Bryson DeChambeau’s Ball Search Pushes Him Out of Masters Hunt

He sent a short chip, his fourth shot on the hole, flying 20 yards over the green. His pitch from there skipped another 15 feet past the hole. Two putts later, DeChambeau had a confounding, disheartening double bogey.

“I know it affected him a little bit, because he didn’t play his best golf after that,” Rahm said.

Rahm was being empathetic, and diplomatic.

Looking frazzled, DeChambeau hooked his drive on the fourth hole, then mis-hit an iron from the rough — “Oh, I popped it up,” he yelped after the swing.

He started playing considerably faster and hardly sized up some shots before hitting them, as if he had an Uber car waiting to remove him from the scene. It was an unconscious reaction any everyday duffer would have recognized — the kind of thing golfers do when their minds are overcome by a mix of exasperation and embarrassment.

Consecutive bogeys ensued on the fourth and fifth holes. Now DeChambeau, who declined to come to the clubhouse interview area late Friday, was four over par for his round.

Rahm, who was also part of the search party that on Thursday had helped DeChambeau find a ball he blasted into the azalea bushes behind the 13th green, understood what his playing partner was going through.

“It’s unfortunate that the rules of golf don’t let you kind of figure out it’s somewhere there and keep playing — because he had to re-tee,” Rahm said. “I mean, when you have Bryson hitting it as hard as he hits it and it’s kind of hooking with not much spin into a soft area, we were all confident it was pretty buried and it was going to be hard to find.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/sports/golf/bryson-dechambeau-masters-leaderboard-day-2.html