Bryson DeChambeau’s length off tee one of 2020 Masters big stories

It’s all about one player so far, and his name isn’t Tiger Woods for a change.

The pre- Masters Tournament talk this week has centered on long-hitting Bryson DeChambeau, who is favored to hold the U.S. Open and the Masters titles in the same year for only the seventh time. His mixture of talent, fitness, determination, along with doses of math and science, have taken the golf world by storm.

“(He’s) basically disrupting the game of golf over the last few months,” Rory McIlroy said.

Woods, who won the 2019 Masters 19 long months ago, is one of those to hold both titles in the same year, 2002. But the five-time Masters champion has struggled since his stirring victory here last year, and is taking second-billing to the 27-year-old Texan.

So are the rest of the world’s golf stars, from world No. 1 Dustin Johnson to No. 5 McIlroy, who is making his sixth attempt at completing the career Grand Slam.

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How DeChambeau fares this week “is a big story, and I'm just as intrigued as everyone else to see how that unfolds,” McIlroy said.

Fans around the world -- but not at Augusta National Golf Club, where it will be a quiet Masters -- will find out quickly if DeChambeau is as good as advertised. He goes off No. 10 at 7:33 a.m. in Thursday’s first round, playing with world No. 2 Jon Rahm and Louis Oosthuizen.

DeChambeau won the COVID-19-delayed U.S. Open at Winged Foot in September by six shots and has shown no signs of slowing down in this week’s major finale. He’s taken the past month off to prepare for the 84th Masters. Before that, he was 24-under par for his previous eight rounds.

He’s made such progress in the past year that he’s the rare pre-tournament favorite who has never cracked the top 20 in his previous Masters starts. His best finish is a tie for 21st as an amateur in 2016. He did share the first-round lead last year after shooting 66, but drifted back to a tie for 29th when it was over.

That is not expected to happen this year, not with the kind of form he is in and the way he might manhandle Augusta National with his new-found length off the tee and short game.

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DeChambeau wowed his practice-round playing partners Monday, including Woods.

“What he's done with his entire team to be able to optimize that one club and transform his game and the ability to hit the ball as far as he has and in as short a span as he has, it's never been done before,” Woods said Tuesday.

Justin Thomas, who was also in that group with DeChambeau on Monday, said DeChambeau is so long that “holes like (No. 13) and 15 are par 4s for him and par 5s for everybody else. But it is what it is.”

Fellow competitors have high praise for the work DeChambeau has put in, both with his golf swing and fitness. They go hand-in-hand to create the swing speed he has to launch his monster drives.

He led the PGA Tour in driving distance last year at 322.1 yards and, after adding 40 pounds of muscle in the offseason and three-month break because of the pandemic, DeChambeau is now averaging 344.4 yards off the tee.

“Pretty much every hole he's going to have a pretty distinct advantage over everybody,” Thomas said. “You look at a hole like 2, he's got a 90 yard fairway pretty much and he could be flipping anything from a 9- to a 7-iron in there.

Photos: Tuesday Masters Practice

“I still think the fact that he hits it as straight as he does as far as he does is extremely impressive, and he's definitely gotten a lot of players to change their mentality or at least try to pick up some yardage.”

Of course, there is a reason Johnny Miller once called the Masters “the spring putting championship.” It’s rare that the winner doesn’t have a great putting week, with a minimum of three-putt greens.

“You still have to get the ball in the hole,” Thomas said. “Although he has a big advantage, I still think that if he wins tournaments he does because he still putts it really well. He's a great putter, and it's a very underrated part of his game.”

Not to McIlroy.

“If you look at Bryson's strokes gained numbers at the U.S. Open, strokes gained around the green and strokes gained putting was better than strokes gained off the tee,” McIlroy said. “He did drive it really well, but at the same time you need to back that up with all other aspects of your game. If trophies were handed out just for how far you hit it and how much ball speed you have, then I'd be worried. But there’s still a lot of different aspects that you need to master in this game.”

DeChambeau agreed with McIlroy’s assessment.

“You can hit it as far as I want to, but it comes down to putting and chipping out here,” he said. “That is one of the things that I think people sometimes struggle to see. As much as I can gain an advantage off the tee, I still have to putt it well and chip it well and wedge it well and even iron play it well, and that's what I did at the U.S. Open.”

One of his rivals, however, said length alone won’t win DeChambeau a green jacket this week.

“I mean, still got to hit the fairways, still got to hit it close and still got to make the putts,” said Brooks Koepka, who has had a mild feud on social media with DeChambeau. “The longer you hit it, obviously it becomes a little bit more difficult to put it in the fairway. ... He's done a good job of working. He's worked his tail off to hit it that far. It's worked for him, so...”