’t speak it,” Hinesley said.
He likely won’t have to do much work on the confidence-building front. Late in the day, the shadows of the second round lengthening, DeChambeau looked up at the leaderboard at one point and saw himself in lone possession of second in the Masters. Someone asked him what he thought at such a moment.
“I belong,” he answered immediately.
His caddie is looking to show the same thing.
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