[Paul Rudovsky]

Most analysts have attributed DeChambeau's win to his length, swing speed, and strength.  These were no doubt important, but I have strongly believed that the most important factors have been his mind and work ethic.  The following article seems to back up my point.  Working with the folks at Bridgestone, he figured out how the ball would react differently coming out of deep deep WF rough when he was hitting short irons out of the rough--down to the differences in spin rates compared with shots off the fairway.


I remember reading about 3-4 weeks ago about DeChambeau's caddy spraying with mist the balls he was hitting with short irons on the practice range...and no one else understood why he was doing it.  And remember, he was not the longest at WH...by any measure.


And one last point...IMO there have been 4 "giants" in the game (in terms of playing ability and performance) in the last 100 years...Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus, and Woods.  The most consistent factor with all four has been their brain power...more so than physical power.


https://golf.com/gear/golf-balls/bryson-dechambeau-bridgestone-us-open-winged-foot/?utm_campaign=forecast&utm_source=golf.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%7Bdate%28&utm_term=Forecast%20Newsletter[/font]

[archie_struthers]

 


Paul great stuff here. Mentalists vs golfers




Most of the really good players (some tour players)  I caddied for as a youth tended to be fairly brain dead. Not a lot of introspection just aim it and hit it. One thought , could care less about what anyone else was shooting or how their day was going. Only their own game mattered. Cold hearted killers!


Hogan made it an art form with the story of his not noticing Sarazen's hole in one (don't believe )  Nicklaus never ever choking (along with great talent)  and Tiger just having so much skill that he scared everybody....Just don't know enough about Robert Tyre Jones but he certainly had a fire burning within that has rarely been matched or harnessed


DeChambeau is an outlier, and he might just be a golf genius too. His approach is so different at times that he has the rest of the field befuddled , hello Rory and he has the stones to run against the current. I swear he has taken best of Moe Norman and refined it to fit the times. Only time will tell !

[Kalen Braley]

I would disagree with this premise.

While you can win majors without brains and work ethic (cue Brooks K and John Daly), you sure as hell can't win if you don't have the physical gifts and talent to compete at the top levels in golf.  Certainly when you have both like a Jack or Tiger you're gonna win a boat load of tournies, but possessing the physical abilities are always the most important attributes in any sport at elite levels...

[cary lichtenstein]

Most analysts have attributed DeChambeau's win to his length, swing speed, and strength.  These were no doubt important, but I have strongly believed that the most important factors have been his mind and work ethic.  The following article seems to back up my point.  Working with the folks at Bridgestone, he figured out how the ball would react differently coming out of deep deep WF rough when he was hitting short irons out of the rough--down to the differences in spin rates compared with shots off the fairway.


I remember reading about 3-4 weeks ago about DeChambeau's caddy spraying with mist the balls he was hitting with short irons on the practice range...and no one else understood why he was doing it.  And remember, he was not the longest at WH...by any measure.


And one last point...IMO there have been 4 "giants" in the game (in terms of playing ability and performance) in the last 100 years...Jones, Hogan, Nicklaus, and Woods.  The most consistent factor with all four has been their brain power...more so than physical power.


https://golf.com/gear/golf-balls/bryson-dechambeau-bridgestone-us-open-winged-foot/?utm_campaign=forecast&utm_source=golf.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%7Bdate%28&utm_term=Forecast%20Newsletter

I am in 100% agreement

[Sean_A]

Very confusing. The premise of the article relies on the premise of super fast swing speed which is where power comes from. I think many pundits have already stated that a good game plan was devised,but it was a game plan built around power. To say power wasn't massively important is to ignore reality. Which in turn is to ignore the impact of tech. People are trying to unravel the threads, but they are all woven tightly and one thread doesn't work without the others. Power and a game plan put Bryson in position to win. Adding superb putting to the mix put the trophy in his hands. But this is what folks are complaining about, a lack of balance required to win. Bryson isn't some genius. Loads of people have been saying for some time that power, short iron play and putting is the formula to win on tour.

