I always find it slightly jarring that Bryson DeChambeau’s 2020 US Open win at Winged Foot is labelled ‘bomb and gouge’ golf when his short game skills are what stood out to me as he romped to victory.
That being said, despite Oakmont producing big hitting winners like Jack Nicklaus, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera and Dustin Johnson, this week’s US Open cannot be won from the thick rough.
While the majority of the field might stand on the tee in fear of seeing their ball disappear into a grassy abyss, DeChambeau insists he will be as aggressive as he can off the tee – despite vying away from that approach at the Masters.
“Can I be fearless on this golf course? Well, yeah, anybody really can,” said DeChambeau, who is gaming new irons. “Are there times to be more reserved, depending on wind locations, softness of greens, pin locations, you name it, very strategic.
“It’s not like every single hole is Winged Foot out here. You can’t just bomb it on every single hole and blast over bunkers and have a wedge run up to the front of the green. You can on a lot of the holes but not on every one of them.
“I think this golf course, you have to be just a fraction more strategic, especially with the rough is so long. I’m going to be as fearless as I can possibly be out there; I know that.”
Oakmont screams Scottie Scheffler central. The world number one is the best in the game at controlling his golf ball from the tee, it’s what won him the US PGA Championship last month, and it’s that conservative approach that might see him over the line this week.
“This golf course, there are not many trees out there, but there are so many bunkers; I don’t really know if this is a golf course you can necessarily just overpower with kind of a bomb and gouge type strategy, especially with the way the rough is,” Scheffler said.
“You have to play the angles. Some of the greens are elevated, other ones are pitched extremely away from you.
“There’s not really many areas where you step on the tee box and you’re like, hey, I can miss it right here, hey, I can shade towards the left side of the fairway because right is really bad.
“Actually, if you hit it in the right rough, you’re probably not going to get it to the green; if you hit it in the left rough, you’re probably not going to get it to the green. So might as well try and split the difference there and hit it in the middle.”
2021 US Open champion Jon Rahm, is joint third favourite alongside Rory McIlroy coming into this week and he believes fairway finding will be half the battle as players look to avoid the penal rough and punishing bunkers dotted around the golf course.
“Length in a major like this, and even now in general in any sport, having that power is always helpful,” he said of winners like Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Ernie Els, Angel Cabrera and Dustin Johnson.
“I would like to guess that that week their driving was very much on point. I think it’s obviously nearly impossible to win a tournament here if you’re not hitting it well off the tee because, if you keep putting yourself off the fairway, for lack of a better term, you’re not going to get Oakmont very often.”
2016 champion and defending course champion Dustin Johnson has already admitted that driving was key to pipping Shane Lowry to the title nine years ago.
“It was mostly the driving. Obviously, even driving it in the fairway here, it’s still really difficult, but I hit a lot of good drives and a lot of good iron shots,” said the former world number one.
Moving on swiftly to McIlroy himself who hopes that he has found the missing piece of the jigsaw after incurring some major driver issues in recent weeks.
A Taylormade Qi10 is his weapon of choice for Oakmont and we will find out very quickly whether he has found his groove again because out there, there is no hiding place.
McIlroy admitted he was concerned about his driving after struggling to find a replacement for his non conforming model at the PGA Championship as he missed the cut by 12 shots in Canada last week.
Still, two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas is backing McIlroy to be a major factor this week.
“You look at someone like Rory McIlroy, you drive it like he does, I would pull that driver out as often as I can,” Thomas said of the Masters champion, who admitted that finding a replacement for the driver ruled nonconforming at the PGA was “a concern” after he struggled from the tee and missed the cut by 12 strokes in last week’s Canadian Open.
“He hits it further and straighter than maybe anybody that’s played the game. It’s hard to argue why he wouldn’t hit driver as often as he could. It truly is dependent on the player and their strategy.”
Leave a comment