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<\/p>\nHe\u2019s long. He\u2019s loud. He says he\u2019s going to bring a \u201ctsunami\u201d of people with him to Bethpage Black. Bryson DeChambeau will be a force in the Ryder Cup when the competition kicks off in about four weeks, but for the U.S. team room\u2019s resident YouTuber and long-drive competitor to be fully maximized as the asset he is, he must be paired with the right partner.<\/p>\n
Friday and Saturday, Bryson cannot just Bryson. He must do it while remaining in sync with another member of the U.S. team, and vice versa. So now that the automatic qualifiers are set and Keegan Bradley\u2019s picks are official, it\u2019s time to sit down and muse: Whom is DeChambeau going to play with in Long Island?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s first rewind to France and 2018 \u2014 in a Ryder Cup at which the Americans got pummeled by the Europeans, DeChambeau made his first team and played foursomes with Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Both matches were lost, 5 and 4. The question wouldn\u2019t be addressed until later, but it was apparent: Was DeChambeau really the type of player fit for alternate shot? Onward to Wisconsin. DeChambeau was older, in his bulking stage, and brought an energy to the cup that wasn\u2019t necessarily everyone\u2019s cup of tea \u2014 that was no secret. So, captain Steve Stricker paired him with the new kid on the block: Scottie Scheffler. Playing their own balls in fourball, DeChambeau and Scheffler tied their first match against Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton and won their second match against Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland, 3 and 1.<\/p>\n
Davis Love III, a vice captain for both teams, said DeChambeau and Scheffler were paired together based on the analytics and the need for a strong four-team lineup in each session of the cup. That data-driven approach was spurred on initially by Paris captain Jim Furyk, who also served as an assistant in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Europeans were ahead of us on the analytics,\u201d Love says.<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019re on to something.<\/p>\n
At Whistling Straits, DeChambeau could blast drives around the property, and Scheffler could stay in the fairway and fire at pins when necessary. This was a different Scheffler \u2014 he had not yet won on the PGA Tour \u2014 and might not have had a choice in the matter: \u201cI knew what I was getting into,\u201d Scheffler said at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I expected to go out there and be the bomber. We had a great game plan for today, and we knew exactly what we were going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bryson DeChambeau, left, and Scottie Scheffler had success together in 2021, but does that make it work four years later? (Richard Heathcote \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Fast forward to 2025: Scheffler is the best player in the world, and DeChambeau is one of the few who can rival him. DeChambeau is now playing on LIV and appearing four times a year in the majors to challenge the PGA Tour\u2019s best. Scheffler is an established leader in the U.S. team room, a development that was born first in Rome, where DeChambeau did not make the squad, and subsequently in Montreal, at last year\u2019s Presidents Cup. Now, a Scheffler-DeChambeau pairing would be something much, much different: It would constitute a \u201csuper pairing.\u201d The U.S. team tried pairing its best players together with Woods and Mickelson in the early 2000s, and it was largely deemed a failure, for various reasons. It also once experimented with throwing the aggressive, long hitters together in Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, but that pairing quickly dissipated, too. Generally, the \u201csuper-pairing\u201d is ill-advised, especially in the era of advanced statistics, and Scheffler has two practically predetermined pairing options from more recent team competitions in Russell Henley and Sam Burns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took the analytics guys to explain to us why we shouldn\u2019t keep trying to put Brooks and Dustin together. It\u2019s because they birdied the same holes! It\u2019s so simple, but we couldn\u2019t figure it out,\u201d Love says.<\/p>\n
So who works with DeChambeau\u2019s profile? If there\u2019s a way to mirror the Scheffler-DeChambeau dynamic in 2021, it might be by selecting Ryder Cup rookie Ben Griffin to step up and play in fourball with LIV\u2019s biggest star. Griffin is a shorter hitter than DeChambeau, but his ball-striking and putting \u2014 both of which rank in the top 30 on the PGA Tour \u2014 should allow him to ham-and-egg with DeChambeau well. Griffin might not be on DeChambeau\u2019s internet-popularity level just yet, but the UNC product also has a social media presence, so perhaps there\u2019s a personality fit there, too. Knowing the emphasis the U.S. team places on statistical compatibility, but with the added confirmation of character compatibility, Griffin could have been selected specifically to play with DeChambeau.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of that was considered before those six guys got picked. There\u2019s somebody in that group that is a great partner for Bryson,\u201d Love says. \u201cBryson with somebody steady, or somebody who birdies something other than the drivable par-4s and the short par-5s, is a good partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourball is one thing \u2014 alternate shot, or foursomes, is another. In that format, a different potential partner for DeChambeau emerges, as the golf ball you play becomes a huge factor. According to Brad Faxon, a two-time U.S. team member and current member of the NBC broadcast team, it\u2019s a highly valued factor. There are always rotating pieces of equipment in play for DeChambeau, but right now his ball is the Titleist Pro V1x Double Dot, the same model Cameron Young used when he won his maiden PGA Tour event, the Wyndham Championship. Griffin is the only PGA Tour player using a Maxfli ball.<\/p>\n
But do you risk DeChambeau\u2019s volatility in the hope he catches fire with another Ryder Cup rookie in Young, a player whose demeanor couldn\u2019t be less akin to DeChambeau\u2019s? The reward could be massive: Early momentum, as foursomes are happening in the morning sessions, per the U.S. team\u2019s preference, and you could have a potential new pairing on your hands for many cups to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m Keegan Bradley, I want Bryson out there in the first matches,\u201d Faxon says. \u201cAs emotional as he is, there\u2019s nobody that\u2019s going to get U.S.A chants more than him. What if Bryson starts off first? What if he hits a shot and drives it on the green?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe place would go nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Top photo: Christian Petersen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s long. He\u2019s loud. He says he\u2019s going to bring a \u201ctsunami\u201d of people with him to Bethpage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-129917","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\/129917","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=129917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}