Eddie Pepperell has been following Bryson DeChambeau’s progress closely. He just hasn’t been following his diet.
The 29-year-old Englishman returned to tournament play on Wednesday at the British Masters, showing off a slimmed-down figure after undertaking an “extreme diet” during his offseason.
Pepperell hasn’t played a golf tournament since early March. But he has been watching plenty of PGA Tour action, firing off a characteristic run of jokes on Twitter as the tournaments have played out.
On July 2nd, as DeChambeau took on the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Pepperell was watching. “With every drive Bryson hits, I see my impending barista job come closer,” he wrote.
On July 6th, he posted a photo of a large bag of “Serious Mass” chocolate protein powder. “S— just got real @b_dechambeau you better watch out cause this little whippersnapper will be within 75 of you in no time.”
On July 13th, he continued the barista theme. “I may be sliding down the world rankings at a pace not seen since its inception but today I took some money off some friends on the course. Felt great. Will tide me over before I have to give a definitive answer to Costa Coffee,” he wrote.
As it turns out, Pepperell was on a diet of his own — just one with a decidedly different end goal than DeChambeau’s max-calories scheme.
“I’m about 10 centimeters thinner around the waist, apparently,” Pepperell told Sky Sports of his slim new figure.
“I’m a bit late, 29 now, so I’m getting on a bit. I don’t know what prompted me to start. I’ve beefed up in the sense that I’ve eaten a lot of beef! I’ve taken the opposite route to Bryson DeChambeau, I think it will pay off more for him than it will for me.”
The last time we saw Pepperell in action was at the Qatar Masters, where he was DQ’d after signing an incorrect scorecard (the total score was correct, but two of the holes had incorrect numbers on his scorecard). That was the very same week, he said, that he began the diet.
So how does a professional golfer drop four inches from his waistline while at home during quarantine? Pepperell insisted that it was through keeping things simple (and extreme).
“So I found this extreme diet, I tend to be quite extreme in that sense so I knew it would probably be the right thing for me to do,” he told SkySports. “I’ve adapted it a bit now, but for four months all I ate was steak, liver and bone broth every day. I must say, my body felt amazing for it. I felt just great.”
Pepperell’s longtime girlfriend is a nutritionist and had been eating vegan, but she agreed to change up her diet to join Pepperell in his pursuit. On July 11th, he posted a photo of “his and hers” steaks, presumably scarfed down by the couple.
While Pepperell’s tweets are nearly always tongue-in-cheek, they generally also always contain an element of truth, too. He has been sliding down the world rankings. When he last completed a tournament, he was No. 58 in the world. Now he finds himself at No. 82.
Still, his week at Close House Golf Club got off to a proper start with an opening round of four-under 68, inside the top 10.
“I don’t know what to expect, I think I’ll play very well or pretty bad, and I don’t imagine there will be a lot in the middle,” he said. So far, so good.
You can read his complete interview with Sky Sports here.