The American’s startling victory at the US Open has split opinion because his radical approach is a challenge to the way things have always been done in golf
You couldn’t miss Bryson DeChambeau at the Masters in 2016. He was 22 and just out of college. He should, in fact, have been midway through the senior year but he’d quit to take what he called a “six-month apprenticeship” on tour. So here he was, strutting around Augusta National in his flat cap and bright red shirt, clean cut, square-shouldered and riding high up the leaderboard. After 35 holes he was one shot off the lead, then he made a triple bogey on the 18th. DeChambeau finished tied for 21st, the best performance by an amateur in more than a decade.
The previous year DeChambeau had won both the US Amateur Championship and the NCAA Division I Championship. He was only the fifth man to do it, and three of the previous four were Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jack Nicklaus. He was always going to attract attention, and that was before he opened his mouth. He spoke about his physics major, explained that he had a “one-plane swing” he’d learned from an manual written in the 60s, The Golfing Machine by Homer Kelley, that he played with clubs cut to the very same length and he had a putting method evolved from another obscure book, Vector Putting: The Art and Science of Reading Greens, by HA Templeton.
Related: Bryson DeChambeau is just getting started and has green jacket in crosshairs | Ewan Murray
