DeChambeau achieved ball speeds of more than 322km/h (the Tour average is around 273km/h), as well as carrying one drive more than 400 yards. The 27-year-old proceeded to put this might into operation on the course, blitzing the field at the US Open at Winged Foot last September. McIlroy explained how that turned his head.
“I felt like I made some good strides up to and including Winged Foot,” he said. “I played well at the Tour Championship and then actually played well at the US Open [where he finished eighth]. I look at my swing there and I would be pretty happy with that again.
“Then after Winged Foot I had a few weeks before we went to the West Coast and I started to try to hit the ball a bit harder, hit a lot of drivers, got a bit more speed, and I felt like that was sort of the infancy of where these swing problems have come from.”
McIlroy will now go to work. He has three weeks. Wayne Riley, the Sky Sports analyst, believes he should scratch the WGC Match Play, the only event on his schedule before the Masters, and “arrive in Augusta, fresh”.
His results going into the Players were actually not shabby at all, with back-to-back top-10s and a third in his curtain-raiser to the season in Abu Dhabi in January. But he has fallen outside the world’s top 10 for the first time in three years, has not won in 17 months and his confidence is plainly shot.
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After a gruelling eight-week stretch in which he has played seven times, he could surely do with a break, but he is desperate to exorcise the gremlins in time for his latest shot at becoming just the sixth player in history to complete the career grand slam.
“I want to get on the range right away and try to get through this,” he said. “First and foremost I have to be able to hit the shots and get the ball starting on my line and control the flight and spin. At the minute I’m struggling to do that, and if you can’t do that going to Augusta, you’ve got no chance.”
The Telegraph, London
