Open ... and shut
DeChambeau walks through the door at Pinehurst McIlroy's misses left open
Bryson DeChambeau roars and strikes his future statue pose (Chris Keane/USGA)
The bunker shot will go down as one of the greatest in the game’s history, a shot for the ages. As classy as Bryson DeChambeau’s blast from the sand was setting up his U.S. Open victory, so too was his shout out to the crestfallen Rory McIlroy in the aftermath.
DeChambeau had every right to revel in victory — his second U.S. Open. He need not worry about how McIlroy faltered down the stretch, bogeying three of his last four holes, missing two short putts inside 4 feet, letting go another opportunity to win a fifth major.
But he did worry about it. DeChambeau — on the bad end of a good bit of abuse over the past two years, some of it indirectly from McIlroy regarding his LIV Golf move — took the high road.
“Rory is one of the best to ever play,” DeChambeau said. “Being able to fight against a great like that is pretty special. For him to miss that putt, I'd never wish it on anybody. It just happened to play out that way.
“He'll win multiple more major championships. There's no doubt. I think that fire in him is going to continue to grow. I have nothing but respect for how he plays the game of golf because, to be honest, when he was climbing up the leaderboard, he was two ahead, I was like, Uh-oh, uh-oh. But luckily things went my way today.”
DeChambeau was there to greet Xander Schauffele when he was defeated by a stroke last month at the PGA Championship and handled Sunday’s victory with the same humility.
Credit DeChambeau, whose resurgence in the last year has been nothing short of remarkable. From virtually no success at all in the LIV Golf league to now contending in three of the last six majors and winning one of them is a remarkable turnaround.
But he did not do it with his best stuff on Sunday. DeChambeau, for some reason, changed the head on his drive roughly 30 minutes prior to the final round. He admitted afterward he probably should not have done so. He hit just 5 of 14 fairways and just 11 of 18 greens. He made only two birdies and shot 1-over-par 71, his highest score of the week.
And he trailed by two shots with six holes to go. But DeChambeau’s birdie at the 13th coupled with McIlroy’s mistakes down the stretch put him in position to win or at least get into an aggregate two-hole playoff.