Injured Bryson DeChambeau enjoying lower profile before 2022 Masters

Bryson DeChambeau has always done things his own way, but even he is taking it a little far at this year’s Masters. In February he suffered a hairline fracture of a bone in his left hand when he fell over playing table tennis against Sergio García on a marble floor during a tournament in Jeddah.

His doctors and his coaches told him he should take the next four months off to recover, but here he is, two months later, teeing up at Augusta National despite their advice. “It was a huge risk,” he said, “it was probably not one that my doctors recommended, but I decided to do so because I wanted to give this tournament a run.” He says his game is at about 80% of where he would like it to be.

It’s not just his hand, he has a hip injury, too, a partial tear in the cartilage. He already had problems with both hand and hip before the fall because of the extreme speed and strength training regimen which, for a brief period, turned him into one of the most dominant players on the tour.

His world ranking has dropped back to No 14 now, and he says himself that his build-up to this year’s tournament feels very different to how it did in November 2020, when he came here off the back of his six-shot victory in the US Open at Winged Foot. Tiger Woods said the way DeChambeau was playing back then was “unprecedented” and “historic”.

“Coming here in the fall for that Masters, a lot of eyes were on me, and it was a different expectation level and definitely uncomfortable for me because I had never experienced that,” DeChambeau said. But this year, “coming off an injury, not being really fully ready, or not having won recently or whatnot, it’s kind of been nice going into this year’s Masters just peacefully going about my business.”

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