19th Hole
Is this the real reason behind Bryson DeChambeau’s total loss of form?
In last week’s column, Rich Hunt identified his 23 players who can win the Masters, with his final ten picks including both eventual champion Jon Rahm and 54-hole leader and tied-second, Brooks Koepka.
At the start of the piece, Rich quickly dismissed 14 of the 18 LIV players “based on their most recent performances on the PGA Tour as well as how well the player has played on the LIV Tour.” They included the 2020 U.S Open champion and former world number four, Bryson DeChambeau.
Once the darling of the long-hitters, the 29-year-old has admitted he is currently “working on stuff,” – a nod to the contents of his 2023 golf bag – but it remains that he has not won since the 2021 Arnold Palmer Invitational and looks a far cry from the player that, just under three years ago, recorded a six-shot romp at Winged Foot.
Posting on Twitter as Hunt Golf Analytics, Rich posted the reasons he believes Bryson has failed to progress, concentrating on his iron play.
The post starts by saying that, after the pandemic, BDC was the “best driver of the ball on Tour who was doing a reasonably good job on approach shots and around the green & was putting really well,” before looking at the Power-To Putting Principle, a method he wrote about in a column in 2019.
The Power-to-Putting Principle is that there's a strong correlation between distance off the tee and the length of average birdie putts. This mainly comes from par-5's and dogleg par-4's where long hitters get the biggest advantage. pt3
— Hunt Golf Analytics (@Richie3Jack) April 7, 2023
Rich suggests that, “They’re [long hitters] more likely to make shorter length putts than superior putters of the ball are to make longer putts,” before saying that, “if you have arguably the longest hitter on Tour and he’s putting great, that means a lot of birdie putts are going to fall because they are higher% putts being made by a superior putter of the ball.”
The Twitter post mentions some of the past golfing legends, “were often very long off the tee and good putters (Bobby Jones, Palmer, Seve, Greg Norman, Nicklaus, Watson, Tiger, etc)” before analyzing Bryson’s current issue.
But one of the things Bryson has had some issues with is his iron play. After his hot streak after the pandemic/pre-injury his iron play was weak from the Red Zone (175-225 yards). And throughout his career, his iron play has been, at best, up-and-down. pt7
— Hunt Golf Analytics (@Richie3Jack) April 7, 2023
The study continues.
“Sometimes his iron play has been exceptional and other times it’s been some of the worst on Tour,” says Rich. “And since he’s never been a good player around the greens, when his iron play is off, it’s going to result in a lot of bogeys.”
As fans are aware, Bryson has single-length irons through the bag, and Hunt suggests that those, plus a fascination for the Long Drive Competition, are not the methods by which a player can become a good iron player.
and while I'm all for speed training and have great admiration and awe for Long Drive competitors, I'm not so sure that training and competing in long drive competitions is the best thing for becoming a good iron player by Tour standards. 10/10
— Hunt Golf Analytics (@Richie3Jack) April 7, 2023
Looking at the official stats for the 2021 season, Bryson completed 15 events, leading the ‘off-the-tee’ stats in five, and ranking top-five in another two. However, he also recorded eight events with a ranking of 40 and worse for approaches and 12 times a minus figure for ‘around-the-green.’
Rich believes he can come back.
Answering a respondent, he writes, “He’s still young and has shown the ability to play at a top level. So many people in golf don’t realize just how up-and-down and unpredictable careers on Tour are. That’s a big reason why I think the LIVT model is flawed.”
Given his statistics when winning his one and only major (1st off-the-tee, 1st approaches, 3rd around-the-green and 20th for putting) Bryson has a few years to get it all back – Winged Foot is due to host the U.S Open again in 2028.
More from the 19th Hole
19th Hole
‘Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight’ – LPGA pro offers candid take following rough AIG Women’s Open finish
An opening round of 77 left LPGA pro Jenny Shin with a mountain to climb at last week’s AIG Women’s Open.
However, fighting back with rounds of 69 and 67, Shin found herself six shots off the lead and just outside the top 10 heading into Sunday as she went in search of her first major victory.
