"The driver sucks.”
Bryson DeChambeau after finding just 4/14 fairways and shooting 1-over par today at #TheOpen
— GolfBet (@GolfBet) July 15, 2021
Bryson DeChambeau struggled during Round 1 of The Open Championship at Royal St. George’s, finishing seven strokes behind the leader at 1-over par. Following his disappointing round, DeChambeau went on a rant in which he blamed his clubs for his underwhelming performance.
Specifically, DeChambeau blamed his driver, a Cobra Radspeed.
“The driver sucks,” DeChambeau said after hitting just 4 of 14 fairways on Thursday.
After his comments, a company rep for Cobra, tour operations manager Ben Schomin who caddied for DeChambeau just two weeks ago after he split with his former caddie, spoke to Golfweek’s David Dusek about the golfer’s complaints. Rightfully so, Schomin ripped DeChambeau and said that his comments were counterproductive.
“Everybody is bending over backwards. We’ve got multiple guys in R&D who are CAD’ing (computer-aided design) this and CAD-ing that, trying to get this and that into the pipeline faster. (Bryson) knows it,” Schomin said. “It’s just really, really painful when he says something that stupid.
“He has never really been happy, ever. Like, it’s very rare where he’s happy. Now he’s in a place where he’s swinging a 5-degree driver with 200 rpm of ball speed. Everybody is looking for a magic bullet. Well, the magic bullet becomes harder and harder to find the faster you swing and the lower your loft gets.”
If those comments weren’t enough to show how Schomin really felt, he went on to compare DeChambeau’s rant to a temper tantrum from a child.
“It’s like an 8-year-old that gets mad at you,” he said. “They might fly off the handle and say, ‘I hate you.’ But then you go. ‘Whoa, no you don’t.'”
Ouch. The comments from Schomin are brutally honest, and they are also warranted. No one likes a professional athlete who digs for excuses and blaming your equipment for your own struggles is never going to be well-received by fans or the public.
To DeChambeau’s credit, he did later apologize for letting his frustrations get the best of him.
We’ll have to see if DeChambeau can find more consistency in Round 2 on Friday.
