How Bryson DeChambeau ‘drives wedges’ at the Masters
JOHANNESBURG — Bryson DeChambeau hasn’t always been nice, to borrow an old saying, he puts down the grass where the goats can find it.
For more than a decade now, golf fans have tried to understand the physics lesson DeChambeau gives every time he and a friend discuss club selection. (As an eyewitness, they speak a different language than we do!) And throughout those years, DeChambeau has been more prone to mixing up complexities — think Coefficient of Restitution — than digging into them, especially at press conferences.
But when you’re pushed for more, when there’s a clear runway to dive into the details, it can be hard to stop him. Evidenced this week in South Africa, where DeChambeau teased that he drives it well, hits his irons well and puts it hard. The last boundary of his game before the Masters “drives” his wedges.
“Like I did back in ’23 when I tested a bunch of drivers at the end of that year and I found the driver I use today,” said DeChambeau.
And the driver with whom he won the US Open.
What has become incredibly clear is that dialing in equipment probably means more to DeChambeau than it does to the average tour-level professional. It’s important for everyone, but for DeChambeau that shouldn’t be on the verge of chaos. So what does it look like to “dial” wedges? I answered the question his way, and, unsurprisingly, he spoke for the next three minutes.
“Big question,” he began. “It’s a lot about the point of strike and how much turf gets between the face and the grass and it reduces that, managing that strike, and how you manage that strike depends on how soft the turf is. If it presses too much into the ground, if it doesn’t, if it bounces off the ground like in Australia, it’s really hard to roll back a little bit and hit it a little bit. It’s soft here, you hit it just in the same place and it goes in just under and you hit it high on the face and it comes out with more spin and short and dead.
Given the complete dump of rain Steyn City has received in the past 24 hours, DeChambeau is right about the softness of the soil. Long blades of grass will be flying in the sky in South Africa. And that probably won’t be the case at Augusta in a few weeks.
“So I’m trying to find a bounce that will work for me, the first one, that plays like tight situations because I always play very well in tight situations,” DeChambeau continued. “I learn from it [my teammates]. I can see how they beat it. I see what they do, and I learn a lot from my team, although I don’t really ask because they are tired of asking wedges. They are just the same, go for short wedges and standard clubsthat I tried, and I still suck at that.”
DeChambeau played single-length instruments and used longer-than-usual wedge shafts for years. It works for him… but it’s completely atypical. His colleagues sat next to him while he spoke and nodded their heads knowingly.
“But I will tell you that it is interesting to see the way they hit the ball, the forward shaft leans, and where they hit the face is important,” he continued. “So I think that leading edge height is very important, depending on how soft the turf is.
“I think surface friction is very important, how hard it can be. Funny enough, when the surface tightens, it actually starts to rotate a little bit at a certain point, up to the legal limit. And then, once you go past the legal limit, it starts to rotate a lot. It’s like a bell curve too. It’s kind of wild.
Then you can get situations where there’s a very smooth surface and then it’s wet and slippery and doesn’t turn at all, and it has to spin.
Let that be a window into what DeChambeau’s testing seasons ultimately look like. They go so far as to try to understand the strange limits at which surface friction begins to return to its purpose of increasing rotation.
“Unfortunately I hit my wedges a little bit because maybe I don’t have the right bounce configuration,” he continued. No one was interested in stopping him. “Perhaps the way of grinding is a little different.
“I’m trying new wedges. They almost have a bubble on the bottom and they’re helping a little. It helped last week.”
Those new wedges are the Bettinardi HLX 6.0 wedges. You have a 1 on 1 conversion to win with them in the bag. But it sounds like he could change them and get new ones at any time. Obviously there are many options in play.
“I have more head weight on the wedges. We’re cutting out things that weren’t working for me, be it a softer shaft, shorter wedges, a different kind of torque on the head for contact, different types of grinds, lighter heads, no grooves to hit the grooves. It’s possible for me to be able to shoot, if I’m 5 percent fit, I have a better chance than I did last year at the Masters.”
Ah, yes. The 2025 Masters, is always remembered for the completion of the Grand Slam of Rory McIlroy, and secretly slept where DeChambeau played in the last group and quickly disappeared in the background because his iron was not up to standard. Now he’s obviously given that a lot of thought, and the wedges are getting their proper time under the magnifying glass.
“I took the last Masters as an opportunity to learn how to be a better iron player and a better wedge player,” he said, about to conclude. “I feel like most of it was there. A couple of fine tuning sessions and then I’ll just keep hitting it the way I did and hopefully give myself a good chance.”
