World number one Scottie Scheffler says Bryson DeChambeau is a lot of things but definitely not a cheater as he leapt to the defence of his fellow American who was the centre of a huge rules controversy at the 154th Open Championship.
On Friday night, DeChambeau was penalised two shots for inadvertently improving his lie on the par-4 5th. DeChambeau’s reaction was furious and he threatened to withdraw from round three in a two hour debacle with the R&A.
Rory McIlroy ripped DeChambeau to shreds on Saturday accusing him of holding the tournament hostage by his reaction while others like Max Homa and Sam Burns defended the two-time US Open winner. Scheffler said after his third round that he had a lot to say on the matter but he wasn’t comfortable saying it in public. After his final round he gave his thoughts to the media where he appeared sympathetic towards DeChambeau.
“I think maybe we need to be a little bit more strict in the way that we are policing guys, but it’s a little bit of a balance because you’ve got certain guys like a Bryson who every shot he hits is going to be shown on TV. When you have camera angles that are far away, things can look different than they do when you’re right there,” said Scheffler.
“All I’ll say is Bryson, I’ve known him for a long time, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater. I’ve never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious.
“When you’re watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don’t think he did anything intentionally.
“We’ve seen penalties happen with — like you remember Jon Rahm a couple years ago at the Memorial when his ball moved in the rough, and it’s like to the naked eye, can you really tell that?
“I think sometimes it’s just a difficult position in the game of golf. When I was growing up, if this was the line between things that were — like if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it and this is when you’re doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way. I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should.
“I think we need to kind of get back to the traditions of the game and maybe we do need to police things a little bit more stricter in the game.
“But like I said, it’s a tough line to kind of cross. So that’s why it’s hard for me to say anything like this. Bryson is a guy that I’ve known for a really long time. Like I said, he’s not a cheater.”
After his final round, Bryson DeChambeau blanked the media for the fourth day running at Royal Birkdale.
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