BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU:
THE MODERATOR: Bryson DeChambeau joins us after shooting a stellar 4-under 66 in the final round of the 105th PGA Championship.
Bryson, could you have drawn up your first day any better than that?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No. I mean, it's a fantastic round of golf at Oak Hill. It's a prestigious place. Very difficult golf course.
As I was looking at it throughout the week, I'm like, man, I don't know how shooting under par is even possible out here on some of the golf holes.
But, luckily, I was able to play some really good golf, hit a lot of fairways, did my job and made some putts.
Q. The comparison coming in from a lot of players is this reminded them of Winged Foot?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah.
Q. You see that? If so, it's good news for you?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It is, right, but it is more nuance. I've said that a couple times now where you can't just run it up every single green. There's some forced carries, right.
It's different, a different test and a test that I'm willing take on. If you're driving it well and hitting your irons well, you can play out here, but it can get pretty nasty pretty quick if you're not hitting it straight.
Q. You've undergone a pretty striking physical transformation over these last five years.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah.
Q. I'm wondering as you reflect on that, you said it's been a hard five years for you. Why is that?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, a lot of diet changes and eating a lot going down to 5,000 calories down to 2,900, whatever it is now. Carrie, my chef, she helps me out with that.
But eating properly instead of eating stuff that inflames my body. I took a Zoomer peptide test, which essentially tells what you inflames your blood when you eat it. I was allergic to corn, wheat, gluten, dairy. Pretty much everything I liked, I couldn't eat. I took that out. Started taking it out in August and over the course of time I've lost all this inflammation, lost a lot of fat and slimmed down like crazy.
I lost 18 pounds in 24 days. It was crazy. It wasn't fat. It was all water weight. You know how I looked before. I was not skinny.
So a lot of changes in that regard. Obviously having the hand injury was no fun and then learning to play golf again with a new hand.
It's been a while. So nice to come back and start to finally figure out what's going on with my golf swing. As I've told you guys before, I've struggled with my driving. You see me out there on the range. That's something I don't want to do. I don't want to be out there all night, but I've had to to figure out what I did so well in 2018 and what made me so successful then.
I feel like I'm catching on and trending that direction. Figured out a couple things this week, and it certainly paid off today.
Q. Do you think you're closer to the end of that journey or the beginning of that journey?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: The end of it, for sure. I want to be just stable now. I'm tired of changing, trying different things. Yeah, could I hit it a little further, could I try and get a little stronger? Sure. But I'm not going to go full force.
It was great. Shoot, I can hit my 8-iron 200 yards now, whereas before it was 175, 170, something like that. So it's a tremendous asset. Like on 7 I could hit 6-iron, 8-iron to the green, where guys are hitting hybrids and trying to fit it in there.
So it's an asset, and it was a fun experiment, but definitely want to play some good golf now.
Q. It sounds like despite losing this weight and going back the other way, you haven't lost much in the way of distance and power.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No.
Q. How have you been able to maintain that, and has this transformation, again, impacted your game over the last six months, nine months, trying to figure it out?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, look, it's helped me have more energy, first and foremost.
What was the first question, again?
Q. Just about, even though you've lost weight, muscle and everything, it doesn't appear --
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No, no, I lost --
Q. -- you've lost distance.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: The fast twitch stuff is still there. I built that, engrained that in. Long drive is more fast twitch than anything. Yeah, you have to build a muscle system that can support it.
You see a lot of guys that are just lanky and they just hit it really far. It's because they are fast twitch. You can train it. It's not easy to train. It hurts, but you can do it.
I have it now, and it's fantastic. I don't really have to do much to get to 200 ball speed. I can get the 200 ball speed if I want to, but with the golf swing that makes it go straight, I'm not going to swing it that fast.
Q. I'm curious about what you've been most surprised by this week. What's been the most surprising part of your week so far?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, hitting the driver straight, finally. That's been the most surprising part because I'm so used to hitting it everywhere.
