DeChambeau determined to make his own luck
YOU need a bit of luck in this game. Even now, as you read this, there will be a golfer down at your local club muttering ‘you jammy little so-and-so’ as their playing partner duffs one to three inches.
A wee break now and again from those golfing gods is par for the course but those bouts of good fortune can’t be taken for granted. As Jack Nicklaus said, “if you find yourself in a position where you hope for luck to pull you through, you’re in serious trouble.”
Bryson DeChambeau is well aware of that. “I’ve been pretty lucky, for the most part,” he said after keeping himself in contention at the halfway point of The Players Championship at Sawgrass. “But I don’t think that’ll happen this weekend.”
DeChambeau’s second round three-under 69 for a six-under aggregate tucked him in the upper echelons but golf’s man of the moment knows there is plenty of room for improvement.
Boasting a bigger drive than the Paris-Dakar Rally, DeChambeau has been trying to throttle back his howitzers this week but they
have still been veering here, there and everywhere over the past couple of days. In 36-holes, the reigning US
Open champion, fresh from victory in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last weekend, has found just 12 of 28 fairways. DeChambeau has been getting away with it, though.
A wayward tee-shot which spawned a double-bogey on his opening hole of the day – he started on the 10th – was hardly a rousing start but the 27-year-old began a repair job like a panel beater clattering out the dents. Birdies at 11, 16 and 17 got him back in red figures and further gains at the sixth and ninth bolstered his assault on a ninth PGA Tour title.
“I’ve got to make sure that my game is good off the tee,” DeChambeau added. “I have to get it in the fairway so I don’t have to rely on luck.” What was it Nicklaus said again?
His driving may have required pace notes rather than a stroke saver but his irons and, importantly, the putter have been salvaging
many a situation. He found the putting surface 13 times in regulation yesterday and only needed to get up-and-down for par once. “The iron play is a B to A-minus and putting is an A,” was his self-assessment. “The driving is a C.”
DeChambeau was one of the early starters trying to chase down the first round pace of seven-under set by Sergio Garcia. Denny McCarthy was up and and at it before the larks had even had time to flap a dozing wing at the snooze button and, out in the very first group of the day, he illuminated his 69 with a holein-one on the third – his 12th – as he hoisted himself on to the six-under mark.
“It was a slow start, I wasn’t that awake, and it wasn’t that flashy,” he said. All that changed, of course, when he flighted a lovely 8-iron into that third green and watched it hop in.
If McCarthy pulled out the ace in the pack, Chris Kirk certainly played his cards right as he pieced together a thrilling 65 which thrust him
to seven-under. The 35-yearold former Walker Cup player, who won the first of his four PGA Tour titles a decade ago, has endured well-documented off-course troubles in recent years and had to take a break from the circuit to deal with issues involving alcohol and depression.
This was another significant step in Kirk’s rehabilitation and a telling thrust around the turn featured a fine run comprised of birdie, birdie, birdie, par, eagle.
“There were months where I didn’t think that I really had any interest in playing golf at all again, much less competitive golf,” said Kirk, as he reflected on those dark days. “Thankfully my mindset has changed a lot now in numerous ways, and I’m back to really truly enjoying playing and really enjoying competing. Days like today are a lot of fun.”
On an intriguing second day, Lee Westwood, runner-up at Bay Hill last weekend, had reached the turn at the head of the pack while overnight leader Garcia re-ignited a stuttering round with an eagle on his
11th as a busy leaderboard just about raised questions about social distancing. Sungjae Im’s sizzling run of six birdies in a row was the kind of burst Rory McIlroy could have done with but, after his ruinous opening 79, the defending champion missed the cut by a country mile.
I have to get it in the fairway so I don’t have to rely on luck
LEWIS Hamilton’s preparations for an historic eighth world championship have been dealt a blow after his Mercedes team ran into significant trouble on the first day of Formula One testing in Bahrain.
With only three days of pre-season action, the grid is in a race against time to fine tune their machines for the new campaign. But Hamilton’s Mercedes completed the fewest laps in Sakhir yesterday after they were sidelined for the majority of the fourhour morning session with a gearbox failure.
Valtteri Bottas eventually emerged from the Mercedes garage with 35 minutes remaining before lunch and managed just six laps.
Hamilton took over the Mercedes driving duties in the afternoon, notching up an additional 42 laps for the world champions, but his running was disrupted by a sandstorm in the desert which affected visibility. The Briton, battling for grip, also ran off the circuit on a number of occasions.
The reigning champion finished 10th, 2.238 seconds adrift of Red Bull’s Max
Verstappen, who set the fastest time of the day, while completing more miles (139) than any other driver.
Hamilton, who won 11 of last season’s 17 races as he equalled Michael Schumacher’s record of seven titles, will be back in the Mercedes cockpit today. But team principal
Toto Wolff has admitted the Silver Arrows can ill-afford
any further setbacks ahead of the new campaign which gets under way in the Gulf Kingdom on March 28.
“It wasn’t a good start because we had a gearbox issue that came out of nowhere which we couldn’t identify and understand,” said Wolff. “If we’re able to have a smoother ride from here onwards then we can recover. But if we have more stumbling blocks, then obviously with three days of testing there is not a lot we can do.”
Mercedes, who are bidding for a remarkable eighth drivers’ and constructors’ double, have been bulletproof at testing in recent seasons.
So their troubles yesterday will come as a welcome boost to the chasing pack. Ahead of the test, Mercedes were the only team to elect against a filming day, where drivers are permitted to complete 60 miles in their new car. The running would have enabled Mercedes to identify their gearbox failure.
With few tweaks to the rulebook over the winter, after a major overhaul of the regulations was delayed until 2022 following the coronavirus pandemic, Hamilton’s closest challenge is set to come in the form of Verstappen. The Dutchman, 23, headed the time charts from Britain’s Lando Norris by two 10ths. Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel broke down at the end of the pit lane in his Aston Martin, while Haas driver Mick Schumacher, the son of seven-time world champion Michael, was restricted to just 15 laps following a gearbox change.