It wasn’t all that long ago that pundits speculated that Bryson DeChambeau’s best golf was behind him.
After he’d bolted from the PGA Tour for the greener (and more lucrative) pastures of LIV Golf in the summer of 2022, DeChambeau’s game began trending in the wrong direction. He went winless in his debut LIV season and for much of his sophomore campaign, and dropped out of the top 100 in both the OWGR and Data Golf rankings. Just like that, the once mighty DeChambeau looked … ordinary.
In true Bryson fashion, though, he refused to accept his pedestrian play. He got to work (again) — and did so, in part, using an app designed for swing nerds.
Enter Sportsbox AI. The app, which you can download to your phone, uses state-of-the-art technology to analyze swing videos and spits out hundreds of datapoints about your body movements. It’s catnip for swing geeks and dataheads, and perfect for a player who thinks about the game like DeChambeau does.
Since DeChambeau and GOLF Top 100 Teacher Dana Dahlquist started utilizing the app to monitor DeChambeau’s swing, Bryson has found a new (and lethal) gear with his driver.
Don’t take our word for it, though. Asked this week what the secret to his elite driving has been, DeChambeau was quick to credit Sportsbox.
“There’s a little bit of fine-tuning that goes on with Dana and Sportsbox, just trying to get that face more consistently into the impact zone every time, and making sure I’m comfortable when I hit it on the toe and the heel,” DeChambeau said. “What’s it going to do off the toe? What’s it going to do off the heel? Making sure when I accidentally hit the toe or accidentally hit the heel, it still goes in play and I miss it in the right places. But for the most part, I feel like I’m starting to swing a little bit more free.”
If DeChambeau keeps driving the ball the way he has been, he may end this week with major title No. 3.
3 things I’m thinking
Yips? What yips?!
You’d never have known it at Philadelphia Cricket Club last week, but the Tour’s latest Signature Event winner — Sepp Straka — struggled with chipping yips in college. That should give hope to everyone battling a similar ailment.
It’s raining, it’s pouring
Mother Nature is absolutely pummeling Quail Hollow this week. Such was the downpour, my colleagues in the media center said they couldn’t hear themselves think. Expect the winner to be a long bomber. In other words, one of the pre-tourney favorites: Rory, Scottie, Rahm, JT…
And the winner is…
With all that sogginess in mind, give me Bryson to win. He was close at Augusta, but I think he gets it done this week.
