Welcome to Play Smart, a regular GOLF.com game-improvement column that will help you play smarter, better golf.
After Bryson DeChambeau finished his third round at Pinehurst No. 2, he shook hands with his playing partners, signed his scorecard and headed straight to the range. Despite the fact that he’d posted a three-under 67 — the second-lowest round of the day — there was still plenty to work on in his swing.
DeChambeau has long been known as one of the biggest tinkerers in the game. No matter how well he’s hitting it, he always feels there’s room for improvement. The fact that he had built a three-stroke lead heading into the final round at the U.S. Open did little to change this philosophy.
“Pleased with how I struck it for the most part,” DeChambeau said. “Got to work on that just a little bit.”
Working on the swing “a bit” looks a little different for DeChambeau than it does for most pros. When the 2020 U.S. Open champ headed to the range for his post-round session, he had a full team around him. With a Foresight launch monitor on the ground across from him, DeChambeau hit balls until it was nearly dark. He also had a member of his team videoing every swing and logging the Foresight numbers in tandem.
For any other pro, behavior like this on the even of major Sunday would be a cause for concern. But that’s just Bryson being Bryson. Even with major championship No. 2 in his sights, his quest for improvement was still in full force.
DeChambeau isn’t just using feels to adjust his swing this week, though. He also relying heavily on the state-of-the-art app Sportsbox AI, which analyzes swing videos and spits out hundreds of datapoints about your body movements.
Meet Sportsbox AI, a swing app with potentially revolutionary swagger
DeChambeau and his coach, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Dana Dahlquist, have long used Sportsbox in their work together. But after a week of work U.S. Open prep in Texas last week leaning heavily data provided by the app, Team DeChambeau is all-in with Sportsbox at Pinehurst.
According to someone close to DeChambeau’s team, things really started to click during his Wednesday practice round at Pinehurst No. 2. As he made his final U.S. Open preparations, DeChambeau started hitting the ball “as well as he has since Greenbrier” [where he fired a 58 last fall].
GOLF.com’s source explained that DeChambeau has been trying to rid himself of a right miss. The issue, the source explained, was that on those shots that missed right his weight got to his lead side too quickly, moving his pelvis more toward the target. When this happened, DeChambeau had to use excess side bend to compensate, making it difficult to release the clubhead like he needs to.
After seeing the problem illustrated in Sportxbox, DeChambeau and his team quickly got to work correcting the issue. By Wednesday of this week, they’d fully solved the problem. And in every range session since, they’ve used those swings from Wednesday as a baseline, trying their best to get him back in the groove he felt in the lead up to the U.S. Open.
So far, the plan is working. Through three rounds, DeChambeau is the man to beat. And if he can keep swinging like he has so far, he’ll soon be hoisting his second U.S. Open trophy.