It’s well-known that Bryson DeChambeau is a stickler for perfection, from tailoring his clubs to his exact liking to testing his golf balls with bath salts to detect any manufacturing flaws.
Hence, it comes as no surprise that the US Open champ sometimes finds himself under pressure on the practice range when things aren’t up to scratch. Yet, it’s his attention to detail that sets the LIV Golf ace apart from the rest.
In a candid chat with GOLF on the range, DeChambeau confessed that his most frequent error is a “chunk”. for those not versed in golf lingo, that means hitting the turf before the ball but that’s not what really gets him worked up.
Rather than fixating on just the impact, DeChambeau is more preoccupied with the aftermath, particularly the trajectory of his ball and keeping the curve through the air within acceptable limits. A consistent draw, which is the 30 year old’s go-to shot, suffices to navigate the course, even if his contact with the ball isn’t perfect.
“What gets me stressed is improper curvature,” DeChambeau revealed. “If I’m thinning or chunking it, I’m okay with it. But if it starts curving too much one way, that’s when I really get stressed.”
“That’s when you’ll see me hit golf balls [on the practice range] for quite a while. So it’s just getting back to basics, yeah.”
Bryson DeChambeau, known for his unconventional approach to golf, has a peculiar habit of dunking his golf balls in Epsom salts.
“I put my golf balls in Epsom salt,” he explained during his US Open victory at Pinehurst No. 2.
“I’m lucky enough that Connor, my manager, does that now. I don’t have to do it. But essentially we float golf balls in a solution to make sure that the golf ball is not out of balance.”
DeChambeau highlights a concern about golf ball manufacturing: “There was a big thing back in the day where golf balls are out of balance, and it’s just because of the manufacturing process. There’s always going to be an error, especially when it’s a sphere and there’s dimples on the edges. You can’t perfectly get it in the center.”
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He further elaborates on his technique: “So what I’m doing is finding pretty much the out-of-balanceness of it, how much out of balance it is. Heavy slide floats to the bottom, and then we mark the top with a dot to make sure it’s always rolling over itself.”
The golfer uses an analogy to simplify the concept: “It kind of acts like mud. If there’s too much weight on one side, you can put it 90 degrees to where the mud is on the right-hand side or the mud is on the left-hand side. I’m using mud as a reference for the weight over there. It’ll fly differently and fly inconsistently.”
“For most golf balls that we get, it’s not really that big of a deal. I just try to be as precise as possible, and it’s one more step that I do to make sure my golf ball flies as straight as it possibly can fly because I’m not that great at hitting it that straight.”
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