Bryson DeChambeau may not have retained his LIV Golf Korea title this past week, but he still managed to make plenty of headlines from Busan.
DeChambeau finished third at LIV Golf’s latest event. He had led after the opening round, and went on to post another five under par round of 65 on Sunday.
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However, his momentum stalled on Friday and Saturday.
DeChambeau said he was going to investigate the problems within his game after his second round. And DeChambeau was subsequently seen working in the darkness on the range after he finished on the course on Saturday.
But the two-time US Open champion decided to go elsewhere for answers before Sunday.
Bryson DeChambeau questioned after consulting AI during LIV Golf Korea
DeChambeau revealed he consulted AI to help him try and figure out a way forward.
Of course, his performance in the final round suggested that it was a smart decision. He finished just one shot outside making the playoff between Joaquin Niemann and Talor Gooch.
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However, speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Rex Hoggard suggested that he was left baffled by DeChambeau’s comments about using technology.
He insisted that DeChambeau would be a lot better off going down a much more traditional route.
“I jokingly sent a very good friend of ours, who’s a swing coach on the PGA Tour, a text that said, AI’s even taking your job. Look what’s happening here. I think it’s a little comical and I’m not even trying to dismiss this whole idea because I’m sure there is something there, I’m sure there’s a lot of smart people in Silicon Valley trying to figure out how to turn AI into the perfect swing coach. But in this particular case, of all the things that AI could have told Bryson DeChambeau, all of the technical issues and pressure and what you’re trying to do – he was trying to close the club face, essentially, what he was trying to do – and the advice was, just don’t hold the club so tight. Loosen your grip. You and I have heard that advice 3000 times in our career. Anyone who’s ever touched a golf club has heard that advice,” he said.
Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
“That is the only thing your drunk buddies will tell you on a tee box when you hit a bad shot. Either that or you looked up. So either one of those things are kind of ridiculous. Yes, you should have a light grip. Yes. I’m sure AI nailed that one. I’m sure that somehow that resonated with Bryson DeChambeau to go out and actually play a decent round. He actually said, in his comments following that final round, that, no, it’s not fixed. It did not fix him, shockingly, with that kind of advice. You don’t know how that you could possibly go wrong.
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“This is just another chapter in Bryson DeChambeau being maximum Bryson DeChambeau, where he could have just as easily sat in front of a microphone and said that I’m struggling with my game. It just wasn’t there. I’m going to keep working. The idea that Bryson, of course, would go to AI to get the fix, we’ll give our colleague at golfweek.com, Adam Schupak credit. He wrote a really good column, pointing out that instead of AI, he maybe just should go back to Mike Schy.
“The idea being that they split up, it wasn’t a very pretty split up, but this was almost like a father figure to Bryson, at least when it came to golf. And maybe he does need someone in there. We have seen too many videos of Bryson just grinding away into the darkness at Augusta and anywhere else, trying to find answers. And he’s like every golfer, but he takes it to the extreme and this is just another example of that.”
Bryson DeChambeau urged to stop trying to reinvent the wheel
DeChambeau has made a career of following a different path to almost every golfer on the planet.
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Plenty of casual golf fans knew all about DeChambeau before he had even turned professional, largely due to his quirky name and his unique set of clubs.
At times, his methods have proven to be inspired. DeChambeau dragged the game into a different era when he transformed his body from late 2019. However, he does not always get it right.
And speaking on the same podcast, Ryan Lavner insisted that DeChambeau would now benefit from not trying so desperately to be the smartest person in the room.
“Schy has been with Bryson for 25, 30 years at this point, has probably seen him hit more golf balls than anybody. And even at this stage of his career in their relationship, he would have been more sort of a consultant or an advisor, but it’s pretty clear that Bryson, I watched him firsthand at Aronimink after his rounds at the PGA Championship absolutely searching for something,” he said.
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“Again, it was a messy divorce. There’s some financial components involved as well in that situation. It would be Bryson most likely needing to sort of apologise for how it’s gone down and sort of let bygones be bygones. But at this point, with the searching, it certainly appears like he could use a sounding board.
“And it wasn’t Gemini, not Chat GPT, it wasn’t Claude, none of these people are going to help him. A full-blown swing coach. I know he’s been working with Dana Dahlquist as well over the past couple of years, but it might be time for Bryson DeChambeau to find a different direction.
“And again, it’s his iron play that tends to be the issue. This golf course in Korea, this coming week in Valderrama, these are very confining venues. You look at Bryson DeChambeau’s driving distance over the week in Korea, it was about 280 yards. So he’s scaling back and trying to attack a golf course that way is still not comfortable.
“Something tells me at Shinnecock, the U.S. Open, on those greens, in that wind, you better have complete control of your golf ball. And the time is running out for Bryson DeChambeau to be ready for that sort of test.”
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DeChambeau is far from the only player who seems to be constantly searching. For example, it really does appear that Viktor Hovland has done so much tinkering that he has lost some of the magic that made him one of the world’s best players.
DeChambeau will clearly get a kick out of finding something that no-one else has noticed. However, it does feel like a real shame that he is spending so much of what should be the peak of his career trying to reinvent the wheel.
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