How is it possible for a 22-year-old amateur to make the world’s number one, three, five and six players bite the dust in one of the biggest tournaments of the year? Just ask the phenom, American Bryson DeChambeau, who beat Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy and Henrik Stenson and Rickie Fowler on the opening day of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship (late February) with an insurmountable round of 64 that put him in the lead (he would finish the tournament in 54th place).
An intrigued McIlroy peeked into Bryson’s bag and was amazed at the set of clubs it contained. And he was in for a surprise when he saw those ‘gadgets’ that looked like they had come out of a sweatshop, given their handcrafted appearance.
DeChembau is no stranger. Far from it. He is the current U.S. amateur champion and the fifth player in history to win that title and the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) title in the same year, thus joining the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Ryan Moore. And last year he also made a splash when, competing against pros at the Australian Masters, he finished second to Peter Senior.
Bryson, son of one of California’s top amateur golfers, says he’s doing an internship of sorts before turning pro, which he plans to do after he plays in the Masters in April, a tournament he’s invited to as the reigning U.S. Amateur champion. He will be one of the most talked about players at Augusta National.
DeChambeau defines himself as “a golf scientist”. He is a senior studying physics at Southern Methodist University and, apart from his excellent sporting results, he has become famous for having developed unique irons, those that fascinated McIlroy so much when they played together in the third round in Abu Dhabi.
There are several revolutionary changes that the young Californian has applied to his clubs. For example, each of his irons, whether it’s a 3-iron or a wedge, measures the same, 37.5 inches, as a 6-iron. And then there’s the grip, a strikingly thick grip that holds more using the palms of his hands than his fingers. It looks more like a racquet grip than a golf club grip.
Another thing: all irons have the same angle of the shaft with respect to the club head, very closed, so that the shaft comes out very vertical from the club head. This uniformity also conditions its swing, very vertical.
“They work really well,” Bryson says of his ‘strange creatures.’ “They help me keep the same posture, the same position, everything the same, and they give me pretty good performance.”
Bryson got the idea for these peculiar clubs from the book “The Golfing Machine,” which Homer Kelly, a Seattle aircraft mechanic, published in 1969 with his own money.
A California golf professor, Mike Schy, read the book and was intrigued by Kelly’s theory of “linearly oriented geometric force” and the impact it could have on a golf ball.
Bryson worked with his coach to refine the clubs to suit his game. “It’s a long story, but long story short I chose the variation of the golf machine that would allow me to swing on the same plane,” he explains.
“And then,” he continues, “I realized I couldn’t do it with a wedge and a 3-iron because it would involve changing my body movements. It didn’t make sense, so I said to myself, ‘Why don’t we do them all at the same angle and the same size?”
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