Bryson DeChambeau is leaving nothing to chance as he continues on his quest to lift a second Major championship.
His first big title arrived via the US Open at Winged Foot in 2020, and the LIV golfer's next chance will be this Sunday as he begins the final round at Pinehurst No.2 with a three-stroke advantage over Rory McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay, and Matthieu Pavon.
Nicknamed 'The Scientist', DeChambeau has long been known to swim in a different direction to his rivals, so to speak, - experimenting with different dimensions of clubs, tinkering with grips, and utilizing idiosyncratic techniques.
His Ping irons are all of equal distance and weight - like that of a seven-iron - and were created using a special kind of 3D printing process, for example. The 30-year-old also uses a USGA-conforming Krank Formula FIRE LD (long drive) driver with 6-degrees of loft which helped him to shoot a 58 at LIV Golf Greenbrier last year.
Another method that DeChambeau is using to ensure he ekes out every last ounce of his ability relates to the golf ball he uses. Along with a large portion of pros, DeChambeau is now in the Titleist stable, using the Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash golf ball after his contract with Bridgestone was mutually ended when he signed for LIV Golf.
The Left Dash ball according to Titleist; "is designed for players seeking a high flight similar to Pro V1x with dramatically lower full swing spin and firmer feel."
And while Titleist are among the leading manufacturers when it comes to the best golf balls on the market, DeChambeau admitted he is analysing every single one in his own special way. By bathing them in Epsom salts.
Speaking after surging to the top of the 2024 US Open leaderboard, DeChambeau said: "Yeah, I put my golf balls in Epsom salt. I'm lucky enough that Connor, my manager, does that now. I don't have to do it. But essentially we float golf balls in a solution to make sure that the golf ball is not out of balance.
"There was a big thing back in the day where golf balls are out of balance, and it's just because of the manufacturing process. There's always going to be an error, especially when it's a sphere and there's dimples on the edges. You can't perfectly get it in the center.
"So what I'm doing is finding pretty much the out-of-balanceness of it, how much out of balance it is. Heavy slide floats to the bottom, and then we mark the top with a dot to make sure it's always rolling over itself.
"It kind of acts like mud. If there's too much weight on one side, you can put it 90 degrees to where the mud is on the right-hand side or the mud is on the left-hand side. I'm using mud as a reference for the weight over there. It'll fly differently and fly inconsistently.
Yes, I salt my ballspic.twitter.com/K9pZs5E6d8June 16, 2024
"For most golf balls that we get, it's not really that big of a deal. I just try to be as precise as possible, and it's one more step that I do to make sure my golf ball flies as straight as it possibly can fly because I'm not that great at hitting it that straight."
DeChambeau's accuracy admission is true, in that he is T54 for fairways hit this week out of the 74 players to make the cut, but his outrageous driving distance - which has seen him average 337.8 yards through the first three days (second behind only McIlroy) - has allowed him to pick up 1.65 shots against the field off the tee.
He is also behind only Russell Henley in the putting stats, averaging 1.64 a hole - a figure he has improved on in all three rounds so far (1.87 Thursday, 1.5 Friday, 1.46 Saturday).
Should he maintain his impressive level of golf in the final round on Sunday, bathing his golf balls in salt will likely make for a sweet victory.
