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

After the drama and excitement of the U.S. Open over the weekend, you may assume that Bryson DeChambeau would wish to take just a few days to decompress. As a substitute, he’s busier than ever. After a whirlwind media tour in New York Metropolis, DeChambeau was again to his day job on Wednesday, getting ready for this week’s LIV Golf Nashville.

“I’ve been operating on most likely a cumulative whole up to now three days, like perhaps 12 hours of sleep, perhaps,” DeChambeau mentioned at his pre-tournament press convention. “You guys are the rationale why I hold going. It’s been incredible.”

DeChambeau coated lots of floor in his interview, which included questions on how he balances content material creation with observe, his ideas about missing out on the Olympics for a second time and what it’s prefer to be a role model for younger gamers. However 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 a lot as I’m a really mechanical, methodical individual, there may be an artistry to me that not too many individuals know however I hope they’re beginning to see,” DeChambeau started. “And that 60-yard bunker shot, no matter it was, once I obtained 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 obtained this. I stepped in there and executed it.

“I needed a tap-in, but it surely obtained as much as 4 ft, and I used to be able to go nuts, and you could possibly see me type of get after it with G-Bo saying, ‘let’s go.’ That was so massive. However I knew I had a four-footer to make. It wasn’t only a tap-in.”

As for what made the bunker shot so onerous? DeChambeau mentioned it was the precision required at affect.

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

“If I chunked it, too, it’s quick, hits the entrance edge and comes proper again down. Now I’m making an attempt 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. However in a U.S. Open, the hardest take a look at in golf, you get introduced that, you’ve simply obtained 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 obtained to execute it.

“However the issue degree was by way of the roof,” he continued. “I knew how exact I wanted to be. I bear 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 power to offer it based mostly 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 good, and it landed good, and it ran out, and I’m like, ‘let’s go.’ That was massive. It offers me chills interested by that.

“The issue was by way of the roof. I can’t clarify, except someone experiences that for themselves, I can’t clarify how tough it actually was.”

One other issue that DeChambeau mentioned benefited him at Pinehurst? Dialing in his wedge specs.

“I discovered what bounce works completely for me,” he mentioned. “I virtually haven’t any bounce on my wedge, but it surely has a wider sole, and that was a large factor for me. I actually constructed it, I believe, about lower than a month in the past, so my wedge sport has simply gotten actually good just lately due to 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 will be able to out-hustle them within the workplace, too, the place she’s primarily liable for producing each print and on-line options, and overseeing main particular tasks, equivalent to GOLF’s inaugural Type Is­sue, which debuted in February 2018. Her origi­nal interview sequence, “A Spherical With,” debuted in November of 2015, and appeared in each within the journal and in video kind on GOLF.com.