GAINESVILLE, Va. — Few players garner serious eyeballs when making a club switch, but Bryson DeChambeau is on the short list. In fact he may be 1A on the list.
The two-time U.S. Open champion has brought us along on his gear-nerd journey since his days with Cobra Golf, and it has been an electric ride. Of all of the players I have interacted with about equipment, he is by the far the most thought-provoking.
Now, LIV Golf‘s top dog and owner of the most unique bag in professional golf has made another highly anticipated switch — into LA Golf’s Proto irons. He’ll put his new gamers into action at LIV Golf Virginia this week.
As has become customary for DeChambeau’s irons, his LA Golf set is single length (37.5 inches to the end of the grip), with the faces containing “bulge and roll” like you might find on a driver.
Bulge and roll is an old-school way to counteract mishits, and it reduces side spin left to right or right to left depending on the strike; DeChambeau primarily hits a hard, high draw to neutralize that pattern even more. In his new irons, there is an 80-gram tungsten weight on the toe that gives DeChambeau the head stability to have an inside path, meaning he can swing hard with little fear of overcooking shots to the left. This weighting pulls the CG more toe side which slows the toe down, counteracting any face rotation in harmony with the face structure and DeChambeau’s impact conditions. Great thing for a player that prefers to hit a draw that starts right of the start line and floats back to center.
The new set is similar to the Avodas (US Open Irons) he had been playing the past two seasons after a short stint with a set of Pings, but his LA gamers have some subtle tweaks that gear geeks will dig. For one, the Protos — which have gone through a few iterations over the past few months — including a slight tweak to the heel section on the face that mitigates some of the curve on heel strikes. In other words the heel section of the face is slightly flatter (curvature wise)than the toe section. That was the final touch that not only shored up DeChambeau’s flight windows across the face but also allows him to dial in his preferred in-to-out swing path. The typical miss with that path is heel side so it’s a huge advantage, especially with DeChambeau’s speed, to know that if you do slightly miss a shot, the left-to-right curve that is typically the pattern stays in a tight pocket. Same rules apply for toe strikes.
I was with DeChambeau on the range at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club for his final test with his new irons, and his response was positive from the first strike. He intentionally hit shots off the toe and heel to test the side curve, and the shot patterns were exactly what he wanted. There were even a few balls off the heel that started straight and drew, which also caught DeChambeau’s attenion. Typically, this strike would start left and spin right, losing flight integrity, ball speed and flight stability.
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