What You Can Learn From Bryson DeChambeau

The five-time PGA Tour winner is now the longest hitter in golf after a body transformation

What You Can Learn From Bryson DeChambeau

Despite top-eight finishes in seven of his last eight PGA Tour starts, Bryson DeChambeau hasn’t won for 17 months. Yet he stands heads and shoulders above the rest when it comes to the headlines, because those shoulders are now mighty wide.

His weight gain and new body shape have seen him pummelling the ball further than anybody, with DeChambeau topping the driving distance stats at 340.3 yards in the Charles Schwab Challenge in June.

Here, we look at the changes he has made and ask GM Top 25 Coach Barney Puttick for his take on it all.

Barney’s analysis

When you look at the shape of Bryson’s swing, it hasn’t really altered.

A good parallel for what he has done would be a decent junior golfer, say about 14 years old.

He’s hitting the ball well, then within three or four months, just through the natural process of getting stronger, that same swing is generating another 15-20 yards.

“I’m just going to keep proportionally making everything stronger and applying some force and speed to the golf swing to see what it can handle”

The swing plane is the same, but the physical force he’s putting into it is much greater because he’s bulked up naturally.

Bryson has just sped up that process. He’s taken the swing he already had and just literally got stronger so he can deliver the club that much faster on the same line.

His strength is that his swing doesn’t deviate so there’s no big shallowing out. His movement stays more or less on one plane – one perfect axis.

Bryson is just straight up and down the line.

He’s not trying to become a long-drive champion – he’s just trying to make his second shots shorter, and he’s still pretty accurate too.

The stats for each hole he’s playing show about a 25-yard gap between where his driver finished last year and this year. But he hasn’t gone away and come back with a new golf swing – he’s come back with a new body.

What you can learn from Bryson

It’s just the importance of strength and fitness training.

The number one thing for the older golfer would be flexibility.

Bryson isn’t just bulking up – he’s bulking up with flexibility. Any strength training – whether dumbbells or swinging a weighted club – plus flexibility, perhaps via pilates, will show that you can hit it further yourself, but it needs more than just hitting balls on the range.

Increased strength and flexibility equal more stability, which leads to improved striking. If you are hitting the ball more squarely, distance will improve via a better ‘smash factor’.

What Bryson said at Hilton Head

”Yeah, well, I got bored. I love the game of golf, and I love the journey that it takes me on, and I want to keep pursuing different avenues to try to be the best that I can possibly be.”

What Rory said at Colonial

“I hit a really good one [on the 11th] and probably hit it like 315, 320. He must have flown my ball by 40 yards. He hit it like 370, 375 into the wind. It was nuts. It was crazy. It’s unbelievable.”

What Bryson said at the Rocket Mortgage Classic

“I’m consuming around I would say six to seven of those Orgain protein shakes a day now where I used to be, you know, two or three.

“So as I’ve upped the weight, upped everything I’ve just had to consume a lot more.”

Related: What Bryson DeChambeau eats in a day

DeChambeau has won five PGA Tour titles.

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