U.S. Open Recap: Bryson Wins the Big One

Remember when they announced golfers could leave the flagstick in while putting? Bryson DeChambeau was the first guy to say he was doing it. Of course he was. After all, he was the weird guy who arrived on the scene with every club the same length. Oh, and he wore that funny hat.

Clearly, DeChambeau figured out modern golf and golf technology in relation to what the human body is capable of before everybody else.

He transformed his body, he transformed his swing. And on one shining Sunday afternoon just north of New York City, all the planning and hard work finally paid off -- just like he believed it would.

DeChambeau put on remarkable display of brute force to not only beat the best golfers in the world into submission but indomitable Winged Foot as well. He captured the 120th U.S. Open by six strokes over a gallant Matthew Wolff to win his first major title, one that perhaps signals a turning point in the sport.

We have known that distance off the tee is paramount for some time now, but never to the degree that DeChambeau proved with his 5.5-degree driver, taking mighty lash after mighty lash, agronomy be damned.
  
The storyline entering the week was big, bad Winged Foot. You heard it all: the Massacre, 1974, Hale Irwin, 7-over, 2006, Geoff Ogilvy, 5-over, etc., etc. The golfers would have to kneel down and respect the course or suffer the consequences. DeChambeau was having none of it, boldly announcing that he would attack the thatches of six-inch rough as if they were the wide-open fairways of Kapalua.

"No, no! You have to get the ball in the fairway!"
If you don't have to get the ball in the fairway at the U.S. Open, where do you?

Good question.

The members of Winged Foot may have gotten their pride dinged by DeChambeau taming their beast to the tune of 6-under. They should not forget that, while over par was not the winning score as they surely had hoped, 142 of the 144 in the field fell victim to the course.

We should not lose sight that while DeChambeau hits the ball farther and with more ferocity than the golf world thought possible, he's also an elite putter. He ranked third in the field SG: Putting in the final round. Doesn't seem quite fair that someone with such power can also have such touch. Of all the top golfers, of all the longest hitters, DeChambeau is also the best putter. He ranked 10th on Tour in SG: Putting last season. And, yes, more weirdness, his putter has more loft than his driver.

Despite what was on display the past four days, DeChambeau is human. We'd seen his on-course meltdowns, his emotions, his poor finishes in majors before this year, his social media fight with Brooks Koepka. (Yeah, that was weird, too.)
 
But now he's won his first major just a month after tying for fourth at the PGA, doing what seemed beyond what was humanly possible. He's fifth in the world rankings.

Don't worry, Winged Foot, you're still a behemoth. Not everyone can do what DeChambeau can do.

They all have the blueprint now, though.

MONDAY BACKSPIN

Matthew Wolff
Imagine being 21 years old and playing in a major. Now imagine almost winning. Twice. A month after tying DeChambeau for fourth at the PGA, Wolff battled him till the back nine on Sunday in finishing second. He has a lot of DeChambeau in him, playing an attack-all-the-time style of golf. Even though Wolff won the 3M Open last year, he endured a year of struggles afterward. It was only since the restart that he turned a corner, apparently for good. He's now ranked 18th in the world.

Tiger Woods
This was only Woods' fourth missed cut in 22 U.S. Opens. Tellingly, three of them have come in his past four (the other was at Winged Foot in 2006). It seems that taking all things into consideration, he no longer can win a U.S. Open. The game is now simply too long and too powerful. His back makes competing anywhere a dicey proposition. But let's say his back is fine. As he's shown, he can win the Masters almost on memory. Open Championships can still be won with guile and imagination, so maybe he can contend there. But candidly, if the bet was Tiger simply getting to 83 wins to pass Sam Snead, which way would you go?

Phil Mickelson
The question now isn't whether Mickelson will win an Open to complete the career grand slam – he won't. The question is, how many more will he play in? Like Woods, this was only Mickelson's fourth missed cut at an Open, and he's made 29 starts. In normal years, you have to be inside the top-60 OWGR to qualify. Mickelson is now 56th in the world rankings. Where will he be next June? Really, as crazy as this sounds, the best chance for Mickelson to play in another U.S. Open may be to win the U.S. Senior Open. The thing is, the 2021 Senior Open takes place in July, four weeks after the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

Dustin Johnson
He was never in the conversation, never in contention, but when all the dust settled, he was inside the top-10, tied for sixth. Yes, it's another major without a win but still a good week overall. In the last seven Opens, DJ has finished first, second, third, fourth and now sixth.

