“Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.”
— Oscar Goldman (from the Six Million Dollar Man)
Bryson “The Snail” DeChambeau is up to something.
The Sultan Of Slow Play, The Duke Of Delay, The Count Of Crawl has something up his sleeve and it’s not a very long sleeve.
The Mad Scientist of the PGA Tour has had a so-so early season. In this head-scratching cross-over time of the year when Korn-Ferry grads and guys without a lot of tour status get to actually show up and play, DeChambeau has been, well, average at best.
Let’s take a quick survey.
He missed the cut at The Greenbrier (Military Tribute).
Nabbed a T13 at the birdie-friendly Safeway.
Came to life a bit with a final round 63 in Vegas and jumped up into a tie for fourth.
Then “The Snail” hit everyone with this news:
He’ll be stepping away from the PGA Tour for the next six weeks.
Extended vacation? Hardly, The Sultan Of Slow is about to go Colonel Steve Austin on us and become something akin to The Bionic Man.
No, there will be no bionic parts involved but there will be some sort of Weird Science involved and Weird Science is what Bryson does best when he’s not slowing down play in a PGA Tour event.
He’s going to be doing something under the supervision of Greg Roskopf. Roskopf has his own brand of science going on. He’s the author of The Roskopf Principal and the founder of MAT, which to us lay-people is Muscle Activation Techniques.
So Bryson The Snail’s plan is to work out with special equipment at his home and he’ll also be traveling to Denver for personal sessions with Roskopf. Plan is to start with the core and then work on the extremities.
Wonder if Roskopf can increase The Snail’s pace of play while they’re at it?
What is Bryson expecting from all of this work?
“Bigger. Way stronger. Not necessarily bigger, but just stronger in general,” DeChambeau predicted. “I am going to look probably a lot bigger, but it’s going to be a fun month and a half off. I have never been able to do this, and I’m going to go do things that are going to be a lot of fun.”
This is not Bryson’s first rodeo with Roskopf.
They’ve collaborated in the past to study Bryson’s brain waves, of all things. The goal with this latest experiment, according to DeChambeau is “to make sure the neurological threshold is just as high as the mechanical threshold.” For those of us who work for a living, it means maximizing muscle potential and the body’s range of motion.
So what’s The Sultan Of Slow going to look like in six weeks?
“You’re going to see some pretty big changes in my body, which is going to be a good thing. I’m going to be hitting it a lot farther,” he said.
Hitting it farther? Where Bryson needs to improve is that short game of his. Pretty mediocre compared to his overall ball striking.
Bigger, stronger, farther?
What about faster?
Oh yeah, right, this is Bryson DeChambeau we’re talking about.