Ciao

[Paul Rudovsky]

Very confusing. The premise of the article relies on the premise of super fast swing speed which is where power comes from. I think many pundits have already stated that a good game plan was devised,but it was a game plan built around power. To say power wasn't massively important is to ignore reality. Which in turn is to ignore the impact of tech. People are trying to unravel the threads, but they are all woven tightly and one thread doesn't work without the others. Power and a game plan put Bryson in position to win. Adding superb putting to the mix put the trophy in his hands. But this is what folks are complaining about, a lack of balance required to win. Bryson isn't some genius. Loads of people have been saying for some time that power, short iron play and putting is the formula to win on tour.

Sean--

I am not (and I am sure the GOLF article is not) saying power is not massively important...but we are saying that power, without a plan of how to use it, is not enough to come close to what BdC achieved at WF.  Bryson IMO is some sort of genius...because while "loads of people" have said what you wrote in your last sentence, saying something is not the same as acting on that belief.  And that is what BdC did...and others did not do. 

Figuring out how to deal with WF's rough and tame it was huge, and allowed him to effectively utilize his power to generate the results he achieved.  No one else had the brain power and work ethic to make that happen.  "Saying" something is different from doing something about it!  Power was necessary, but was not sufficient.  Bryson was not the longest player in the field.  He putted great in part because his understanding of how to deal with the rough allowed him to put most of his approach shots where putting was possible on those greens.

[Sean_A]

It looks to me like we agree except for the part about brain power. Loads of golfers understand the power, wedge and putt strategy. Bryson executed the best on the week.

Ciao

[Niall C]

Paul


I agree with Sean. His strategy isn't anything new and neither is it rocket science in terms of its conception. At the end of the day, he based his game plan round his own game and having done that he executed the plan very well and that is why he won. All the chat about science is just so much hot air. Principally the media trying to create a legend round the next big thing.


Niall

[Paul Rudovsky]

Sean and Niall--


Yea, I guess it is just a coincidence that the guy who figured out exactly how much the rough affected the spin and roll out on irons won by six strokes.  Also just a coincidence that Jack did things like pacing off distances from trees etc etc before almost everyone else (actually JWN picked up idea from Deane Beman as I recall), and Hogan knew exactly how far he hit every club with every type of swing, and many of the top players on the Tour started studying "strokes gained" data...and they all have had great results.


Shot link and TrackMan like devices have made golf a data driven game and that will not change.  Those who are smart enough to figure out new and better ways to use the data that is available...and or generate new data that has not been available (which is exactly what BdC did) will dominate going forward.  Think how much $$$ tour players are paying data analysts to tell them what shots gained data is saying...   Frankly, my guess is that BdC understands this stuff better than any of these analysts.


That does not mean that physical skills do not matter...it means there is another factor to consider...brainpower

[Garland Bayley]

How exactly was it that the other bomb and gougers couldn't get within 6 strokes of Bryson? Oh, right, science and its application doesn't matter.

[Tal Oz]

Paul, I mostly agree with you that Bryson is out preparing and out thinking his competition. His floor is just incredibly high right now. The strokes gained data shows that his preparation on and around the greens at Winged Foot won him the US Open and he placed 7th in driving which certainly didn't hurt.

One other interesting factor that I heard on Twitter and would open it up to this DG is that Bryson's short irons and wedges having 6 iron length shafts helps keep his swing speed up through thick rough. Logically that makes sense, but I have no idea if it had any impact on the final outcome.

[Kalen Braley]

A few SG stats rankings for Bryson in the US Open

Off The tee: 3rd
Approach: 3rd
Around the green: 2nd
Putting: 18th
Overall: 1st

I think the 7th in driving distance doesn't really tell the whole story.  He did pretty much everything, except putting, better than basically everyone else.  Yes its easy to say "science" because he claims it, but when Tiger was lapping in the field in his far larger beat down at the US Open at Pebble, science wasn't the claim as I recall...

