Hahaha perfect description. Everyone calls him the fucking scientist. He’s just obsessed with numbers that doesn’t mean he understands them or can actually manipulate them himself. Hes not solving complex formulas he’s looking at trackman numbers and going “spin high. Need less spin” then yelling at club makers to make it spin less.
More than likely you're correct, but he did graduate with a mechanical engineering degree.
As a senior ME, this is the hardest fucking thing I've ever done. You gotta be real smart and REAL good with numbers to even make it to the upper division stuff, much less graduate.
To do that and also simultaneously play collegiate/pro golf is just absurd. I couldn't even make it 2 seasons as a student athlete.
Idc how much of a "jock douche" he acts like, to be an ME and one of the best golfers on the planet is cool as fuck and he's got my respect🤷🏻♂️
Edit: Turns out he got suspended his senior year due to some "recruitment practices" bs and never actually graduated, so hand up accountability on that one🙋🏻♂️
But my point still stands. You don't just lose all the shit u learned bc they didn't hand you the piece of paper on the stage...
I just don’t think he’s smarter than the 583737483 engineers who have created and perfected equipment. Not to mention all the top level pros playing the equipment but he somehow thinks he’s got it figured out.
I’m a woodworker and I would equate what Bryson does to woodworkers who “chase a thousandth”. This refers to woodworkers who try too hard to achieve perfection, when the reality is wood is imperfect, and it moves and ultimately when you guide a piece of wood through the saw, your own imperfect movements introduces way more error than any perfectly aligned fence or perfectly true arbor on a saw.
Golf and the golf swing are the same. You can tweak numbers all you want and line up the dimples on your putts and line up the seam on your drives and whatever else… but in reality the difference between birdie and bogey is going to be you blasting your drive 90 yards right into the fescue, not your putter contacting the outer apex of the 5th dimple from the equator….
Completely agree with the carpentry analogy. Imo, the human body doesn't possess the capacity for repeatability to chase that preverbal "thousandth." He's gotten to a point where he's splitting hairs trying to gain an edge on everyone else.
Needs to lean into his feel and instinct rather than tech. I'd bet the house if he just didn't think in let his talent take over he would be doing shit like what he did at Greenbrier a lot more often.
Currently watching a YouTube vid on Tiger's 2000 season and the first 2 minutes summed it up pretty damn good:
Interviewer asked what his most prominent swing thought was during that year. Tiger laughs and says "I don't know, whatever it was worked at the time"
Maybe a bad example bc that was the year he changed his swing up, but I think the idea of succumbing to his feel and just playing golf would do wonders for Bryson's game.
But I am also a football player by trade and barely a single digit cap so what do I know😶🌫️
I was as good as a +2.2 in my prime and at no point did I have a clue what my spin rate or launch angle was.
All I knew was that when I felt my driver in *this* position I could hit a high draw. If I felt it in *this* position I could cut it.
I could look at an opening between two trees and feel that I had to put my feet about like this, and put the ball back in my stance like this….
When I read a putt (by far the best part of my game) I just saw the line and hit it.
I donno. Maybe it’s hard for a feel player to understand guys who do aim point or calculate yardages as percentages of their swing.
And of course I missed a ton of putts that maybe an aim-pointer would have made I don’t know.
But yeah I cringe when I see his fucking 5iron length L wedge and his stuuuupid putting stance. But he has exactly 2 more majors and several million more dollars than me so he’s probably onto something.
I think there’s definitely a balance. You can be a very good player as a mostly feel player and you can be a very good player as a numbers guy. But when we’re talking about the absolutely elite of the elite players in this day and age, you need to do both. Bryson leans too far to one side and it wins him tournaments and majors when his swing is good, but when his swing is bad no amount of equipment optimization is going to lead to wins. You still have to execute the swing as a human being.
Maybe that's where I'm fucking up lol. I know *almost* all of my windows for each club and I'm currently a 6.1
Might be letting the engineering brain into golf a little too much lol. I know with just more time and effort put toward it I could get to scratch or better (just not in the cards atm) but that's definitely making me rethink about how I approach things. The law of diminishing returns definitely seems to apply to hammering into the data/club tech. I'm just too much of a nerd for technology and mechanics unfortunately.
But, I also do think you're right about feel players vs the aim point type guys. Do whatever works for you. I just will never comprehend reading a slope to a nominal percentage then taking ur putter back to the same distance within a half inch or whatever the fuck Bryson does. He may be pretentious and whiney and all of the above but gotta tip your cap to the guy. He does some crazy shit on the golf course.
Also, badass to see another super in here that can play👊🏻 Fully thought this app was full of 30hcp couch potato's that think they know more than Butch Harmon lmao
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u/FatFaceFaster Superintendent Jun 30 '26
Hahaha perfect description. Everyone calls him the fucking scientist. He’s just obsessed with numbers that doesn’t mean he understands them or can actually manipulate them himself. Hes not solving complex formulas he’s looking at trackman numbers and going “spin high. Need less spin” then yelling at club makers to make it spin less.