Johnson Wagner has described Bryson DeChambeau’s behaviour on Friday of The Open Championship as disgraceful, and believes that the game could have a real issue with so many younger players inspired by the LIV Golf star.
The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale will be remembered for the sublime performance from Ryan Fox over the weekend. However, DeChambeau’s actions after the second round will also not be forgotten in a hurry.
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The 32-year-old was handed a two-shot penalty after it was deemed that he had improved the lie around his ball while in the thick rough on the fifth hole.
Johnson Wagner criticises Bryson DeChambeau over his behaviour at The Open Championship
DeChambeau did not take the penalty particularly well. The scenes were almost farcical after the round, with the two-time US Open champion returning to the scene of the incident with two officials.
It delayed the announcement of Saturday’s tee times. Meanwhile, DeChambeau took the decision so poorly that he threatened to not even play over the weekend.
Reports from several outlets, including the Telegraph, claimed that DeChambeau told officials that he would make a call to President Donald Trump.
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But speaking on Scorecard on CBS, Johnson Wagner suggested that the decision to penalise DeChambeau was absolutely the right one.
It was clearly DeChambeau’s reaction that left him stunned.
“I was watching live and saw him step into the shot from that face-on angle, and it was definitely weird. It was like an unnecessary step down onto that piece of fescue. I didn’t really think much more of it, but I was checking X a little bit throughout the day, and I saw the video posted again and people were raising questions, so then it started piquing my interest,” he said.
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
“And after the round, when he went back out and they showed us the angle when he first found his golf ball and the marshal pointed to it, and he immediately went and stepped down a two-yard area of fescue right behind his ball, they had a face-on angle, it looked even worse. It was pretty clear at that point that he clearly impacted not only his takeaway, but also his downswing, not having to brush through whatever level of fescue grass that was back there. It clearly affected the shot.
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“For him to handle it the way he did, to go into that scoring area, if he had seen the video, I don’t know he could refute watching that video that there was an infraction. If he had just taken the penalty, walked out, answered a couple of questions from the media, said, ‘I made a mistake’, this would all be over and we wouldn’t be talking about today.
“For him to go back out there and make the scene in which he did, I found it incredibly childish. Grant Moir of the R&A is one of the greatest human-beings I’ve ever met in my life. I had the pleasure to interview him for Golf Channel a couple of years ago. To treat him and the head DP World Tour official with the lack of respect that Bryson showed, I thought it was disgraceful.
“I love watching him play golf. I think he brings an element to any event that he’s in. It raises it immediately. But that performance was absolutely disgraceful.”
Wagner fears Bryson DeChambeau set a terrible example for young golfers at Royal Birkdale
Following Friday’s antics, many would have been delighted to see DeChambeau fade over the weekend.
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But there is clearly a concern that his actions will have much larger implications for the game.
There are numerous examples of players accepting a penalty with minimal fuss. Shane Lowry was penalised during The Open Championship last year when he almost certainly had no chance of noticing his ball move.
Meanwhile, Cameron Young called in a rules official when he noticed a problem during the final round of the Cadillac Championship at Doral earlier this season. Young was subsequently handed a one-shot penalty for his ball moving in the fairway.
There would have been a lot of sympathy for DeChambeau had he taken the penalty with good grace. It is impossible to say with complete certainty that he intended to improve the lie around the ball.
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However, Wagner is now worried that DeChambeau’s influence in the game may lead to others in the future following his lead and remonstrating with officials when they are unhappy with a decision.
“His agent was out there with him the whole time when that was going on. His caddie, Greg Bodine, was there as well. There was one clip I saw when Bryson first stepped in behind the ball, you could see – his caddie was wearing glasses, but he was looking right at him – and it’s almost like his eyes were wide and he had to look away like he didn’t see what he was doing, because I think he knew what he was doing as well,” he said.
“Bryson DeChambeau, and I’ve said this before, he has brought more eyeballs and grown the game of golf arguably since Tiger Woods more than anybody.
“And I think this is a really slippery slope that he’s going down with this decision, because as he’s bringing so much youth to the game, being an example of how to act and how to behave and how to handle things, is just as important as bringing those young people to the game because if we have a whole generation of Bryson fans that think it’s okay to act that way, then we’re going to be in trouble in 10, 15 years.
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“He does so much good. If it weren’t for Bryson, I wouldn’t be with CBS, he came out at Pinehurst and watched me hit a shot and handled the US Open trophy, I’m fully convinced that I have this job because of that moment. So I have a lot I owe him personally.
“I just think the game of golf holds itself to such a different standard, and I think it’s a crazy time and I just want him to maybe next time we see him, walk back some of his comments and maybe apologise for some of the behaviour.”
It will be interesting to see whether DeChambeau faces any retrospective action over his behaviour.
Plenty will feel that he crossed a line several times over. And if the R&A do penalise him further, there will be a number of golf fans who think that the right decision has been made.
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