It was a little before 3pm when Bryson DeChambeau emerged from a network of secluded pathways and into the sightline of a small group of schoolkids.
Half an hour remained until his tee-time and they were waiting for him. Of course they were. Everywhere he goes, children line the fences, adults too, stretching out hands or flags for his signature. More often than not, they get what they want.
But this scenario, on this summer’s afternoon, was different, which is to say that one of the boys, aged no more than 12, didn’t offer a hand or a flag – he offered some advice instead.
‘Keep your feet off the grass this time, Bryson,’ he called, but there was no smile for the lad. No glance, either. Head down, DeChambeau simply carried on with his walk to the driving range, because what else can you do?
And what else can you say when we have all seen the footage and many of us have reached the same conclusion? There are all manner of c-words in this world but nothing screams louder in golf than a whisper about cheating.
For DeChambeau, this was the day after he stomped the grass and cleared a swing path into one of those rows. Even by his standards for controversy and thrills and attention-seeking, there has never been an episode so thrillingly controversial as the ‘inadvertent’ means with which he gained global attention on Friday.
Bryson DeChambeau stepped out onto the green on Saturday with the eyes of the world on him
The crowd may have flung a handful of insults at him but he had the crowd roaring for him too
But here he was. He bashed a few balls on the range, as he had done until 10.30pm the night before, when he was still processing the two-shot penalty at the heart of this mess, and then he made his journey to the first tee.
There were kids waiting there, too. And more adults. And journalists. Plenty of those. Lucas Herbert, the tournament leader, was not due out for a little while, Rory McIlroy was nowhere close to contention, Ryan Fox had shot a 62 and Tommy Fleetwood was making a charge up ahead, but there was no doubt about the only story in town.
And even less around the notion that this would be one of the most challenging rounds of DeChambeau’s life, because golf is a lonely place. An isolated place. Eyeballs can burn hotter than a heatwave in the wrong circumstances.
But then something happened – the gallery roared for DeChambeau from the grandstands that encase three sides of the narrow tee box on the first hole and they roared again when he launched a five wood 250 yards up the left. As chance would have it, the ball came to rest in the rough and then came a little joke. ‘Careful Bryson,’ said one of the locals and that got a few giggles.
We leaned in. We watched. And obviously he would never do anything so daft as to press down that tuft of scrubland grass behind his ball, but we stared anyway before he floated an approach to the back of the green and cleaned up for a par.
Naturally, there was someone else in this script – the guy next to DeChambeau. That would be Sam Burns, who also parred the hole and birdied six of the next 17. Closing with a 65, he went on to sign for a 65 and a 10-under-par total that will send him into the final round with a two-stroke lead over Fox and Si Woo Kim – fine tales, all of them.
But we weren’t really there for that. Regrettably, we weren’t there to talk about Burns or how he only decided last Friday to play in this tournament that he might now win. We were there to watch DeChambeau. To watch those watching him.
On the second hole, that watching became even more intense. Once again, he dragged a shot left, and once again it was in the rough. But this was deeper. This was more like the rough he was accused of manipulating on Friday. This threw up another joke from the other side of the ropes: ‘Careful where you stand, Bryson!’
He bogeyed and at four under par, he was now four off the lead. He was slipping. But still he had the crowd, or most of them, because at the third someone else adapted the gag: ‘Forget about that penalty, Bryson, lad!’ By the green, we heard the first shout of ‘cheat’ but it wasn’t said with any feeling. It was said in a pantomime spirit. It was performative, much like the target.
This went on for a while, all the way to the fifth hole. Should we call that the scene of the crime?
In golf, they’d give you less for murder than a deliberate attempt to bend the rules, and this was the place where he did the thing that threw out the noise. Did he intentionally improve his lie by treading down on that thick fescue behind his ball? He had said no on Friday. He had screamed as much at the officials and they had accepted his version but penalised him anyway. And now he was back on the same hole.
This time his drive went left. And another punter called ‘cheat’, with more conviction, because maybe the alcohol was kicking in. But that guy was silenced by those near him. And DeChambeau parred.
By a quirk, this was at 4.30pm, so around the time McIlroy was stopping in to do his media duties after a 69. He eviscerated DeChambeau, saying he wasn’t ‘fond’ of him, which we knew, and that a group of players all felt he committed an infraction, which we didn’t. The rage DeChambeau had shown on Friday? McIlroy said it was ‘performative’ and the tournament had been ‘held hostage’.
Rory McIlroy did not hold back in his assessment of DeChambeau after he finished up
Despite registering his worst score of the week, it was also somehow his most impressive
That was punchy. That chimed with many of us. But DeChambeau is a strange beast and galleries love him. They lifted him. And here he showed tremendous willpower to turn his round – birdies on the sixth, 15th and 17th holes were remarkable for his circumstances. So too his par saves from bunkers on the 12th, 13th and 14th holes, the last of which required an act of body contortion beyond some gymnasts.
There were more jokes as the pint count increased – that much was guaranteed. And on the 18th he was called a ‘cheat’ by a man in the grandstand. Bogeying the hole, he fell to six under and four behind Burns after signing for a 69. It was his worst score of the week and in some respects, it was his most impressive.
When it was done, he was seen in a heated discussion with Mark Darbon, the chief executive of the R&A – another ugly scene and one sparked, bizarrely, by his demand to be given his scorecard from Friday. Why he would want it is anyone’s guess.
But that is the nature of DeChambeau, a puzzling man among many other labels.