Look, it could happen tomorrow. I don't think it will, but I feel really confident. Golf is a weird animal. You can never fully have it, like Arnie said. You always think you have it one day and then it just leaves the next. Just got to be careful.
Q. What did you find that's allowed you to hit it straighter?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It's being more -- how do I explain this easy?
I'm just in a place where I'm more ulnar. I'm keeping the handle higher through impact, and that allows the clubface to stay more stable. I feel like I was pushing down to the left, and it was closing the face down really hard, and I had low left, high right.
So that's five years of trying to figure that out and not being able to, as well, like my wrist has not been able to do it.
Q. You mentioned that you had doubts about whether or not you could get back to this level. How serious were those doubts?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: How serious were they? Look, every day could be the next one. Each day I had always this glimmer of, hope that I could get back to it. It was never like I've got nothing, I'm done. I could have easily been like, you know what, I had a great career, I'm good. But I didn't because I knew I had it in me to do it every single day, and I worked as hard as I could every single day. There were times I doubted myself, severe doubts, but never got to a point where I was done. Maybe for like a day I was done, I'm just going to take a day off, whatever and the next day, I came back, all right. I think I got something.
Q. Your results on LIV have not been what you wanted them to be. What have you been doing to manage that frustration, for lack of a better word?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Keep practicing. Simple as that. I mean, you know, Connor has been with me through thick and thin and Brett has, as well, it's about let's practice hard and figure it out and go work and let's go find the people that can help me get back to what I did in 2018.
That's it.
Q. How difficult has it been to manage those?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: The emotions have definitely fluctuated pretty high and pretty low, thinking I have something and it fails and going back and forth. It's humbling. Golf, and life, always has a good way of kicking you on your you know what when you are on your high horse. It's nice to feel this today.
Q. You seem so chipper and we are used to seeing you oppressed by golf, it felt like?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Absolutely, yeah.
Q. What is your relationship with the game? How has it changed and how do you feel about it right now?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Look, I love the game, and I love being a part of helping inspire kids to play golf and grow the game whatever possible way I can. But I will say that there have been times where it's like, man, I don't know where this is worth all of it.
But again, like I said, you wake up the next day, and like, there's that glimmer of hope and I want to go do it. I want to go do it. It's a bit of an addiction, I can tell you. But it's just about giving yourself hope every single day. That's what I tell anybody, too, as much success as I've had, I've had so much more failure and you've got to be able to jump over that failure to get that success, and the more that you push back on failure and go, you know, what I'm going to try and be better, I'm going to try and figure out the next day, or whatever it is, in whatever thing, it doesn't have to be golf. The more resilient you can become. And that's a beautiful part about the game is it always gives you another opportunity to do better.
Q. Are there times where you hated golf?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I was disappointed. I don't know if hate is the right word. It was more of just frustrated and disappointed, like I've achieved this, why can't I just do it every day. You know, that's what we all think out here. But it's definitely a game you can't conquer.
Q. What did it feel like to understand that your body was like super-inflamed? Was that something you were even remotely aware of?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Remember the head stuff I had at Augusta? That's what I started feeling weird. And ever since then, I've just made it my full process to figure out what that was. I couldn't figure it out. It was like a minor symptom of vertigo and I couldn't stabilize. Equilibrium was off. Found out I have problems with my nose and got that fixed this off-season.
It's just been a continual process of trying to figure out what's going on because I felt haven't like I have enough energy through the day. Halfway through the day I was crashing, and when I was hitting golf balls, I was like, oh, I get lethargic. So I couldn't practice as long and had to sleep more and didn't feel really recovered in the mornings.
Q. Do you feel like that journey was a mistake or part of the journey you needed to figure out?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'll say this till the day I die. Everything I do is not a regret nor a mistake. It's just a learning process.
Q. What do you weigh now?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I weigh like 210 to 215.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports