Bryson DeChambeau's transformation both physically and into a content machine has been quite the ride the last year or so. In a sport where controversy usually isn't part of the status-quo, DeChambeau has brought plenty of eyeballs to golf with his words and his play. While some see it as good for the game, as any publicity is good publicity, some golfers have been rubbed the wrong way by DeChambeau's actions. Matthew Fitzpatrick is one of a handful to have spoken out about DeChambeau in the past but now, as Rex Hoggard of Yahoo notes, Fitzpatrick sees him in a different light.
When DeChambeau bulked up last year and started hitting lasers off the tees, it was impossible not to notice. And if you tried to ignore it, DeChambeau would let you know about it anyway. Fitzpatrick was one of the first to verbally voice his thoughts.
“It’s not a skill to hit the ball a long way in my opinion. I could put on 40 pounds. I could go and see a biomechanist, and I could gain 40 yards; that’s actually a fact. I could put another two inches on my driver. I could gain that. But the skill in my opinion is to hit the ball straight.” He added that DeChambeau was “making a mockery” of the game, arguing, “Some of the places he hit it, and he’s cutting corners — when he’s on, there’s no point. … It doesn’t matter if I play my best.”
Fast forward about a year later and Fitzpatrick tweeted this picture of DeChambeau and him playing in the same group in an event on Monday:
When asked about the picture, Matthew Fitzpatrick was singing to a different tune about DeChambeau.
“I was just asking him about his clubs and his speed training and stuff, and I've been doing something similar and looking into it anyways before my comments that I made last year,” Fitzpatrick said. “It's nothing too new to me, it's just quite interesting just to hear his thoughts and how he's going about things to improve his swing speed and get longer.”
Matthew Fitzpatrick seems to have come around a bit on Bryson DeChambeau. While others may hold firm in their initial stance, maybe Fitzpatrick's flip in opinion signals that there's a chance more take a liking to the way Bryson DeChambeau goes about his business.