I especially enjoyed the final round of last week’s Rocket Mortgage Classic—watching the battle of the two big ballers. As always, I was interested in Sir Nick Faldo’s commentary about the weakness in Bryson DeChambeau’s game–his wedges–and that he should make an equipment switch to tighten up this part of his game. Indeed, our Ryan Barath made the same suggestion in an article July 3.

I was all in—not only as a big fan of Sir Nick and Jim Nantz—but Bryson’s 6-iron-length wedges have always looked awkward to me. On Monday, I received several calls from instructor clients/friends asking if I could support Sir Nick’s analysis. Never one to back down from a challenge, I agreed to take a deep dive into the difference between Bryson’s game in 2019 and thus far in 2020.

The data is a bit thin—69 Shotlink rounds in 2019 vs. only 42 in 2020 through Rocket Mortgage. Nonetheless, I’d submit that we have representative samples.

Here is what I found.

DRIVING

Strokes Gained # and (Ranking):

• 2019: .412 (24)
• 2020: 1.11 (2)

This is a giant leap in Strokes Gained and ranking.  OK, but Strokes Gained is an abstract number and not all about distance. Why the jump? 

Distance:  302.5 (34) => 323 (1).  Again, quite a jump. 20.5 yards in distance ON AVERAGE. Impressive!

Errors:  .4 per round => .15/round. I have worked with lots of Tour players and reducing errors is extremely difficult. Most do it by prudently cutting back on distance. To pick up over 20 yards AND cut ERRORS* by 62.5% is miraculous! For perspective, the average of the PGA Tour in 2019 was .62 errors/round. So, Bryson is outdriving EVERYONE by 21 yards AND making less than 25% of the ERRORS*? Extraordinary!

[*Driving errors are Balls hit out of play that require an advancement to return to normal play or penalty results.]

APPROACH SHOTS

Strokes Gained:

• 2019: .236 (Rank 54)
• 2020: .428 (Rank 38)

Not a great improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. This is mainly because Bryson’s accuracy from the fairway went from 62% to 70%.

PUTTING

Strokes Gained:

• 2019: .372 (Rank 28)
• 2020: .690 (Rank 12)

Another substantial improvement. Two things stand out:

1. Reduced 3-Putts from .49/round to .33 (Tour avg. is .51) – excellent jump!
2. In the always critical 6-10 ft. range, his makes went from 54% to 62% (Tour Avg. is 52%). Again, over 42 rounds, this is as much improvement in a Tour player as I have seen.

WEDGE PLAY

In my work with Tour players, I consider this to be shots from 50 to 125 yards. Bryson may very well extend this range with his length, but I chose to stay with it because I have years of data on the Tour level play for comparison.

I measure:

• # shots – How many shots a player faces on average per round.
• % Greens Hit – As opposed to the Tour’s Proximity that includes greens missed w/i 30 yards of the edge.
• Putting distance when hit (My Proximity)
• Down-in – The average shots needed to get the ball in the hole.

I am going to stick with shots from the fairway only as they are over 70% of these shots for everyone.

*Avg. Putting Distance when the shots hit the green.

**Avg. Down-in:  The # of shots need to hole out.

Mr. DeChambeau has performed an extremely noteworthy feat in that he has not only dramatically increased his driving distance BUT his accuracy to boot. Further, he has improved EVERY facet of his game, including his oft-criticized wedge game. And not just a little. If we do the math on his Down-In improvement: 2.84 to 2.68 = .16/shot X 114 shots in 2020 = 18 strokes saved this year.

In my studies of the value of a stroke on Tour, at Bryson’s current top-10 level, each stroke is worth $50-70,000. I tip my hat to him!