Louis Oosthuizen
He really has had a remarkable career, especially in majors. He's won the 2010 Open Championship. He's finished runner-up in all four majors. And now he's added a solo third. Incredibly, he's never won on the PGA Tour (except for the Open). Oosthuizen is 37 but still an elite player, back up to No. 16 in the world.

Xander Schauffele
It's no longer a surprise when Schauffele is there on Sunday. Quite the opposite. He finished solo fifth, on top of a tie for 10th last month at the PGA. He now has five top-5s and seven top-10s in 13 career majors. As unfair as this may sound, if he doesn't finish off one of these soon, the new narrative will be why he can't win a major.

Rory McIlroy
He didn't win, he didn't really contend (T8). But he was on the first page of the leaderboard for much of the week and led the field in SG: Off the Tee, showing the first signs that he is back. Not that he really went away.

Will Zalatoris
He was the best player on the Korn Ferry Tour this past season. That's how he got into the field – with the pandemic nixing qualifying, 10 KF players gained entry. Zalatoris showed he might be a lot more than just the best the Korn Ferry Tour has to offer. He tied for sixth, not only earning an invite back next June but cracking the top-100 (76th) in the world rankings. He also led the entire field in SG: Approach. Zalatoris still doesn't have many playing privileges on the PGA Tour, but he's clearly shown he belongs there. (He also is one of the few guys who doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, though we suspect that will change shortly.) Another KF player, Taylor Pendrith, also cracked the top-25 (T23).

Zach Johnson
This was the final year of Johnson's U.S. Open eligibility for winning the 2015 Open Championship. That was the only way he qualified this year. Really, the only way he was going to qualify next year was via an improbable top-10 – and he got it! Johnson tied for eighth to earn a trip to Torrey Pines next June. Johnson is far from the elite player he once was. But time and again he's been able to elevate in majors. He did it this time by leading the field in SG; Putting, gaining more than 10 strokes. He's made 14 of his past 18 major cuts.

Viktor Hovland
Two Oklahoma State Cowboys in the top-15 and neither was named Rickie Fowler. What are the odds? Actually, pretty good -- for now and the foreseeable future. Hovland understandably might be No. 3 among the Class of '19 behind Wolff and Collin Morikawa right now. But he tied for 13th, and that was after playing the final three holes in an ugly 5-over and with a game vastly lacking in superior wedge play. What about Fowler? He was last in the field in SG: Putting.
 
Lee Westwood
He's 47 and this was his 83rd major. It seems pretty clear he will break Jay Haas' all-time record for 87 majors without a win. Or is it? Westwood is still playing at a high level – he tied for 13th at Winged Foot and is ranked 41st in the world. At nearly 50 years old, he led the field in SG: Around the Green in the final round. Winning a U.S. Open seems out of his reach, but there would be bigger surprises than him winning an Open Championship, where he tied for fourth last year, or even a Masters, where he's been runner-up twice, most recently in 2016.

Lucas Glover
You'd be hard-pressed to find a wackier U.S. Open history than Glover's. Of course he won one, however improbably, at the Bethpage Black in 2009. How improbable? He was ranked in the 70s at the time, and Woods, Mickelson, etc., were all in their primes. Glover had played in 13 other Opens entering this year and had made only two – TWO – cuts. He had missed eight in a row coming in – and also was playing terribly coming in. So naturally, he was on the first page of the leaderboard for a chunk of Sunday until a late slide left him tied for 17th.

Takumi Kanaya
The world's top-ranked amateur missed the cut by one stroke – after bogeying two of his final three holes on Friday. Kanaya has already qualified for the two Opens next year, but only if he remains an amateur. He's already 22, so that seems like a big ask, especially since he's shown he can compete with the pros. He's already ranked inside the top-250 OWGR, very rare for an amateur. Kanaya made the cut at the 2019 Masters and tied for third in last year's Australian Open, finishing ahead of, among others, Paul Casey and Marc Leishman.