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Deep into the final round of the Open, and Bryson DeChambeau is almost legless in the last chance saloon. He has slipped to minus five, four off the clubhouse lead, with eight holes to play. Worse still, he has not made birdie all day. But there is a sliver of hope. After all, in 2017, Jordan Spieth made up four shots on the back nine here to take the Claret Jug. History couldn’t repeat itself, could it?
The loyal band of Brysonites cheer as he steps on to the tricky par-four 11th, and takes out a driver. Yet they, and Royal Birkdale’s infamous rough, are about to turn viciously against him.
The anatomy of a disaster starts with DeChambeau’s driver flying 301 yards into the jungle on the left. He’s in so thick that his second travels just eight yards. Yet even worse follows as the American’s third then flies into the deep fescue on the right – and, after an extensive search, is declared unplayable.
It means that he is not only slapped with a one-shot penalty, he also has to take a buggy 138 yards back to the scene of the original crime. At which point the crowd starts serenading him with a song: “Rory! Rory McIlroy!”
It is pantomime stuff, but the barb still stings. A triple-bogey seven eventually follows. It means that DeChambeau’s race is run, and the R&A can quietly exhale.
It was all a far cry from the giddy atmosphere that greeted DeChambeau when he stepped on to the 1st tee a couple of hours earlier. You might have thought that Friday’s controversy over his two-shot penalty might have affected his popularity. Especially with McIlroy accusing him of holding the tournament hostage. Not a bit of it.
The crowd around the 1st was 10 deep in places. There were young people with tattoos and an enormous number of kids – in other words, not the typical golf crowd. And as DeChambeau was introduced, there was a huge cheer, followed by a shout of “Rory’s going to buy you a pint after!” from one fan, followed by huge laughter.
Many of those cheering DeChambeau were probably among the 2.8 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, where he makes a virtue of going against the grain. Most golfers prepared for the Open by playing in Scotland last week, or coming to Birkdale early to practise. But DeChambeau? He spent it filming himself playing the nine-hole Northwood golf club in the Redwoods – and getting more than 2m views.
Not that it has seemed to affect his play this week – or at the start of his final round. His first drive was pulverised into the light rough, prompting gasps from the crowd and a shout of “absolute rocket that!” – then came an approach sent to 10ft. “Let’s go, Bryson!” the believers chanted. Then came the sighs and arghs as the putt trickled wide of the hole.
To win, DeChambeau knew he had to get off to a fast start before the 25mph gusts materialised, and then hang on for dear life. Up ahead of him, Cameron Young and Scottie Scheffler were setting the blueprint. Could he follow it?
Alas not. The 2nd hole almost mirrored the 1st. After another huge drive into the light rough, one fan shouted: “Boom‑a‑boom,” a decent approach followed, along with a missed putt.
But the crowd at this point was overwhelmingly positive. The only critical voice early on came as he walked down the 4th hole, and one critic shouted at him: “Don’t stomp the grass down, Bryson.”
Regardless of your position on what happened on Friday, imagine the reaction of the New York crowd if McIlroy had received a two-shot penalty for stamping on the scrub behind his ball at Shinnecock Hills at the US Open last month? There wouldn’t have been the odd sarcastic remark; more like blue murder.
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Yet the magic that DeChambeau’s followers expected never materialised. Approaching the turn, the driver continued to be wayward. And while smart putts at the 6th and 7th allowed him to save par, when a bogey followed at the 8th, the American was falling back.
As DeChambeau left Royal Birkdale there were plenty of reporters who wanted to speak to him. Alas, they heard only seven words as he walked off: “Have a good night everyone. Thank you.”
It was a shame, given that since Friday, that incident on the 5th hole has been analysed nearly as closely as the Zapruder film – with thousands of people having their say. On Sunday evening Scheffler himself added to that number after he finished his round with a striking intervention.
“Bryson, I’ve known him for a long time, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater,” he said. “I’ve never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or any time 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. Bryson is a guy that I’ve known for a really long time. Like I said, he’s not a cheater.”
Of course the R&A has not accused DeChambeau of cheating. Instead it says he inadvertently changed the conditions of his shot by walking on the fescue.
That incident created the biggest by far noise at the Open this year. Sadly for the man who made it, he mustered barely a whimper when it mattered most.
