Bryson DeChambeau: I’m not slow… my playing partners are!

Bryson DeChambeau has been regularly criticised lately for his pace of play but, today, he hit back, saying: Don’t blame me… blame the guys I’m playing with.

The 25-year-old, one of the favourites to win The Masters this week, has been singled out by social media users and commentators for taking an inordinate amount of time to play, particularly as a result of in-depth, strategic discussions between he and his caddie.

One clip posted on the European Tour’s Twitter account, and which has subsequently been widely shared, showed the American taking over a minute to play a shot during the Dubai Desert Classic earlier this year as he and bagman Tim Tucker weighed up a wealth of variables – amongst them, air density – that might affect his shot. 

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However, speaking at Augusta National ahead of the first men’s major of the season, DeChambeau went on the offensive.

“I think we do a fantastic job of taking all the information we can in the allotted amount of time,” he said of he and Tucker’s discussions. 

“The one piece of information that a lot of people miss is the walk to the ball. There’s a two-and-a-half or three‑minute walk that people don’t take into account. You can gain a lot more time by walking 15 seconds quicker to the ball than you can by five seconds over a shot. 

“So people don’t take that into account when we talk about slow play.” 

He went on to say that being a big-hitter was putting him at a disadvantage and making his play seem slower than others.

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“I may be a guy that hits it up there farther than someone, and they are taking their merry time getting to their golf ball and it’s behind me and I’m already up there and I can’t get any of my numbers because I’m right in their line of sight,” he went on.

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“Once they do their whole process, that takes maybe 25 seconds compared to my 35‑second to 40‑second preparation to hit the shot by the time we walk back over and get the number, do all that.

“You can view me as a slow player [but] in the end I look at it from another standpoint saying there’s a whole other piece to this puzzle that we are not looking at yet.”

Does he have a point? Leave your thoughts in our Comments section below.

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