One of the more popular Masters activities on Tuesday seemed to be not just tracking where guys were hitting balls at the Augusta National tournament practice facility with the Masters’ new range tracker feature, but also how many balls pros were hitting.
Most hit somewhere between 30 and 70 balls as they warmed up to practice. Others got into the triple digits, perhaps looking to dial in their swings or maybe a piece of gear. Max Homa banged a significant 247 balls.
But no one got near Bryson DeChambeau’s staggering 393 swings on the range on Tuesday.
So what was Bryson doing? While a lot of his swings were drivers, he worked in the full bag, from wedges to driver and seemingly everything in between.
He contended he wasn’t worried about fatigue.
“It’s planned. It’s strategic,” DeChambeau said during his pre-tournament press conference Tuesday. “So I know what I’m going to do during the week based on where I need certain things to be. I’m testing some drivers right now to find the best thing that I can use for me this week. It’s not the full answer, but we’re getting really close. I’m excited about that.
“The flow of it, it just depends on what I feel is not going well or going really well. I’m swinging it pretty darned well this week, feeling great. Just trying to get those reps in and make sure nothing is falling. Sometimes I almost try to break things on my own just to see what would happen with the ball flight, where is it going to go if I do this or do that. It’s just seeing the sensitivity level of my game and how sensitive the swing is.”
Gear nerds likely noticed he mentioned he was testing drivers, with several balls being tracked well over 185 mph ball speed and up to 150 apex height.
DeChambeau has been working to get a new LA Golf Driver into the bag. It hasn’t quite replaced his gamer Krank Formula Fire, but DeChambeau was testing multiple driver heads and then marking them up with red sharpie afterward.
“It’s just trying to get that dialed-in head, that perfect head,” DeChambeau said. “Been working a lot on some equipment stuff, and super close. Super close with some of the driver stuff we’ve been working on.
“But for my speeds, it’s just so tedious, and they have to be so precisely measured and defined. It’s tough. The manufacturing process is not easy. It’s one of those— where for speeds of my caliber, it has to be super precise. So I’m testing different heads to see how it reacts, how I feel, how it feels in my hands. I’m swinging it really good right now, so I’m just trying to get the most precise thing in my hand for this week.
“I’m just defining, okay, that spins too much or it misses left or it’s hanging out to the right so I can kind of identify, okay, this one probably has too much CG here or whatnot. Just trying to find that driver that acted like when I shot 58 at Greenbrier. If that driver, that would be great. But I don’t want to use it because I don’t want to change the face curvature and change the dynamics. I want to have that head just as it is. I don’t want it to change.”
As of this writing, DeChambeau has only taken a much more reasonable 55 practice swings, with what appears to be just nine drivers, so it seems DeChambeau has accomplished what he wants to, for now.
But whenever Bryson makes a significant change, it’s likely going to lead to some wild results.
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