Bryson Begins Masters Tune-Up By Not Playing Again Until Tournament Week

Apparently this whole athlete thing also entails weight, diet and equipment work leading into a major, not exactly a boost to the PGA Tour that loves the jock narrative and who pulled off a miraculous salvation of the lucrative CJ Cup and ZOZO Championships. Irony can be inconvenient.

From Steve DiMeglio’s post-Shriner’s wrap of U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau’s pre-November Masters plans.

“I’m going to be working out like crazy. The first week back home, I’m not really going to touch a club too much and going to be training pretty hard and getting myself up to hopefully around 245, something like that, in weight. Be the first time I’ve ever done that, so I’m going to be consuming a lot and see and working out a lot and see what we can do from there.”

Gotta be ready to go twelve rounds.

Now, as for the whole skill vs. equipment debate, DeChambeau eed up the governing bodies to take action. At least, in a world of governing bodies that like to govern. That’s because the other focus of DeChambeau’s preparation involves equipment testing.

Nothing unusual there, right?

“The advantages I usually have could be much improved upon with the equipment. We don’t have it yet, but we’re diligently working on it behind the scenes. We’ll prototype and test it and see if it works, if it doesn’t we’ll go back and tool it and hopefully have it ready for Augusta.”

Meanwhile Rory McIlroy is testing shafts to catch Bryson, at least based on photos and his postings about the speed chase, reports Jonathan Wall.

Yes, of course, players have changed clubs to suit Augusta National and even carried two drivers. But when a player shuts it down to weight train and equipment test to improve their advantage, might that be a sign things have tipped too far?