Dr. DeChambeau at work
By Bill Felber
Bryson DeChambeau, the PGA Tour’s most committed mechanic declares war on inconsistency.
Bryson DeChambeau has set off in search of the chief hobgoblin haunting the PGA Tour: inconsistency.
DeChambeau announced his quest during an interview on The Golf Channel’s Morning Drive following his dominating performance in winning the Dubai Desert Classic. At -24 264, he beat Englishman Mike Wallace by seven strokes with five players – among them Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter — another stroke behind.
“It’s about trying to figure out what works, and what works consistently,” DeChambeau told The Golf Channel’s Gary Williams. “I hated it when I would go to one tournament and play really well and then the next week have all the number’s off.
Most people, DeChambeau acknowledged, would ascribe those week-to-week, and even round-to-round swings, to the human condition. But the Tour’s most famous mechanical man isn’t buying it. “There are actually reasons,” he asserted, all but declaring his intent to go “back into my little lab” and stamp those reasons out.
DeChambeau suggested to Williams he may recently have made substantial progress toward that goal. He explained his final round 64 with the certainty of a scientist emerging from a lengthy session with lab rats.
“Last night I figured it out and I knew today I could play well,” DeChambeau said.
The best test of consistency is standard deviation, a mathematical calculation of the normal range of a player’s performance. Whether DeChambeau truly “figured it out” overnight in Dubai is yet to be firmly established, but based on his performance in recent PGA Tour events he still has a way to go.
That reality may of course be precisely what he’s talking of correcting.
Beginning with last August’s PGA Championship, DeChambeau has played 38 PGA Tour rounds, winning both the Northern Trust and Dell last September and the Shriners last October . Those two September victories followed immediately on the heels of DeChambeau’s failure to make the cut at the PGA, a point of sensitivity driving the concern over consistency.
The standard deviation of DeChambeau’s score in those 38 PGA Tour rounds (not counting Dubai) was 3.42 strokes relative to par. In a sentence, that means there was a strong likelihood that any time he teed it up, DeChambeau could be expected to shoot within 3.4 strokes of his average score of about 3.35 strokes below par; that is, between par and seven under..
Obviously it’s impossible to judge the significance of that 3.4 number in isolation; we need some comparables. Three are offered, and they are intended to be benchmarks. One is the world’s number one player, Justin Rose. A second is the consummately average Tour player, the one with a stroke average closest to the Tour mean. That happens to be Brian Gay. The third is Phil Mickelson, who beyond being a great player is notorious for his mercurial performance swings. As a trio, they essentially represent the low, mean and high swings in performance variance.
Here are those swings, showing each player’s standard deviation, average, and normal range:
Std. Dev. Average Normal range
- DeChambeau 3.42 68.95 65.53-72.37
- Rose 2.78 69.63 66.85-72.41
- Gay 2.69 71.29 68.60-73.98
- Mickelson 3.65 69.46 65.81-73.11
The first thing to conclude from a quick examination of this data is that consistency isn’t everything. Statistically Gay is more consistent than Rose, yet Rose is obviously the better player. When we talk about consistency, what we’re really discussing isn’t leveling all attributes but polishing weaknesses.
The second thing to conclude is that however much DeChambeau covets consistency, he isn’t there yet. The 3.42 standard deviation of his Tour performances since the PGA – a string that includes three victories – is much closer to Mickelson’s wild ride than to Gay’s consistent mediocrity.
Still, it’s interesting to run with DeChambeau’s premise, adding the qualifier that we’re talking about consistency of excellence. Having established that consistency and excellence are not inherent partners, which parts of DeChambeau’s game does he need to refine in order to improve his week-to-week performance?
In one word, putting.
Considering the three individual PGA Tour events DeChambeau has played during the 2019 season – the Shriners, the Sentry TOC and the Sony. In those, the standard deviation of his putting performance has been 1.735 strokes per round. He has shown the ability to fluctuate from very good to pretty bad in something approaching a heartbeat.
In the first round of the Shriners, which he won, his putting gained him 1.7876 strokes on the field as measured by the Strokes Gained system. Two days later, in the third round, his putting cost him nearly a full stroke relative to the field. On Sunday, he gave the field more than a full stroke on the greens and yet still won because the other facets of his game were so dominant.
This inconsistency on the greens followed him to Hawaii. At the TOC, he gained 7.34 strokes on the field due to his putting. One week later at the Sony he ceded the field 1.457 strokes in the same area. Seven days, an island or two in distance, but nearly a 9-stroke performance swing on the short grass.
The same was almost precisely true in reverse with respect to DeChambeau’s ability to approach the greens. At the Sentry, he spotted the field more than two and one-quarter strokes by his shortcomings in that skill. At the Sony, he was more than four and three-quarters strokes superior to the field.
Obviously, on the theory of “horses for courses,” the differing natures of those tracks may have impacted DeChambeau, who may have found it easier to adapt his game to the greens at Kapalua and the fairways at Waialae than vice versa.
On the other hand, if your stated goal is consistency, then those are precisely the types of performance variations you’re fighting to eliminate. That in turn means return trips to the lab…and bad news for Dr. DeChambeau’s lab rats.