“But when I watch Bryson hit driver, it reminds me of Steph Curry… It’s just, you can’t do what he’s doing,” said LIV golf critic Brandel Chamblee on the Dan Patrick Show, which means a lot coming from this critic. Bryson DeChambeau is playing really well right now and has a lot of momentum. Recently, he almost won the PGA Championship but finished tied for second, and let’s not forget that he is the defending champion. Alongside him, Justin Thomas, ranked No. 5 in the OWGR, also came in hot. He won the RBC Heritage earlier this year and tied for second at the American Express. With both players showing strong form, fans had high hopes for them at this U.S. Open—but were left disappointed.
Insiders had discourses about their current form, which is questionable right now. In the Golf Podcast with Rex Hoggard and Ryan Lavner, were baffled by Thomas’s and DeChambeau’s recent play. “I think Bryson was a bit of a surprise, you and I talked a lot about it earlier in the week, I didn’t think he was going to be able to contend,” said Hoggard. He is currently at T91 with 8 bogeys and 1 double bogey in round 2, quite a poor performance, and no wonder, a bit of shock.
“I didn’t expect him to do what he did today with a 77 and miss the cut.” That line hit harder because Bryson was the only LIV golfer coming in with real rhythm and form. Given the way he’d been playing, this drop-off came out of nowhere. “coming into this event I believe he was second favorite” after Scottie Scheffler he was the one to took the trophy but he took away nothing but disappointment of fans well theb might be true that LIV golfers does not have what it takes to play at big tournaments as said by Chamblee before. He was not only that gave insiders a shock.
“I’m particularly surprised by JT because even though he’s playing so much better this season than he did last season,” a fair take by the insiders, considering he looked more composed, was striking it well, and had cleaned up his putting, he even fixed his driver issue before the us open. And then he misses the cut at a major. “he does have these lapses where he just he did it at the players championship,” Thomas tied up at shocking 110 position with 6 bogeys and 2 double boggeys in the 2nd round and missed the cut even more bad than Dechambeau, just didn’t fit the version of Justin thomas we’d seen lately.
While the criticism rolled in and questions about form kept piling up, fans were just as curious about how Bryson himself would respond to the disappointing result.
How 2nd fan favorite DeChambeau took this defeat…
“I think the rough is incredibly penalizing. Even for a guy like me, I can’t get out of it some of the times, depending on the lie.” Dechambeau said after the 1st round, Bryson admitted just how punishing the course was. He said the rough at Oakmont was so thick, even he couldn’t muscle it out at times—and that’s coming from one of the longest hitters in the game. “It was a brutal test of golf,” he said, summing up the grind everyone faced. His familiarity with the course did not even help!
He even visited Oakmont days before the tournament, and he hinted at the challenge ahead. “Yeah, just don’t hit it there,” he said on his YouTube channel during the practice visit, quite ironically, the thing he warned others about seems like he himself has hit it there. Along with struggling in the rough, Bryson also couldn’t get comfortable on the greens.
He admitted that he just couldn’t figure out the speed “for whatever reason, just couldn’t get the speed of the greens dialed in,” he added, something crucial at a place like Oakmont, where the greens are fast, tricky. That small detail made a big difference in his overall performance.
So now, with Bryson and Justin Thomas out of the picture, the spotlight shifts—who’s going to rise and take the trophy? As of now, Sam Burns is leading the charge, and all eyes are on whether he can hold that momentum through the weekend.
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