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Bryson DeChambeau’s comments on the performance of his driver in the opening round of The Open have not gone down well with the club’s manufacturer.

After opening with a one-over 71 at Royal St George’s, during which he hit only four of 14 fairways, DeChambeau fumed about how the biggest club in his bag had performed

“The driver sucks,” he groaned. “It’s not a good face for me, and we’re still trying to figure out how to make it good on the mishits. I’m living on the razor’s edge, like I’ve told people for a long time.”

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That, as you can well imagine, was not well received by the head honchos at his equipment sponsor Cobra.

Speaking to Golfweek, the brand’s tour operations manager Ben Schomin – who stepped in to caddie for DeChambeau during the Rocket Mortgage Classic two weeks ago when he split with regular caddie Tim Tucker – hit back at the world No.6’s claims.

“Everybody is bending over backwards. We’ve got multiple guys in R&D who are CAD’ing (computer-aided design) this and CAD-ing that, trying to get this and that into the pipeline faster,” said Schomin. “He knows it. It’s just really, really painful when he says something that stupid.”

DeChambeau is currently using a 46-inch Cobra Radspeed driver with five degrees of loft, which is custom-built for him. Now, it seems as though his maker’s

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“He has never really been happy, ever,” added DeChambeau. “It’s very rare where he’s happy,” Schomin said. “Now he’s in a place where he’s swinging a five-degree driver with 200 mph of ball speed. Everybody is looking for a magic bullet. Well, the magic bullet becomes harder and harder to find the faster you swing and the lower your loft gets.”

Schomin added that he believes DeChambeau said what he did in the heat of the moment. But that, he insists, is no excuse.

“It’s like an 8-year-old that gets mad at you,” he continued. “They might fly off the handle and say, ‘I hate you.’ But then you go. ‘Whoa, no you don’t.’

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“We know as adults that they really don’t mean that and I know that if I got him cornered right now and said, ‘What the hell did you say that for,’ he would say that he was mad. He didn’t really mean to say it that harshly. He knows how much everyone bends over backwards for him, but it’s still not cool.”


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Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor

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