Masters 2016: Bryson DeChambeau named all his irons, other notes
Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth were the stars on the second day of the Masters.
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Two days are in the books, and the tournament looms large over the final day of prep on Wednesday. Tuesday was heavy on press conference and none of them were more interesting than the one featuring amateur Bryson DeChambeau.
The reigning U.S. Amateur and NCAA champion revealed that because all his clubs are the same length, he named them all instead of giving them numbers. The names correlate with the degrees of loft. Here he is going down the list.
"So 1960, who won the Masters? So King is on that wedge. Now I am using Cobra wedges this week, but on the 60-degree, it's King. The 55, it was Mr. Harvey Ward low Am at the 1955 [Masters]. U.S. Amateur winner, too.
"The 50-degree, 1950, Jimmy Demaret won in 1950. So I call him Jimmy. Kind of funny when you ask, 'Hey, give me the Jimmy.' The 46-degree, 1946, Herman Keiser. Jackie is my 9-iron, No. 42, 42-degree lofted club.
"The 38-degree is the 8-ball, 8-iron, correlates quite nicely. The 34-degree ... three plus four is seven, OK? And it has 'Tin Cup' written on it because that was Tin Cup's favorite club.
"The 6-iron, Juniper, it's the sixth hole at Augusta, 6-iron. Then 5-iron is my favorite par 5 out here, Azalea. Then you've got Gamma, which is the third letter in the Greek alphabet ... 3-iron and it's 20 degrees of loft. Haven't gotten to the woods yet. I'll get to those eventually."
Crazy or awesome?
Phil Mickelson is intrigued. Mickelson was asked about how the same length clubs might help with spine angle and keep golfers injury free. He went full Phil.
"Well," Mickelson grinned, "there was a German study that kind of showed that to be the case and so there is some kind of validity there, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on that to be able to know if it's accurate or not."
Right.
Here are the rest of my notes from the second day.
• Speaking of injuries, Mickelson said he's on a mission with a message. "I also have a message," said Mickelson. "Like an internal message that I want to ultimately get out, and that is that you can play golf for a lifetime and injury-free if you swing the club like Bobby Jones did ... where it's a swinging motion rather than a violent movement. A lot of the young guys continue to get hurt as they create this violent connected movement, and I don't believe that that's the proper way to swing the golf club."
Phil was on fire today if you couldn't tell.
• Jordan Spieth said he's feeling better this Tuesday than he was on Tuesday of last year's Masters. That's scary.
• Rory McIlroy confirmed he brought jigsaw puzzles and Monopoly to play in his rented house. Savage.
• My favorite moment of the day was watching Mickelson play a match against Keegan Bradley and Dustin Johnson. Bradley made a putt against them and Mickelson said, "Nice putt, Keeg. I forgot you were playing with us."
• Arnold Palmer was out on the veranda on Tuesday drinking his namesake, talking to patrons. It was incredible to just sit there and watch The King.
• I noticed today that the bathrooms here never smell. If you've ever been to a building full of sportswriters, you know that's an oddity.
• Pimiento cheese sandwich count: 2. Soon to be overtaken by my peach ice cream sandwich count.
• I am desperately fighting against to not spend any money in the merchandise tent this week. Feels like that might be a lost cause, but I'm two for two so far.
• You should watch the Jack Nicklaus 1986 documentary on Golf Channel tonight. It is excellent.
• There was a touch of chill in the air all day (relatively) which could be a harbinger for the weekend. It's going to be fascinating to see how weather affects this tournament (if at all).
• Yes.
"sir, you can't do that here."
— No Laying Up (@NoLayingUp) April 5, 2016
PHIL: "why?"
"how did you even get a craps table out here?"
PHIL: "table's hot man, you comin out or what"
• More yes.
Best caddie name at this week's Masters belongs to Thongchai Jaidee's man: Posom Meeposom.
— Jason Sobel (@JasonSobelESPN) April 5, 2016
















