LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau lurking at the PGA Championship
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Bryson DeChambeau had eyes down and lips moving as he made his way to sign his scorecard Friday in the PGA Championship, muttering to himself every step of the way.
DeChambeau looked like someone who had thrown away a good round.
He shot 68.
DeChambeau was frustrated with his finish, a tee shot that took one bounce into deep rough, which led to a miscalculation of how it would come out of the rough, which led to bogey.
The big picture? The U.S. Open champion is right in the mix at a major, where he seems to reside a lot these days. It’s easy to forget DeChambeau when he’s 12 time zones away in Asia on LIV Golf. It’s hard to ignore him at the majors.
“It’s a great test. I’ve just got to have my putting a little more on and keep playing the way I am,” said DeChambeau, who was at 3-under 139 and five shots behind Jhonattan Vegas.
“It easily could be 7, 8 under right now,” he said. “Or I could be even par. So just keep moving along, and I think a 65, 64 is out there. I almost shot it out there today, and I definitely saw it out there. I just didn’t accomplish it.”
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This wasn’t particularly close. DeChambeau opened with a simple birdie on the par-5 10th, but he failed to cash in on the other two par 5s at Quail Hollow — a three-putt from 50 feet for par on the 15th, an errant tee shot on the seventh that forced him to lay up and made it difficult to hit wedge close with a back pin.
There were also a trio of medium-range birdie putts, one of them on the tough 16th, so there was plenty of good in there. It was that bogey on the ninth hole that left him muttering.
“I hit it down the left-hand side, a little bit of a draw, and it bounced into the rough,” he said. “It was sitting up, and I just went under it a fraction and it hit the top of the face and came out dead. Really regret not just spending 10 more seconds to look at it and go, ‘OK, I need to choke down a little bit on that second shot.”
It came out 30 yards short, he pitched to 10 feet and he missed the par putt.
DeChambeau spent the muggy morning in front of a wall of spectators, except on holes with water on one side of the fairway. They rarely leave disappointed, whether it was his near ace in the opening round or his sheer strength on nearly every swing.
DeChambeau has long been an enigma in what can be such a predictable sport, particularly with his successful chase to find speed and enormous power, and with his work on YouTube that is approaching 2 million viewers.
He can disappear on LIV Golf, particularly when the events are held in Asia. But he won the most recent LIV event, and he always seems to perform on big stages like the majors.
In this one, he still has ground to make up.
“I felt like I was playing good, just didn’t get anything out of it,” he said. “Still got some weird breaks out there. That’s what this golf course does to you. It was tricky with the wind kind of swirling, but for the most part, I felt pretty good.”
That’s the talk of just about every golfer at this level, a strong memory of all the little things that went wrong, a short memory for what worked out for them.
Surely there were a few things that went right Friday? DeChambeau mentioned the wind dying ever so slightly on the par-3 fourth, allowing his shot to catch the right side of the green to set up a 12-foot birdie putt.
And then he started going through the rest of the holes — trees on No. 2, not getting a firm bounce on the par-3 17th. His thoughts were interrupted to remind him he was supposed to mention the good breaks.
“I’m trying. I’m trying to think,” he said with a smile. “There wasn’t really many today. I’m sorry. I wish I could say there was.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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