In the end, Bryson DeChambeau’s Masters fate was in the hands of someone other than himself. For all pre-tournament proclamations – including by DeChambeau – about what the US Open champion would and could do to Augusta National, survival rested on a Rafa Cabrera Bello chip. Had the Spaniard holed out from adjacent to the 9th green, DeChambeau would have suffered the ignominy of a missed cut.
Cabrera Bello’s attempt fell short, affording DeChambeau a sigh of relief. Likewise applies to those who remain fascinated by DeChambeau’s unorthodox approach to what is essentially a formulaic sport. Nonetheless, at even par, nine from the halfway lead, there will be no Green Jacket to further endorse DeChambeau’s appliance of science.
For a period on Friday afternoon, DeChambeau was in a tailspin. Having lost a ball in soft ground at the 3rd, he proceeded to lose the plot. The 27-year-old American was comprehensively outside the cut line before the kind of move that emphasises his brute strength. DeChambeau had 124 yards for his second shot into the par five 13th.
As delays caused by a Thursday morning storm lingered, DeChambeau had to wait until Saturday to hole out for a birdie, one of three in a row. As he collected another shot, at the 16th, appearance in the draw for the closing 36 holes looked a formality. Instead, DeChambeau made bogeys at the 17th and 18th. For a spell, his 144 aggregate did not look good enough. Helping hands came from elsewhere.
To his credit – he has not been afforded much of that here – DeChambeau faced the media with his fate still unclear. He explained illness formed at least part mitigating circumstance for this underwhelming display. DeChambeau started feeling dizzy on Thursday evening.
“Every time I’d bend over and come back up, I’d lose my stance a little bit,” he said. “So I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve got to go and do some blood work and get checked out and figure out what’s going on for the off-season.
“It’s something a little weird. I got checked for Covid last night and I was fine. But I had to do the right thing and make sure there was nothing more serious than that. I don’t know what it is or what happened, but these past couple days, I’ve felt really, really odd and just not 100%. Some of that’s played into it. I just feel dull and numb out there, just not fully aware of everything, and making some silly, silly mistakes.”
As DeChambeau toiled on the course, cackling from the back was impossible to ignore. His foibles have made him a rather consistent and easy target for traditionalists.
DeChambeau did not help himself, it must be noted, with his insistence that Augusta National plays as a par 67 for a player of his obscene driving length, but this is an individual who has brought fresh levels of attention to his sport. To portray a major winner’s approach – and there has been plenty of this – as somehow an affront to the sport is hilariously po-faced.
Naturally, DeChambeau was asked to assess the rare episode for one of the world’s leading players of a lost ball in grass. Conversation at the time with rules officials illustrated DeChambeau thought he should have been given relief with the ball buried beneath casual water. The trouble was, nobody could be exactly sure where it had plugged.
“It definitely throws you when a guy goes and gives you the ball on the 4th tee box,” DeChambeau said. “‘Oh, I found it.’ I struggle whenever we know it’s in that area and it’s all wet and it’s a plugged lie, guaranteed. They have to say it’s within a couple foot area. I’m like: ‘Well, I know it’s in this area that’s plugged, so I would think I would get some relief,’ but clearly not. The three minutes was up, so I took a penalty and went back to the tee box and proceeded to hit in the same spot and had a really bad lie after that.
“It just seems like there’s a lot of things going not in the right way. I’ve certainly played worse than this and won tournaments. You can’t control everything as much as you try.”
As DeChambeau pondered, and others pondered DeChambeau, the world’s top three players were among those tied at the top at the conclusion of a round for the first time since world rankings began in the late 1980s. Dustin Johnson, Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas began round three at nine under par, as did Cameron Smith and Abraham Ancer.
Bernhard Langer, now 63, became the oldest player to make a Masters cut. He duly denied this could be considered an old man’s game. “My knees are shot,” said the German. “It’s not an easy place to walk, but it’s a wonderful place to walk.
“There have been so many great players here before me, all the greats that have competed here. To be the oldest to make the cut, it’s certainly an achievement.”
