Bryson DeChambeau improved by 13 strokes on Friday at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida.
If only that meant he’d shot 54, he might be leading. DeChambeau posted hockey sticks in Thursday’s first round of the WGC Workday Championship, an ugly 77, as he was done in by an erratic driver and putter. To no surprise, there was no concession by the reigning U.S. Open champion who rebounded to card a career-best nine birdies and sign for a course-record 8-under 64.
How does one shoot 13 strokes better overnight?
“I didn’t play terrible yesterday,” DeChambeau said, “I just didn’t get anything going my way, especially on that back nine. Had some bad mistakes and that’s what happened. I made some good putts and good strokes today that just luck went my way today.”
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DeChambeau was considered one of the favorites given that the course seems tailor made for his game and he had won the individual NCAA Men’s Championship at The Concession in 2015. DeChambeau’s performance didn’t sit well with him, but without a cut to worry about this week, he knew he still had three rounds to get his revenge on the Jack Nicklaus-Tony Jacklin designed layout.
“Very down on myself,” DeChambeau said. “I felt like I made some great changes this week and albeit they aren’t perfect changes, I definitely didn’t feel like I shot 5 over yesterday. I knew coming into this today just keep your head down and keep going in the right direction, try to keep going in the right direction making the same swing and I was fortunate enough to persevere today. It was a lot of perseverance, my caddie kept me strong and we just kept plodding along and making some great putts out there.”
Starting on the back nine, where he had shot 41 the day before, DeChambeau had a clean nine holes and sprinkled in three birdies at Nos. 12 and the two par-5s, Nos. 13 and 17. DeChambeau gave one stroke back at No. 1, missing the green short and failing to get it up and down for his only dropped shot of the day. He bounced back with birdies at Nos. 2 and 3, then poured in a 28-foot birdie putt at No. 5 and closed with three birdies to come home in 31.
DeChambeau’s 13-stroke improvement lifted him to 3-under 141, eight strokes behind the leader Brooks Koepka. His 64 tied for the low round of the day with Collin Morikawa. It likely will take torching The Concession two more times to be part of the conversation on Sunday, but DeChambeau is hard at work in his quest to get better. He’s still learning how to harness his power surge.
“There’s some weird stuff going on now at high speeds. You could see it last year, I was hitting it really hard and it was going really far, but there were times it would go really far off the map as well. I’m trying to understand why those occur, and sometimes it’s not necessarily golf swing,” he explained. “There’s just technology that we don’t know about yet that’s hindering it unfortunately across the board. Nobody knows how to play a 200‑mile an hour ball speed and barely mis‑hit it, sometimes it doesn’t react the way you think it should.
“So we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing and Cobra and I are working really hard trying to figure it out. We’re doing a great job and in a couple weeks I’ll have some interesting stuff that will hopefully help mitigate some of those errors at high speeds so I can swing it fast again.”
Asked if he would go hit balls at the practice range after scoring 13 shots better, DeChambeau left no doubt.
“Heck, yeah,” he said. “I’m always trying to improve my golf swing. Didn’t feel perfect out there or as comfortable as I think I should be. I’m just going to work on ingraining those feels a little bit better and hopefully I can miss it again in the right places like I did today. And also hit it a little bit better, that would be a great combo.”
