DUBLIN, Ohio – Having gone nearly two months without making a cut, Bryson DeChambeau isn’t exactly feeling all the warm, fuzzy vibes that usually come with defending a title on the PGA Tour.
DeChambeau won a three-man playoff at last year’s Memorial Tournament, capturing the first of what would be four titles in a torrid 12-start span. But recently his world-class game has failed to produce results, as last week’s missed cut at the Charles Schwab Challenge was his third in a row. He also made early exits at the PGA Championship and RBC Heritage before that, and he hasn’t broken 70 since an opening-round 66 at the Masters.
It’s all led DeChambeau to make a frank assessment of where he stands heading into his title defense.
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“Everybody is susceptible to lows. Mine hopefully aren’t as low as some others. And this, to me, is my lowest of lows,” DeChambeau said. “I really don’t feel like I can play much worse.”
DeChambeau hadn’t missed a cut prior to Harbour Town since last year’s PGA, a stretch of 16 starts that included four worldwide victories. He hadn’t missed more than two cuts in a row since the summer of 2017, when he missed seven in a row ending with the U.S. Open at Erin Hills.
DeChambeau earned his first PGA Tour victory a month later at the 2017 John Deere Classic, and back on a course where he has had prior success he’s again optimistic that a turnaround in results is closer than it might otherwise feel.
“Personally for me I feel like this is as low as it’s going to go. I just have to keep running, I have to keep just scratching at the door, keep going with trying to understand why does this dispersion happen? Why do I have this range of possibility of shots?” DeChambeau said. “You have to go back through your checklist, things that you do understand and kind of branch off of that. When you go down a rabbit hole and it doesn’t work, you pull yourself out and find ways that work better.”