Bryson DeChambeau seems to have wandered into the 21st century by mistake, with his Ben Hogan cap, his stiff-armed swing redolent of the late Canadian genius Moe Norman and an Ivy League demeanour that might have sprung from the pages of The Great Gatsby.
The boy from Fresno who mastered algebra at six years of age, the 17-year-old amateur prodigy who cut all his irons to the length of his six iron, the right-handed physics graduate who signs his autograph backwards with his left hand: the complex man they call The Professor speaks from a script that invites awe and curiosity.
It is, largely, a discourse on the science of delivering the club square to the ball with as little variation as possible, a “zero shifting motion”, as he describes it. Much of it he has derived from The Golfing Machine by Homer Kelley, a revered tome written in 1969, first editions of which now sell for £1,000 and more.
DeChambeau imbues his advocacy of the Kelley creed with wide-eyed wonder, his words tumbling over each other in a rush. He says things like: “The only two factors that I will never understand to the fullest amount are wind, and the other one is the conditions of the green at hand. It’s a quest for me just to try and understand every single variable outside of those two, to try and help get my proximities closer to the hole.”
Draw and tee-off times for the opening fourballs of the 42nd Ryder Cup, Europe v United States, at Le Golf National, Paris, France on Friday, 28 September (Europe names first, all times BST)
0710 Justin Rose and Jon Rahm v Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau
0725 Rory McIlroy and Thorbjørn Olesen v Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler
0740 Paul Casey and Tyrrell Hatton v Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas
0755 Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood v Patrick Reed and Tiger Woods
And: “I don’t really take days off. My brain doesn’t let me. The one thing I can say is [I am] doing a lot of brain work and trying to get myself into a more parasympathetic state.”
Or, when asked facetiously this month: “Do you acquire knowledge from unknown sources or imagination, like playing golf on the moon or Mars, whatever?” he smiled and replied: “No, no, no. I don’t go that distance because I don’t know how that all plays out. I’m more on the Newtonian mechanics scale, the stuff that we can see and feel and touch and understand.”
Clearly, this is a dialogue of mutual confusion. Nobody is sure what to make of him. Last month, Golf Digest asked “Tortured genius or odd duck?” while Golf World wondered “Is he some crazy novelty act?”
For all of that, he can play. After 18 months trying to replicate his stellar amateur career on the professional Tour, he has rattled off four tournament wins, looking more assured each time, until slipping a little in Atlanta last week. The question is will this most cerebral and intense of golfers crack under the strain of appearing in his first Ryder Cup, at 25, in front of an overseas audience?
The prospect of being paired with Tiger Woods in the Friday afternoon foursomes – which should be confirmed after the morning fourballs – clearly excites him.
Asked if he and Woods had discussed how they might follow each other’s shots, he said: “Testing golf balls, yeah, it’s something that’s critical when we’re playing fourball, er, foursomes … I always get those mixed up. Alternate-shot. Thank you. That’s just easier for me, alternate-shot.”
The geek with the French surname also left his inquisitor none the wiser when asked this week if he was au fait with the language.
“My name is Aldrich DeChambeau on the birth certificate,” he offered. “That’s why it’s B-A-D, bad. My middle name is James. Thanks, mom and dad, for giving me the longest name in the world. Funny part is, I didn’t even know I had two last names until I was in high school. I went to register under DeChambeau, and they were like: ‘We don’t have a DeChambeau.’ My mom was like: ‘Oh, yeah, about that, you actually have two names.’ Didn’t know that for 14 years of my life.”
So, no. He probably does not speak much French. But he speaks golf. Unnerving as it is to think someone could be on the planet for so long and not know his proper name, DeChambeau oozes certitude and passion about his sport.
His method is a modification of the single-plane arc, that “Pipeline” Moe Norman developed in the 1950s and 60s. Sam Snead called Norman the greatest clean striker of the ball in the history of golf. Woods reckons only two players have ever properly “owned” their swing: Norman and Ben Hogan.
Like Norman did, DeChambeau cracks his driver through the impact zone, arms fully extended, without “breaking” his wrists at any point, works the ball towards the hole with his irons and wedges inscribed with physics formulae then finishes the job with what he describes as “vector putting”.
Woods calls him “the Numbers Guy” and himself as “more a feeling sort of guy”. It will be fascinating to observe their chemistry if they team up. DeChambeau’s intensity might cancel out Woods’s zoned-in focus, or there could be the most glorious synchronicity.
DeChambeau and Woods count their golf-crazy president as a friend. DeChambeau even accepted a present of a set of golf clubs from him. But it is a nailed-on certainty that he would rather play with a toothpick than replace his treasured single-length sticks with a bag of clubs from Donald Trump.