[Tom_Doak]

One other interesting factor that I heard on Twitter and would open it up to this DG is that Bryson's short irons and wedges having 6 iron length shafts helps keep his swing speed up through thick rough. Logically that makes sense, but I have no idea if it had any impact on the final outcome.

Not sure.  I would have thought that the longer shafts make his swing plane slightly flatter and that's not as good for coming out of the rough, but obviously it didn't slow him down much, so maybe the gain in speed outweighs the plane.


I do find it interesting that he is explaining a lot of this openly and apparently without much prompting from golf writers.


I'm a fan of genius, but I also believe genius is overrated [or over-written, anyway].  What the great players have in common, and what all winners have in common, is making the most of their abilities while not overstepping them.  Bryson is more inclined to do that with numbers, and in truth, most of today's golfers are doing that much more than before because we live in the age of Trackman -- Bryson just takes it much farther because that's how his brain works.  But, I mean, I have been pacing off my putts and applying percentages in my head for uphill or downhill since I was 15.  You can try to make it sound like rocket science but it is mostly just arithmetic . . . it's just that most golfers are not even good at arithmetic. 

[Kalen Braley]

On the bright side thou...

The game will see a huge influx of STEM nerds that step in and dominate the TOUR, because certainly science can improve anyone's ability to swing the club with the best of em! 

[Niall C]

How exactly was it that the other bomb and gougers couldn't get within 6 strokes of Bryson? Oh, right, science and its application doesn't matter.

or maybe because they didn't execute as well. You don't need a science degree to work that one out 


Niall

[Niall C]

Sean and Niall--


Yea, I guess it is just a coincidence that the guy who figured out exactly how much the rough affected the spin and roll out on irons won by six strokes.  Also just a coincidence that Jack did things like pacing off distances from trees etc etc before almost everyone else (actually JWN picked up idea from Deane Beman as I recall), and Hogan knew exactly how far he hit every club with every type of swing, and many of the top players on the Tour started studying "strokes gained" data...and they all have had great results.


Shot link and TrackMan like devices have made golf a data driven game and that will not change.  Those who are smart enough to figure out new and better ways to use the data that is available...and or generate new data that has not been available (which is exactly what BdC did) will dominate going forward.  Think how much $$$ tour players are paying data analysts to tell them what shots gained data is saying...   Frankly, my guess is that BdC understands this stuff better than any of these analysts.


That does not mean that physical skills do not matter...it means there is another factor to consider...brainpower

and what's not coincidence is that the guy who plays best usually wins. As for the stuff about working out the spin rates out of the rough, why would you need to know the spin rate when you've already observed how far the ball rolls out when hitting a wedge or a 9 iron or whatever just like every other player before ? Knowing the "science" isn't going to make any difference to how far the ball rolls out.


As for the brainpower, he worked out a fairly simple and not at all original strategy that suited his game and managed to execute it very well. Good on him. His success lay in the execution IMHO.


Niall

[William_G]

how much he thinks about every aspect of every stroke combined with what he knows based on practice etc...


it is a job for him and the only fun comes from winning, and that he did/does/doing

[John Crowley]

Watching Mickelson’s short game video shows that he (and Pelz) were/are pretty analytical. I’m sure Tiger was/is too. What about Hogan? BDC is just the latest to study, perhaps more than his peers, how to manipulate the golf ball.

[Tal Oz]

One other interesting factor that I heard on Twitter and would open it up to this DG is that Bryson's short irons and wedges having 6 iron length shafts helps keep his swing speed up through thick rough. Logically that makes sense, but I have no idea if it had any impact on the final outcome.

Not sure.  I would have thought that the longer shafts make his swing plane slightly flatter and that's not as good for coming out of the rough, but obviously it didn't slow him down much, so maybe the gain in speed outweighs the plane.


