Bryson DeChambeau: I ignored medical advice to take ‘huge risk’ ahead of Masters

Bryson DeChambeau has ignored advice from his doctors and taken a “huge risk” to return early from the injury lay-off which he believes has made him a better person.

DeChambeau was sidelined for six weeks with hand and hip problems before contesting the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play a fortnight ago in Austin, where he won just half a point from three matches in the group stages.

The former US Open champion also missed the cut in last week’s Valero Texas Open and said he is operating on 80 per cent power heading into this week’s Masters at Augusta National.

“I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been able to get here in a short amount of time,” DeChambeau said. “Normally a bone fracture takes four months to probably fully heal, I’m back here in two.

“The doctors recommended that I don’t come back for a while. And even (coach) Chris (Como) has told me ‘you probably shouldn’t play’, even though he wants me to play obviously.

“But it was a huge risk a couple weeks ago. It was probably not one that my doctors recommended, but I’m like, ‘man, this only comes around once a year and I’ve got to give this a go’.”

DeChambeau said he first suffered a partial tear to his hip labrum two years ago and injured his hand late last year before exacerbating the problem in a fall while playing table tennis in Saudi Arabia in February.

“One of the things I didn’t do is take care of my hands and my hip like I should have and I went pretty hard,” he added.

“Albeit I wouldn’t do anything else to change what happened because it’s made me a better person because of it, taking six weeks off, realising that golf isn’t everything in life.

“I’ve had a lot of things change behind the scenes, which has been awesome for me.

“It allowed me to do some pretty