Wind-tunnel testing? Bryson likes the idea as The Open looms

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland – You could see the wheels turning in Bryson DeChambeau’s mind. The topic involved playing in windy conditions – generally among the most reliable of defenses on links courses, such as at this week’s Open Championship at Royal Portrush – and a member of the press posed the question Tuesday on whether the scientific-minded DeChambeau had ever tested his game in a wind tunnel.

The short answer was no – but there’s never really a short answer when DeChambeau discusses the possibilities of perfecting the golf swing. He quickly embraced the idea despite its impracticality.

“This is going to be wild but imagine a scenario where you’ve got a 400-yard tent, and you can hit any type of shot with any wind with all the fans,” DeChambeau said. “That’s what I imagine, like in a hanger or something like that in a big stadium. That would be cool to test.”

It’ll have to be an offseason project, of course. The Crushers GC captain tees off Thursday for his final chance to win a major this season, and then he has LIV Golf’s final four tournaments of the 2025 season to play before the end of August.

The wind tunnel testing could’ve come in handy last week at LIV Golf Andalucia, particularly in the brutal first round that saw gusts exceed 30 mph and eventually produced unplayable conditions that suspended play until the next day.

DeChambeau actually played well under those circumstances, shooting an opening 1-under 70 that left him tied for fourth, but he dropped off the pace the next two days against winds that were still prevalent but not as severe, and finished tied for 30th.

Now he comes to a tournament that has been the most challenging of majors for him to contend, in large part because of the unique weather impact often associated with links courses, such as brutal winds and cold temperatures. Although the forecast doesn’t include extreme conditions this week, questions will be asked – and DeChambeau is hopeful that he has more answers than previous visits.

In seven starts, he has one top-30 finish – a tie for eighth in 2022 at St Andrews. That Sunday is the only time he’s been in a top-10 position after any of his 22 career Open rounds. The Open is the only major in which he doesn’t have at least one top-5 finish.

“The times I’ve been over here, for some reason, my golf swing hasn’t been where it needs to be,” DeChambeau said. “Right now, it feels as good as it’s ever been. Hitting it far, hitting straight as I can, and learning how to putt better on these greens in windy condition and rain and all that. It’s just figuring it out. It’s just going to take time and something that I never really experienced growing up in California.”

Figuring out stuff is what DeChambeau does perhaps better than any other golfer. Doesn’t mean that he solves the issues immediately, and perhaps the sensory overload of data that he tabulates has hidden some of the straightforward, more simplistic approaches.

He admits to standing over a shot and trying to feel the wind, the direction, the speed, the heaviness. In the past, he’s usually defaulted to riding the wind. It can be a dangerous play if not properly calculated. “How do I can control and make sure it doesn’t go into a crazy place?” he asks. It might be the reason why he puts a driving iron into his bag this week, something he’s tested during practice.

Experience matters, especially for players who didn’t grow up golfing under these conditions. Phil Mickelson – like DeChambeau, born in California and an outside-the-box thinker – needed 20 starts before figuring it out and winning the Open in 2013.

Asked what skill he’s had to build up at The Open, DeChambeau replied: “Hitting it and using the wind, playing into the wind a lot more, not trying to ride the wind is something that’s pretty simple to talk about but sometimes difficult to execute. … That’s why we’re looking at doing this week is just try to be as strategic as possible and put the ball in a place where I can give myself good chances for birdies but also not give myself too many difficult places to play from.”

It’s a process, and DeChambeau has – to no one’s surprise – performed testing on how wind affect certain golf balls, especially with his extreme Trackman numbers. He calls it a personal project, something that will take him time to fully grasp.

“If you grew up here, you play a lot of golf over here, you get quite comfortable and knowledgeable about that,” DeChambeau said. “I just need more reps.”

As for this week? He’s hopeful that his form from the first two majors this year – T5 at the Masters, T2 at the PGA Championship – will return after getting side-tracked with a missed cut in his U.S. Open defense at Oakmont. A win would be his third major title and get him halfway to the career grand slam, one of his goals.

Meanwhile, now that he’s moved into his new house outside Dallas, the one that he famously hit 134 tee shots over in order to make a hole-in-one, DeChambeau may need a new building project. If you know of an empty wind tunnel for sale in North Texas, give him a shout.