By Alex Podlogar
At 2:47 p.m., Bryson DeChambeau sat down in Pinehurst. Twenty-four hours and 17 minutes before, he had teed off in the final pairing of The Masters on Sunday.
A lot had happened.
As he leaned back in a chair at a round table set in the back-left corner of Pinehurst Country Club’s Outlook Room, DeChambeau lifted his cap and smoothed it back on, using both hands. His eyes looked skyward and he let out a moderate breath. When his eyes came back from the ceiling, they couldn’t have helped but look directly across the room and out the large windows that framed the 18th green of Pinehurst No. 2. The hole location in the same spot. The people outside still milling about, some trying to peer inside the same window.
The quiet.
DeChambeau was surrounded by friends. Or colleagues. Associates? His content team? Six of them, a majority of them toting cameras for multiple angles. But the cameras were on the table and powered off, the straps and lenses littered among the boxed lunches that had been brought to them. The footage, for this moment at least, could wait on the memory cards. Not much was said. You got the feeling that exhaustion was starting to set in.
Before he had gone outside, he was in this room, among an assembled crowd of USGA officials, media, Pinehurst folks and, somehow, the Stanford women’s golf team. And Bryson, when he was standing behind a lectern adorned with the Putter Boy logo and trying to find the right words, had had his voice catch and tears form. He had stopped and started again. He mentioned Payne Stewart three times. He had paused not awkwardly, but knowingly. He joked about losing The Masters, but while he got a good laugh from the audience, there was evident pain not that far from the surface.
DeChambeau was in Pinehurst to dedicate a plaque placed in front of the bunker from which he made his own history at Pinehurst, a moment in time like his idol Payne. He spoke of the high honor he felt from the USGA and from Pinehurst for putting its first marker of any sort on Pinehurst No. 2. Before he had spoken, he stood to Pinehurst Resort President Tom Pashley’s left and patted him on the back. As he did that, DeChambeau bowed his head and looked to the floor, nodding to himself to take in the scene not by watching, but perhaps by allowing the moment to wash over him. In a few minutes at that lectern, he’d ask, “Why me?”
And then, outside. He carried the plaque, attached to a block of cement. The hole had been carefully dug to precise measurements just that morning. Not long after the grounds crew dispersed, the people started to show up.
The word got out. The word always gets out in this town, whether you are a U.S. Open Champion, a Super Bowl MVP or America’s boyfriend.
By the time DeChambeau was ready to recreate his immediately-famed shot, people stood five deep on the veranda. Maybe it was 10-deep. They circled the 18th green, politely positioned and not willing to breach the putting surface. They crowded around DeChambeau as he spoke to media, his high-wattage smile now perpetual. The tears were long gone. The sun shined, as did the Carolina blue sky. It was one of those beautiful days in Pinehurst.
He stepped into the bunker, and the crowd naturally parted to each side. They gave him room. They trusted his ball flight. They watched with anticipation. And when he left his first attempt short, they playfully applauded. DeChambeau reared his head back and laughed – and asked his caddie for another ball. More playful applause at another shot short. He played a third, getting closer each time, but never again so close to history.
No one chided him. No one shook their heads. No one shrugged their shoulders and wondered why he couldn’t just dial up a miracle again. The several hundreds – or was it into the thousands? – who had showed up to greet him, the kids who got out of school to come, the membership that lined their carts on the path’s ridge to the left, didn’t feel let down.
Instead, they cheered.
Because they understood.
In this town, in this village, this place where your server will often ask where you played before they take your drink order, they know.
A 55-yard bunker shot is hard.
DeChambeau walked to the green. He walked behind it and stood in the clubhouse’s shadow until every photo and autograph had been given a moment.
And then he walked back into the Outlook Room, had his quick lunch with his people and leaned back in that chair and into the dimmed-room’s quiet.
The roar from June can probably still be heard in his head anytime he wants. “The shot of my life,” as he calls it and as is engraved on the plaque, will become a lasting highlight in the game’s long history.
But here, it is burrowed into the sandscape and crowned greens of Pinehurst for all time.
Outside, when asked what Pinehurst means to him, DeChambeau took his time to contemplate his answer. As he’s asked, he looks up beyond the scrum of reporters and cameras and sees the Village surrounding the 18th green. Before he responds, he shakes his head, looks to the ground and takes a deep breath.
“Pinehurst is home.”
Maybe he meant for himself. Or maybe for the American game.