JOHANNESBURG – Bryson DeChambeau hasn’t always been great at, to borrow an old phrase, putting hay where the goats can get it.
For more than a decade now, golf fans have tried to understand the physics lessons DeChambeau offers whenever he and his staff have a conversation about club selection. (As someone who has witnessed it a lot, they speak a different language than we do!) And during some of those years, DeChambeau has been more inclined to consider the more complicated things—think Coefficient of Return – instead of digging into it, especially in press conferences.
But when pushed for more, when there’s a clear track to dive into, it can be hard to get him to stop. As evidenced this week in South Africa, where DeChambeau teased that he was driving it brilliantly, hitting his irons well and setting them solid. The final frontier for his game before the Masters is the “call” in his wedges.
“Something like I did in ’23 when I was just testing a bunch of drivers at the end of that year and then I found the driver that I’m using today,” DeChambeau said.
And that driver won the US Open with.
What has become abundantly clear is that dialing in equipment probably means more to DeChambeau than it does to the average Tour-level pro. It matters to everyone, but with DeChambeau, the wrong fit can border on chaos. So what do “form in” wedges actually look like? I put the question his way, put it to him, and surprisingly, he talked for the next three minutes.
“It’s a big question,” he began. “It’s a lot to do with the point of impact and how much ground gets between the face and the grass and the cushioning of that, the management of the shot and how you manage that shot depends on how soft the ground is. If you press too much into the ground, if you don’t, if it bounces off the ground like in Australia, it was really hard off the ground, so I could hit the ball very quickly after the ball at the end. If it’s soft here, you hit exactly the same spot and it hits you high in the face and comes out with shorter and deader spin.
Considering the absolute downpour that Steyn City has received in the last 24 hours, DeChambeau is right about the softness of the pitch. Long strips of terrain will fly across the sky in South Africa. And that almost certainly won’t happen at Augusta in a few weeks.
“So trying to find a jump that works for me, number one, that plays like hard conditions because I’ve always played pretty well in hard conditions,” DeChambeau continued. “I’m learning from (my teammates). I see how they hit it. I see what they do, and I’m learning a lot from my team, even though I’m not necessarily asking because they’re tired of me asking about wedges. They’re just like. go for shorter wedges and normal clubswhich I have tried, and I am still satisfied with it.”
DeChambeau has been playing single-length irons and using longer-than-normal shafts for years. It works for him … but it is absolutely atypical. Those teammates sat next to him as he spoke and nodded knowingly.
“But I will tell you it’s nice to see how they hit the ball, the front axle is bent and where they hit the face is important,” he continued. “So I think the height of the leading edge towards the jump is very, very important, depending on how soft the ground is.
“I think the surface friction on the face is really important, how rough it can get. It’s quite funny, when the face gets rougher, it actually starts to roll less at a certain point, up to the legal limit. Then once you get past the legal limit, it starts rolling more and more. There’s like a bell curve with it. It’s kind of wild.
“Then you can get scenarios where it’s a super smooth face and then it’s wet and it slips and it doesn’t roll at all, and it has to roll.”
Let this be a window into what DeChambeau’s testing sessions ultimately look like. They go so far as to try to understand the strange limits to which face friction begins to return to its purpose of maximizing spin.
“Unfortunately I hit my wedges wrong just because I probably don’t have the right jump setup,” he continued. No one was interested in stopping him. “Perhaps the form of grinding is a little different.
“I’m trying some new wedges. They have almost a bubble on the bottom and that’s helped quite a bit. It helped last week.”
Those new wedges are Bettinardi HLX 6.0 wedge. He is 1-for-1 in converting wins with them in the bag. But it looks like he could change them for new ones at any moment. Apparently there are a lot of options at play.
“I’ve got a little more head weight on the wedge. We’re taking away the things that haven’t worked for me, whether it’s a softer shaft, shorter wedge, different type of torque on the head for contact, different types of grinds, lighter heads, no grooves in the grooves to friction in the grooves. We’re trying as much as possible and the biggest problems in my game and everything removing them as much as we can be – shoot, if I’m 5 percent more consistent, I have a better chance than I did last year at the Masters.”
Ah, yes. The 2025 Masters, forever remembered for Rory McIlroy’s Grand Slam finish, and secretly slept on what DeChambeau played in the final set and faded into the background so quickly because his iron game was not up to standard. Now he seems to have mostly figured it out, and the wedges are getting a proper moment under the magnifying glass.
“I took the last Masters as an opportunity to learn how to become a better iron and a better wedge,” he said, concluding. “I feel like most of it was there. Just a few moments of adjustment and just keep hitting the ball the way I have and hopefully give myself a good chance.”
We’ll see how it looks in a few weeks.
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