The one place a tournament does not want to fall on the PGA Tour schedule is the week after a major.
The top players in the world take a breather, especially after the battering most of them took at The Masters.
Hilton Head Island is a great setting for the RBC Heritage and the Harbor Town Golf Links is a great test of golf. There is no great advantage for the bombers, it’s a position off the tee challenge. Jim Furyk was the ideal champion last year but won’t be back this week as he’s still recovering from wrist surgery.
Enter the new kid on the block — Bryson DeChambeau. This is his pro debut and he is looking to play his way onto the PGA Tour and he’ll have seven events to do it, starting this week. He will then play in the Byron Nelson, the Colonial, the prestigious Memorial, Quicken Loans and the Travelers. But it all starts this week on the place the locals call Fantasy Island.
“This transition should be fairly easy,” DeChambeau said this week. He has basically been playing as an un-paid pro for the last six months. He has signed to play Cobra clubs, will wear Puma clothing and hit the Bridgestone golf ball. He sports the signature Ben Hogan/Payne Stewart cap.
His swing makes him easy to spot as well. They won’t sell any clubs based on his. Every iron is the same length, all bent 17-degrees upright as he stands very close to the golf ball. Most would find nothing but confusion when reading The Golfing Machine by Homer Kelley but DeChambeau is a different cat. He’s bright, a physics student and a fresh face in golf.
He shot 72-72-77-72 last week at the Masters, ironically, the very same scores once shot by an amateur named Tiger Woods.
He showed he’s ready to play for pay.
This week he’ll find out how ready he really is.
