Bryson DeChambeau in action during the Pro-Am ahead of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

By Kent Gray
Bryson DeChambeau already plays a game with which very few are familiar but you knew the golf scientist was never going to be content with that.

The 26-year-old American has piled on 13kg of lean muscle since a lightbulb moment at the 2018 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open on the PGA Tour in late 2018, adding brawn to golf’s most unique brain. He believes the physical experiment is close to getting his game back to where it was in 2018 when the Ryder and Presidents Cupper won four of his five PGA Tour titles.

Now tipping the scales at 102kg, DeChambeau will put his new muscle infused swing on show in the company of freshly minted South African Open champion Branden Grace and Englishman Matthew Fitzpatrick in the first round of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship from 12.05pm (1st tee) today. The way he’s talking, don’t be surprised if he’s right in the thick of things when they hand over the Falcon trophy on Sunday afternoon.

“It’s made me excited for the game again because I get to go back out and play a game that is completely different than what I knew it to be,” he said.

“I mean, I went out yesterday and hit shots and hit drives… two years ago, I was hitting driver, 5-iron — driver almost 4-iron into 16 but yesterday [practice on Monday], I hit driver — I could have hit 9-iron into it but I hit a chip 8-iron into that hole and it was the same into the wind, 10, 15 miles an hour, I flew a driver 315 yards into a 15-mile-an-hour wind. I’ve never been able to do that before.

“So it’s really a new game for me. It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out. The direction hasn’t really changed that much. I just feel like I’ve got more control and more stable.”

DeChambeau finished T-54 after accepting an invite to Abu Dhabi as an amateur in 2016 but missed the cut two years later as a professional in his only other tilt at the Falcon.

“Moving into 2020, I feel like I know twice as much as what I knew in 2018. For me, that’s certainly a positive benefit that will only help me for the rest of my career.

“I didn’t feel like any point in 2019 I was playing my A+ game…I feel like I’m very close to that right now, very, very close.”