Big, Bad Bryson DeChambeau is Back and Ready to Defend His U.S. Open Title

DeChambeau overpowered Torrey Pines in a third-round 68. Just two off the lead, he's in perfect position to win another U.S. Open title on Sunday.

SAN DIEGO – After the 1974 U.S. Open, Dick Schaap wrote a book called, The Massacre at Winged Foot. It commemorated a scratch-and-claw Open many of us watched as kids. In the end Hale Irwin was left holding the trophy. His winning score was 7 over par, the highest winning score at a U.S. Open since 1963, when Julius Boros won at 9 over at The Country Club outside Boston.

Last year’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot was similar to the massacre of 1974, as no player finished under par — with one exception: Bryson DeChambeau.

The self-styled long bomber overwhelmed the course, and his competition, and introduced pro golf to a new way of attack. DeChambeau, then 26, finished 6 under for a six-shot victory.

Bad news for the rest of the field Sunday at Torrey Pines: Bryson is back.

This time the venue is not nearly as iconic or as difficult as most U.S. Open courses. DeChambeau has little concern or care for the mowing lines that separate fairway from rough, but he believes his best chance is to hit it as far as possible, find it and hit it again.

Very few golfers can pull off that strategy. It requires the innate ability to stay calm when fairways are missed and the ball ends up in strange, uncharted places. It helps when you have a putter that can bail you out of trouble when you struggle to keep it in play.

Rees Jones, the renowned architect who made the most recent U.S. Open changes to the Torrey Pines South Course was out walking with DeChambeau on Saturday. He recalled a chat he had with DeChambeau earlier in the week, when the now 27-year-old gave Jones this warning: “I’m not going to play the course the way you designed it.”

DeChambeau fired a bogey-free 68 in the third round at Torrey Pines / Golffile | Fran Caffrey

After three rounds, DeChambeau is two shots off the lead shared by Russell Henley, Louis Oosthuizen and Mackenzie Hughes, in prime position for a second consecutive U.S. Open title. 

“My first few goes at majors, I was not successful or anywhere near successful, and I feel like I'm starting to understand major championship golf and how to play it and how to go about managing my game, my attitude and just my patience level,” DeChambeau said after signing for a third-round 68 that was also his first bogey-free round in a major championship. “If I can continue to do that tomorrow, I think I'll have a good chance.”

In Saturday’s third round, DeChambeau was not only consistently longer off the tee than his playing competitor Christiaan Bezuidenhout, but dramatically longer — 40, 50 and even at times 60 yards.

While his length was impressive on Saturday, his putter made the difference, just as it did last fall at Winged Foot. His par save on the 7th after driving into a hazard served as a reminder of the depth of DeChambeau’s game.

One ironic and significant aspect to DeChambeau’s power game is that the farther offline he hits it, he can often find a clean lie that allows him to continue to attack the course.

“For me, when I miss it because I hit it pretty far, I'm going to miss it offline quite a bit, so that plays kind of into my advantage a little more because where the people are walking, it's trampled down and you get some good lies out of that,” DeChambeau said. “Again, that was all part of the strategy. I knew that there was going to be people walking and trampling, and if it was a bad lie, I can still run it to the front of the green and get it out from there.”

Clearly, that's not what Jones or the USGA brass contemplated when drawing up their Torrey Pines game plan for this year’s U.S. Open.

With a board stacked with five major winners, including DeChambeau, Sunday will likely be more of a shootout than a typical defensive, wait-and-see-what-happens type of finish.

DeChambeau seems as prepared as anyone to walk to the 1st tee Sunday afternoon with guns blazing. His combination of swagger and strategy worked at Winged Foot, and he believes he can do it again.

“Hopefully I have a great day tomorrow,” he said. “I've just got to go out there, hit some great golf shots and make a few birdies early and get myself up near the leader.”