DeChambeau’s threat to quit the tournament, his refusal to speak to the media and instead take himself off to the driving range in the dark, hitting balls there until 10.30pm, annoying all his fellow professionals who had to stay up until midnight to find out their tee times for the following morning, may not have been out of the Jack Nicklaus/Tom Watson school of etiquette. But DeChambeau is a true one-off. He produces fireworks like no one else.
No one else apart from McIlroy that is. The Northern Irishman may not have produced his best golf at Birkdale this week. His putting woes were neatly summed up on Saturday when the Open website had him ranked 161st in strokes gained putting, which was alarming since the field only had 156 players.
McIlroy admitted following his final-round 71, which left him one under for the tournament and in a share of 40th, that he had been “stuck in neutral for most of the week”. But he certainly was not stuck in neutral when asked for his opinion on DeChambeau on Saturday, accusing his rival of “holding the tournament to ransom”.
Again, whether you like McIlroy or not, how refreshing to have a sports star who offers his unvarnished opinion on things, whether that is LIV, the PGA Tour or even his fellow professionals. That last is rarer than you think. “I’m not particularly fond of him,” McIlroy clarified of his relationship status with DeChambeau.
Golf would be so much worse off without them. DeChambeau is a Marmite character, to be sure. Much of what he does is performative. But he is also a true original. His data-driven approach to the game, the application of science, the way he challenges traditional swing mechanics, the way he connects with his followers via social media rather than the traditional media, his emotional transparency. As for his ethics, Scottie Scheffler was not having it that he is a cheat.
“All I’ll say is Bryson, I’ve known him for a long time, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater,” Scheffler said on Sunday night. “I’ve never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious. When you’re watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don’t think he did anything intentionally.”
Even McIlroy can see how much DeChambeau brings to the table. “I think that would be great for the tournament, absolutely,” McIlroy replied on Sunday when asked for his thoughts on DeChambeau potentially entering this year’s Irish Open in Doonbeg in September (DeChambeau’s buddy Donald Trump owns the course, hence why he might). How box office would that be?
Even when they were not delivering on the course – with DeChambeau’s hopes disappearing on Sunday with that triple-bogey at 11 and McIlroy falling off the leaderboard faster than you could say Uber for [Jackson] Suber – they were still delivering off it. Golf should be thanking its lucky stars it has them.