He isn’t just a major champion—he’s a blueprint for the modern golf outlier. Bryson DeChambeau is known for his meticulous, physics-based approach to the game. This two-time U.S. Open winner has reshaped how elite players think about distance, strategy, and precision. With a 2025 season highlighted by yet another PGA Championship runner-up finish and ball speeds soaring past 190 mph, he’s become one of golf’s most compelling forces of calculation and power. But behind that data-driven rise stood a mentor, quietly shaping his path long before the trophies rolled in.
That mentor is Scott Fawcett. A former Texas A&M golfer turned strategist, Fawcett is the creator of the DECADE system—short for Distance, Expectation, Correct Target, Analyze, Discipline, Execute. Built on a foundation of PGA Tour shot data, DECADE offers players a framework for smarter decision-making. Fawcett began working with the future star in 2015 after a Division I coach reached out. “He said, ‘I’ve got this player named Bryson DeChambeau who’s amazing at SMU, but I can’t get him to stop firing at flags. Could you teach this to him?’ So, I did, in February of 2015,” Fawcett recalled on a recent episode of The Smylie Show.
The partnership worked. That year, DeChambeau captured both the NCAA Championship and the U.S. Amateur, becoming just the fifth player in history to do so. DeChambeau later said he adopted DECADE principles immediately after Fawcett’s four-hour seminar, crediting it for helping him play smarter and ultimately win at the highest levels.
It’s never boring watching Bryson DeChambeau play golf. He’s built for content
— Flushing It (@flushingitgolf) June 13, 2025
But the system itself—its structure, its name—didn’t come from DeChambeau. It was born from a message sent by another star-in-the-making: Will Zalatoris. On the Smylie Show episode, Fawcett explained how a 17-year-old Zalatoris, fresh off a dominant win at the Texas Amateur, sent him a message that changed everything: “Will, after he won the Texas Amateur, which again is the first tournament he won that was bigger than a high school event—and he won by four—he sent me a text right after. Just said, ‘You know, I’ll never be able to thank you. You gave me 25 years of experience in five days.’ And that kind of hung with me.”
That line, 25 years in five days, became the spark behind DECADE. Fawcett, a self-proclaimed Tony Robbins nerd, sought to create a structured acronym that could guide elite players. He leaned into the idea of cutting a “decade” off a player’s learning curve. “And so, I went back to that text with Will—like I say, it just had stuck with me—and so I just wanted to kind of imply, ‘We’re going to take decades off your learning curve.’”
Zalatoris, meanwhile, was climbing his own ladder. By 2021, he’d finished runner-up at the Masters and earned PGA Tour Rookie of the Year. In 2022, he added top-two finishes at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship, and later claimed his first Tour win at the FedEx St. Jude. But 2025 has looked very different.
Will Zalatoris: A career interrupted, not defined
Will Zalatoris entered the 2025 season with high expectations and some unfinished business. Known for his elite ball-striking and nerves of steel under pressure, the 28-year-old Californian had already etched his name alongside the game’s best young players. Yet lingering back issues cast a shadow over his momentum. In April 2023, Zalatoris underwent back surgery that forced him out for the remainder of the season. After a long recovery, he returned to competition in late 2024 and started the 2025 season with optimism. Over 11 starts this year, he showed flashes of form, including a T-12 at The American Express in January. But the results were inconsistent, and discomfort resurfaced.
In May 2025, just weeks before the U.S. Open, Zalatoris announced he’d re-herniated a disc and would undergo a second surgery—effectively ending his season. The timing was gut-wrenching, especially as many analysts had tipped him as a dark horse for the summer’s major championships. On social media, Zalatoris remained hopeful, vowing to return in the fall stronger and healthier.
Still, even while sidelined, his influence on the game endures. One text, sent a decade ago to a golf strategist, helped lay the groundwork for an entire generation of smarter, sharper players, including Bryson DeChambeau, whose career might look very different had that message never been sent
The post Golf Veteran Opens Up About Injured PGA Tour Pro’s One Text He’ll Never Forget appeared first on EssentiallySports.
