Bryson DeChambeau reflects on U.S. Open-winning bunker shot

After the drama and pleasure of the U.S. Open over the weekend, you would possibly assume that Bryson DeChambeau would want to take a number of days to decompress. Instead, he’s busier than ever. After a whirlwind media tour in New York City, DeChambeau was again to his day job on Wednesday, making ready for this week’s LIV Golf Nashville.

“I’ve been running on probably a cumulative total in the past three days, like maybe 12 hours of sleep, maybe,” DeChambeau stated at his pre-tournament press convention. “You guys are the reason why I keep going. It’s been fantastic.”

DeChambeau lined lots of floor in his interview, which included questions on how he balances content material creation with observe, his ideas about lacking out on the Olympics for a second time and what it’s wish to be a task mannequin for younger gamers. But for followers hoping to glean one thing from the two-time main champion’s on-course technique at Pinehurst, he additionally went deep on his U.S. Open-winning bunker shot.

“As much as I am a very mechanical, methodical person, there is an artistry to me that not too many people know but I hope they are starting to see,” DeChambeau started. “And that 60-yard bunker shot, no matter it was, after I acquired up there, the one factor that gave me lots of consolation was G-Bo telling me, Bryson, I’ve seen you hit far more tough pictures than this. You’ve acquired this. I stepped in there and executed it.

“I wanted a tap-in, but it got up to four feet, and I was ready to go nuts, and you could see me kind of get after it with G-Bo saying, ‘let’s go.’ That was so big. But I knew I had a four-footer to make. It wasn’t just a tap-in.”

As for what made the bunker shot so laborious? DeChambeau stated it was the precision required at impression.

“From a technicality standpoint, you can’t miss it a millimeter behind the ball or a millimeter too close to the ball,” he stated. “From 60 yards with an open face, it’s an explosion shot, and in the event you catch it just a bit skinny, I’m hitting it into that clubhouse. There isn’t any room for error. Very, little or no room for error. For it to even go that far out of a bunker takes a reasonably darned good quantity of power.

“If I chunked it, too, it’s brief, hits the entrance edge and comes proper again down. Now I’m attempting to get up-and-down simply to get right into a playoff. The issue was by way of the roof, and it’s one thing that I by no means want anybody to have, to have that have. But in a U.S. Open, the hardest take a look at in golf, you get offered that, you’ve simply acquired to go full power into it and simply embrace it and say, look, that is what the sport of golf has given me, I’ve practiced this earlier than. You’ve simply acquired to execute it.

“But the difficulty level was through the roof,” he continued. “I knew how exact I wanted to be. I keep in mind wanting down on the bunker and seeing only a small sliver of shiny sand about an inch and a half behind the ball, and I used to be like, simply go proper by way of that space, and that’s all I considered. I knew how a lot vitality to present it primarily based on how I used to be swinging it, and I hit it simply flawlessly. When it got here out, my eyes popped up, they widened, and I’m like, that’s excellent, and it landed excellent, and it ran out, and I’m like, ‘let’s go.’ That was large. It provides me chills fascinated about that.

“The difficulty was through the roof. I can’t explain, unless somebody experiences that for themselves, I can’t explain how difficult it truly was.”

Another issue that DeChambeau stated benefited him at Pinehurst? Dialing in his wedge specs.

“I learned what bounce works perfectly for me,” he stated. “I almost have no bounce on my wedge, but it has a wider sole, and that was a massive thing for me. I literally built it, I think, about less than a month ago, so my wedge game has just gotten really good recently because of that grind.”

DeChambeau will hope to proceed his main momentum in Nashville. He tees off alongside Carlos Ortiz and Jon Rahm at 12:15 p.m. on Friday.

Golf.com Editor

As a four-year member of Columbia’s inaugural class of feminine varsity golfers, Jessica can out-birdie everybody on the masthead. She can out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily answerable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular initiatives, corresponding to GOLF’s inaugural Style Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview collection, “A Round With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video type on GOLF.com.