By Estea Rademeyer, Sports Journalist.
For about thirty minutes on Friday evening at Royal Birkdale, nobody in the media centre was writing about golf. They were watching a screen.
Bryson DeChambeau had just finished his second round with a four-under 66, a score that put him one shot off the lead and deep into contention at a major many had already written him out of. Then came the tap on the shoulder. Before he could sign his card, DeChambeau was pulled aside by tournament officials and driven back out to the fifth hole, the scene, it turned out, of an alleged rules breach that had been flagged on television footage during the round.
What followed was as dramatic as anything The Open has produced in its 154 editions.
DeChambeau’s tee shot on the fifth had found deep, knee-high rough. Video review appeared to show him walking through the grass and planting his right foot directly behind the ball before playing his second shot, an action that flattened the fescue behind it and, officials determined, made his backswing easier to execute.
Photo Credit: @Kevin Quigley.
Back at the scene, DeChambeau argued his case with visible frustration, arms folded, hands gesturing, clearly unconvinced by what he was being told. He was then taken to the scorers’ hut for a discussion that stretched beyond twenty minutes and eventually drew in Mark Darbon, the R&A’s chief executive.
Photo Credit: @Kevin Quigley.
When he finally emerged, DeChambeau offered the assembled press nothing beyond a dry “How’s your evening?” before walking straight to the range, where he hit balls alone in the dark until 10:30 pm.
The ruling, when it came, was confirmed as a two-shot penalty. DeChambeau’s second-round 66 became a 68. His overnight position dropped from a share of second to a tie for fifth, three strokes behind Lucas Herbert.
Grant Moir, the R&A’s executive director of governance, laid out the reasoning in detail:
“Bryson has been penalised two strokes for inadvertently improving the area of his intended swing, so the intended backswing on the 5th hole when he was playing his second shot. Ruling 1 restricts what a player may do to improve any of the protected conditions affecting the stroke, and this includes the area of the player’s intended swing. So an improvement means to alter one or more of the conditions affecting the stroke so that the player gains a potential advantage for the stroke. Now, I’ll stress that this applies even when the action is accidental, as it was in Bryson’s case.”
DeChambeau’s agent, Brett Falkoff, offered his own read on the ruling to reporters waiting outside the range:
“The only comment I’ll make is that they just felt that he was not careful enough in walking around a sensitive area around his golf ball, so that he improved his swing path when the swing path was not even anywhere near the grass.”
For a period, Falkoff would not rule out the possibility that his client might withdraw entirely rather than play on under what he felt was an unjust ruling. It was well past midnight before DeChambeau settled the matter himself, posting on social media:
“Obviously disappointed with the ruling. I don’t agree with it, but it is what it is. This fires me up. Onto the weekend. Let’s get it.”
He is due on the tee at 3:30 pm on Saturday.
It’s easy to forget, amid all of that, that DeChambeau had played some of his best golf in months to get to seven under before the penalty landed. It arrived on the back of a bruising run through the year’s earlier majors; DeChambeau missed the cut at the Masters after suggesting he could simply overpower Augusta National, then missed again at the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open, leaving him one poor week away from becoming the first multiple major winner to miss all four cuts in a season since 1990.
He’d also arrived at Birkdale carrying a public jab from Nick Faldo, who had questioned whether DeChambeau had any feel for links golf at all. Faldo’s assessment, delivered on Sky Sports, was blunt: “He has, and I’d say it to his face, zero clue of strategy.”
Two rounds in the mid-60s on a demanding, wind-affected course suggested otherwise, penalty notwithstanding.
While DeChambeau was still working through his ordeal, Lucas Herbert was reflecting on the best round of his career. The Australian, who had missed the cut in three of his five previous Open starts, carded a 62 in the favourable morning conditions — one putt away from becoming the first player ever to shoot 61 in a men’s major, before a five-footer at the last slid by.
Herbert’s round had a sentimental thread running through it. “One of my earliest golf memories was my dad waking me up to watch Chad Campbell in the first round in the 2009 Masters because it looked like he had a really good chance to shoot 62 and break the record at that time,” he said. “I sort of thought, if one kid gets woken up by their parents to watch me finish this round because that’s the record being broken, that would be so cool, and it would tickle me pink. I hope it happened. I hope some kid’s disappointed that I shot 62 and didn’t hole that putt on the last.”
Sam Burns matched Herbert’s 62 later in the day, closing with three straight birdies and a holed bunker shot on 18, remarkable given he’d only committed to playing the week before, after his daughter arrived three days ahead of her due date. “I think it was probably last Friday that he made the call,” Burns said of his own decision to travel. “I thought there was zero per cent chance of competing, but my agent was like, ‘I’m just going to sign you up just in case.’ I had a bunch of conversations with my wife, and she encouraged me to come over here and play, and here we are.”
DeChambeau wasn’t the only contender to lose his composure on Friday. Jon Rahm was issued a conduct warning after throwing a club on the 15th hole during his round of 67 — a breach that will now carry a two-shot penalty of its own if repeated in the final two rounds. Rahm was matter-of-fact about it afterwards: “I shouldn’t have moments like the one on 15, I get it.”
It was a rare lapse from the Spaniard, who sits two shots further back than Scottie Scheffler in a group still well within touching distance heading into the weekend.
Herbert holds the 36-hole lead, with Jackson Suber, Ryan Gerard and Cameron Young at six under. DeChambeau, Burns and Kim Si-woo sit at five under in the group behind. Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick were among the home favourites to miss the cut, alongside Jordan Spieth, Wyndham Clark and Aaron Rai.
None of it will be remembered ahead of DeChambeau’s night in the scorers’ hut. Whether he plays his way back into contention or out of the tournament altogether, it’s fair to say Royal Birkdale has already delivered one of the strangest post-round sagas in Open history, and Bryson DeChambeau, box office as ever, was at the centre of it.