I do find it interesting that he is explaining a lot of this openly and apparently without much prompting from golf writers.


I'm a fan of genius, but I also believe genius is overrated [or over-written, anyway].  What the great players have in common, and what all winners have in common, is making the most of their abilities while not overstepping them.  Bryson is more inclined to do that with numbers, and in truth, most of today's golfers are doing that much more than before because we live in the age of Trackman -- Bryson just takes it much farther because that's how his brain works.  But, I mean, I have been pacing off my putts and applying percentages in my head for uphill or downhill since I was 15.  You can try to make it sound like rocket science but it is mostly just arithmetic . . . it's just that most golfers are not even good at arithmetic. 

Tom, spot on the swing plane will get slightly flatter but it seems his increased swing speed throughout the bag has helped him even in thick rough.


Bryson sure likes sounding like a genius and indeed gets ALL the media attention as perceived genius. What got less of the attention since the Covid break was just how hard he worked to get there. Almost all pros these days are using trackman and strokes gained data to decipher their game, but Bryson is outworking them. He added 30+ lbs, worked on his short game and putting, added distance, all with a maniacal sense of perfection in mind. Him strutting down the 18th fairway at Winged Foot scribbling who knows what in his scorecard is his way to stay in focus mid tournament. Yes, even when he had a 6 shot lead walking down the 72nd. He's easy to pick on, but hats off for figuring out what works best in pro golf ~right now~ and applying it.

I'm very curious to see how he handles Augusta. Before the open I thought places with tough greens and approaches would be the hardest for him to win at. He proved me wrong at Winged Foot.

[William_G]

Tom and Tai,


I'm not seeing any flattening of swing plane while that would be a valid presumption.


He is iron Bryson, same swing plane every club

[Niall C]

Watching Mickelson’s short game video shows that he (and Pelz) were/are pretty analytical. I’m sure Tiger was/is too. What about Hogan? BDC is just the latest to study, perhaps more than his peers, how to manipulate the golf ball.

John


To an extent every player is analytical, even a hacker like me. After 50 years of scuttling a golf ball around I've a good idea of how a ball reacts when struck a certain way or out of a certain lie. I also have a good idea on my own strengths and weaknesses and tend to play accordingly. All that comes from trial, error and observation. Every player is the same.


Niall

[Garland Bayley]

One other interesting factor that I heard on Twitter and would open it up to this DG is that Bryson's short irons and wedges having 6 iron length shafts helps keep his swing speed up through thick rough. Logically that makes sense, but I have no idea if it had any impact on the final outcome.

Not sure.  I would have thought that the longer shafts make his swing plane slightly flatter and that's not as good for coming out of the rough, but obviously it didn't slow him down much, so maybe the gain in speed outweighs the plane.
...

Is you concern that the flat swing plane allows the hosel to be caught by the rough and close the club face?

[Tim Martin]

A few SG stats rankings for Bryson in the US Open

Off The tee: 3rd
Approach: 3rd
Around the green: 2nd
Putting: 18th
Overall: 1st

I think the 7th in driving distance doesn't really tell the whole story.  He did pretty much everything, except putting, better than basically everyone else.  Yes its easy to say "science" because he claims it, but when Tiger was lapping in the field in his far larger beat down at the US Open at Pebble, science wasn't the claim as I recall...

The final round scoring had nobody but BD under par and only three players at even. He played the round of his life when he needed to which makes me think there’s more to come.

[John Crowley]

Tom and Tai,


I'm not seeing any flattening of swing plane while that would be a valid presumption.


He is iron Bryson, same swing plane every club

Right. Haven’t seen much  discussion of the lie angles of his irons. My understanding is that they are more than 3 degrees upright. That does not track with a flatter plane.

[Adam Clayman]

All this does is confirm the bias for low mowed firm ground, accentuating bounce and roll. Imagine if all those shots at WF weren't stopped by a standard repetitive lush rough presentation?

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