Did Bryson DeChambeau Ruin The Masters For Amateurs?
- Updated: January 3, 2019
Did Bryson DeChambeau play so much golf at Augusta National as an amateur that he ruined unlimited access for amateurs playing the Masters?
Hard to say … but maybe!
Here’s what we know:
On Wednesday’s “Shotgun Start” podcast (which is excellent, and which you should be listening to), co-host Brendan Porath reminded listeners that DeChambeau was a frequent flyer at Augusta National even before his first Masters.
After winning the 2015 U.S. Amateur Championship, DeChambeau received an invitation to the 2016 Masters. The famously exclusive club makes its course more available to tournament participants, and DeChambeau took full advantage of that open door.
According to The Augusta Chronicle, DeChambeau played Augusta National twelve times (twelve!) in the eight months between winning the U.S. Am in August 2015 and Masters Week 2016. And that’s without counting practice rounds the week of the tournament!
But two years later, Augusta National’s open-door policy was a touch less open.
Wait…
— Will Bardwell (@willbardwell) January 3, 2019
On Wed.’s Shotgun Start, @BrendanPorath said DeChambeau played “like 25 practice rounds” at Augusta when he was U.S. Am champ.
On a @GOLF_com pod last month, Matt Parziale (2017 Mid-Am champ) said he got *five* rounds at ANGC because “someone abused it.”
Could it be?? pic.twitter.com/4mzOCdei1s
Enter Matt Parziale, the winner of the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship. Like the U.S. Am, the Mid-Am winner gets invited to the following year’s Masters.
But unlike DeChambeau, Parziale was allowed only five (“only” five) practice rounds before the 2018 Masters, as he explained to Sean Zak and Dylan Dethier on their Golf.com podcast in December (also excellent and you should listen to.)
“After I’d won the Mid-Am, about two weeks later, Augusta sends you a packet with all the information of what to expect,” Parziale told Zak and Dethier. “Not the invitation. And in that is, you get five visits before Masters Week starts.”
“Five visits,” Dethier remarked. “That’s more than I would have realized.”
“It used to be unlimited,” Parziale responded, “but someone abused it.”
Dethier followed up: “Who was the guy?”
But if Parziale knew, he wasn’t spilling the beans: “I don’t know, but someone abused it, and unfortunately – five was enough for me. I had a blast.”
Far from a smoking gun, but the timing is suspicious. In the lead-up to the 2016 Masters, DeChambeau turned Augusta National into his own personal laboratory; no more than two years later, practice rounds for amateur exemptions had been capped.
Embed from Getty ImagesSo is DeChambeau responsible? Who knows!
We’ve reached out to DeChambeau’s people (which is to say I @’d him on Twitter; remarkably, he hasn’t responded!). If he comments, we’ll update this post and stop holding our breath.
Either way, credit where credit is due: DeChambeau’s ubiquity among the east Georgia pines paid off with a T21 performance at the 2016 Masters, and he finished as the tournament’s low amateur.
Two years later, Parziale shot 81-79 to miss the cut.
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