Big hit Bryson DeChambeau makes his way to the US Open a divot-sized slice at a time

Golfers like to say they win when it’s their week, when a swing adjustment suddenly clicks, or because they are handling the ball and putting it a little better than everyone else. Bryson DeChambeau has a different opinion: he believes that each week belongs to him.

Over the course of four days, DeChambeau made the folks running the US Open nervous and built Winged Foot’s unwavering reputation, one coin-sized slice at a time. In the end, he was the only player to top par, which also turned out to be enough to beat his closest pursuer, Matthew Wolff, by a whopping six shots.

In the deal, DeChambeau turned one of golf’s fundamental myths: the game is about how many, not how, from the inside out.

“I really don’t know what to say because that’s the complete opposite of what you think a US Open champion does,” said Rory McIlroy, who counts the 2011 US Open among his four major championships.

Look, he found a way to do it. If that’s good or bad for the game, I don’t know, but it’s not the way I saw this golf course or this tournament being played.

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* Mark Reason: The proposed new golf balls will turn us all into hackers

The big debate in golf right now is about the merits of distance versus precision. Most weeks, a younger and fit generation of Tiger Woods inspired players try to propel the ball as far off the tee as possible, thinking that a second hit with a wedge, even from the rough, is easier than, say , a 6 iron from the middle of the street. It’s called the “pump and gouge” strategy, and DeChambeau has become its loudest and most successful advocate.

He has already played with every other facet of the game, from the equipment (single-length irons) to the way he reads putts (taking into account the rotation of the planet). Last October, with five PGA Tour wins already under his belt, DeChambeau doubled down on the distance side of the argument, announcing that he would rack up 40 pounds of muscle in an attempt to hit the ball even more.

“I’ll be back next year,” he promised, “and I’ll see myself as a different person.”

Yet even at the beginning of the week, few people believed that he looked like a US Open champion. No golf tournament places a higher premium on par, or rewards accuracy while punishing stray shots with rough shots several times more twisted than anything found in a routine touring event. But when the US Golf Association established Winged Foot, its risk-reward calculations ended yards behind where many of DeChambeau’s tee shots landed.

However, none of that would matter if he couldn’t putt, or if DeChambeau didn’t have a work ethic that saw him back on the driving range for several hours after completing his round on Saturday, hitting drive after driving in the distance and well beyond the reach of some scattered spotlights.

Tiger Woods had the same momentum in the prime of his career, and for a time, he also hit the ball further than almost all of his main rivals. There is no way of knowing how long DeChambeau will have that same advantage or if it will hold up long term.

But either way, the powers that be in golf will have to decide how much distance is too much and whether or not to accelerate the ball earlier than planned. On Sunday, No. 16 at Winged Foot stretched to 508 yards, a par-5 dogleg turned into a par 4. DeChambeau shattered that defense by cutting the corner with a tee shot that measured 365 yards.

“I don’t know what they can really do, because he’s hitting so far,” said Louis Oosthuizen, who finished third.

The more immediate concern, however, is how many golf courses on the calendar will be able to contain it.

“If you can do it around here,” McIlroy said. “I’m thinking about Augusta and thinking about the way you play there.”

At the end of the US Open broadcast, someone got even more specific, speculating that DeChambeau might fly his tee shot, rather than having to maneuver, the cluster of trees that guard the corner at 13 Augusta National.

That would leave him holding a wedge for his approach shot at the iconic par -5, a prospect that almost certainly had Masters green jackets grabbing a bottle of antacids with one hand and Google’s “emergency garden services.” with the other one. .