Shin, who won the US Girls’ Junior at just 13, couldn’t back those rounds up on Sunday, though, and after playing her opening nine holes of the final round in level par, she then bogeyed three holes coming home to slip down the leaderboard and eventually finish T23.
Taking to X following the final round, Shin offered a frustrated and honest take on how she was feeling, posting: “Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish.”
Don’t think I’ll sleep well tonight. What a crappy way to finish
— Jenny Shin (@JennyShin_LPGA) August 3, 2025
Shin has made 11 cuts in 13 starts on the LPGA Tour this season, but has been plagued by frustrating Sunday finishes throughout the year. Shin ranks 102nd on tour this year out of 155 for Round 4 scoring in 2025.
Miyu Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women’s Open with a composed final round of 70 to win her first major of her career by two strokes.
Cameron Young won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first victory on the PGA Tour.
Young dominated all weekend at TPC Sedgefield, running away from the pack to win by six strokes and put himself in contention for a Ryder Cup pick in September.
Ahead of the event, the 28-year-old switched to a Pro V1x prototype golf ball for the first time, following recent testing sessions with the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team.
Interestingly, Young played a practice round accompanied by Fordie Pitts, Titleist’s Director of Tour Research & Validation, at TPC Schedule early last week with both his usual Pro V1 Left Dot ball and the new Pro V1x prototype.
Per Titleist, by the second hole Young was exclusively hitting shots with the Pro V1x prototype.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to test it this week, but as he was warming up, he asked to hit a couple on the range,” Pitts said. “He was then curious to see some shots out on the course. Performance-wise, he was hitting tight draws everywhere. His misses were staying more in play. He hit some, what he would call ‘11 o’clock shots,’ where again he’s taking a little something off it. He had great control there.”
According to Titleist, the main validation came on Tuesday on the seventh hole of his practice round. The par 3 that played between 184 and 225 yards during the tournament called for a 5-iron from Young, or so he thought. Believing there was “no way” he could get a 6-iron to the flag with his Left Dot, Young struck a 5-iron with the Pro V1x prototype and was stunned to see the ball land right by the hole.
“He then hits this 6-iron [with the Pro V1x prototype] absolutely dead at the flag, and it lands right next to the pin, ending up just past it,” Pitts said. “And his response was, ‘remarkable.’ He couldn’t believe that he got that club there.”
Following nine holes on Tuesday and a further nine on Wednesday, Young asked the Titleist team to put the ProV1x balls in his locker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Rickie Fowler fired an opening round of one-under par on Thursday at the Wyndham Championship, as the Californian looks to make a FedEx Cup playoff push.
Fowler is currently 61st in the standings, so will need a strong couple of weeks to extend his season until the BMW Championship, where only the top 50 in the standings will tee it up.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, Fowler has made an equipment switch of note, changing into new iron shafts, as well as making a switch to his driver shaft.
The 36-year-old revealed this week that he has switched from his usual KBS Tour C-Taper 125-gram steel shafts to the graphite Aerotech SteelFiber 125cw shafts in his Cobra King Tour irons, a change he first put into play at last month’s Travelers Championship.
Speaking on the change to reporters this week, Fowler made note that the graphite shafts offer “something that’s a little easier on the body.”
“I mean, went to the week of Travelers, so been in for, I guess that’s a little over a month now. Something that’s a little easier on the body and seemed to get very similar numbers to where I was at. Yeah, it’s gone well so far.”
Fowler has also made a driver shaft change, switching out his Mitsubishi Diamana WB 73 TX for a UST Mamiya Lin-Q Proto V1 6 TX driver shaft in his Cobra DS-Adapt X, which he first implemented a couple of weeks ago at the John Deere Classic.
However, according to Fowler himself, the testing and potential changes are not done yet.
“Probably do some more testing in some different weight configurations with them once I get some time. Yeah, I feel like we’re always trying to search, one, to get better but are there ways to make things easier, whether that’s physically, mentally, whatever it may be. So yeah, I thought they were good enough to obviously put into play and looking forward to doing some more testing.”
Fowler gets his second round at TPC Sedgefield underway at 7.23 a.m ET on Friday.
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