PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s links golf season, which means the best golfers in the world are thinking obsessively about course conditions. And very few golfers think harder than Bryson DeChambeau.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is going to be wild, but imagine a scenario where you\u2019ve got a 400-yard tent, and you can just hit any type of shot with any wind with all the fans,\u201d DeChambeau said on Tuesday in his pre-tournament Open Championship press conference. \u201cThat\u2019s what I imagine, like in a hangar or something like that in a big stadium. That would be cool to test.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was talking about better understanding the wind: how to play it, how to test it. DeChambeau is a guy who likes to control variables; gusts of wind present a particularly fickle challenge. That\u2019s partly why he\u2019s struggled more at this major than at the others \u2014 his wind tests and his links golf are works in progress.<\/p>\n
\n Bryson DeChambeau ahead of the 2025 Open Championship\n <\/p>\n
One thing DeChambeau has been trying is curving the ball against the wind rather than riding it. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to try to ride the wind one time, how do I control and make sure it doesn\u2019t go into a crazy place?\u201d he said. \u201cBecause once the ball goes into that wind, it\u2019s sayonara. That thing can go forever offline.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the press room \u2014 notably wind- and rain-free \u2014 it all sounds relatively simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cHitting it far, hitting it straight as I can, and learning how to putt better on these greens in windy conditions and rain and all that. It\u2019s just figuring it out,\u201d DeChambeau said. \u201cIt\u2019s just going to take time and something that I never really experienced growing up in California.\u201d<\/p>\n
His hangar hypothetical raised another hypothetical. What would pros shoot if they just played in a literal dome? Par-72, no wind, no rain, no trouble?<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see, I think you\u2019d have guys shooting close to 60,\u201d DeChambeau said. \u201cYou look at Palm Springs, right? That\u2019s pretty much like a dome sometimes in the mornings, so they play really well at La Quinta and whatnot. That would be kind of the same, I think. You\u2019d have guys shooting close to 60 every day, a few of them, and there would be some 72s and 73s, but if you\u2019re playing well, you could shoot 65 or less pretty easily.\u201d<\/p>\n
That led to perhaps DeChambeau\u2019s most interesting revelation, something that he learned as a kid playing public golf courses but also more recently in his side gig as content creator, where he visits public courses chasing scoring records \u2014\u00a0and often falls short. We typically think of Tour-level courses as more challenging than public courses because they\u2019re longer, the rough is higher, the greens are faster. That\u2019s all true. But there\u2019s an unpredictability to your local muni that may not exist in the big show.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s some golf courses that are almost more difficult because the greens are not as good,\u201d DeChambeau said. \u201cThere\u2019s more factors too as well. If they\u2019re perfect greens, my gosh, we can shoot close to 60 [in that hypothetical] if it\u2019s a Tour-caliber golf course. If it\u2019s not as conditioned, it becomes difficult for us to roll it in the hole just because of luck. So there\u2019s numerous factors that play into it for the conditions, but from an execution perspective, give us a normal Tour course in those conditions, we\u2019re shooting under 65 quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my public golf course series, there\u2019s times where I literally shoot one- or two-under par because I just get some bad breaks and bad bounces and I\u2019m not putting well. It\u2019s nice to humble myself a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The beauty of golf is, of course, that it\u2019s not in a hangar nor a dome nor \u2014\u00a0with apologies to TGL \u2014\u00a0in a simulator. Most golf fans will root for proper Open weather this week, a dash of wind and rain, so we get a proper Open test. Given Royal Portrush is considered among the toughest links tests in the world, we should get that test. But they can at least expect smooth greens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s links golf season, which means the best golfers in the world are thinking obsessively…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-12389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}