Back in 2021, Bryson DeChambeau was sponsored by Cobra Golf but it seemed like he was never happy with the driver they built for him.
Four years ago, DeChambeau was in the middle of his ‘beefing up’ phase, so to speak, as he made a huge effort to pile on the pounds and subsequently transformed himself into the longest driver on the PGA Tour by quite some margin.
Cobra Golf manufactured the 31-year-old’s driver at the time, and the mere fact that the longest hitter in the game was using their equipment was a huge coup for them.
In the present day, DeChambeau clocks ball speeds in excess of 190 mph on a consistent basis during LIV Golf tournaments.
However, back in 2021, he was regularly notching up 200 mph+ ball speeds. The LIV golfer has undoubtedly toned down the velocity in his swing these days.
That’s not to say that he isn’t capable of recording ball speeds in excess of 200 mph anymore. He just chooses not to go all out in tournament play like he once did.
There are not many professional golfers who work harder than DeChambeau and the strong work ethic he possesses often leads to intense frustration when things don’t go his way.
Bryson DeChambeau criticized the design of his Cobra driver in 2021
DeChambeau has never been someone to shy away from making controversial comments.
The two-time US Open champion has always spoken his mind throughout his career and that has got him in trouble at times.
After his first round 71 at The Open Championship in 2021 at Royal St George’s, DeChambeau shared his frustrations with his driver.
“If I can hit it down the middle of the fairway that’s great but, with the driver right now, the driver sucks,” DeChambeau said.
“It’s not a good face for me and we’re still trying to figure out how to make it good on the mis-hits. I’m living on the razor’s edge like I’ve told people for a long time.
“I’ve realised this for years now. This has happened since 2016-17 when players stopped drawing it. There’s not very many golfers that draw it any more. It’s not because of spin rate. Everybody thinks it is. It’s not. It’s literally the physics and the way that they build heads now. It’s not the right design, unfortunately, and we’ve been trying to fix it.”
Unsurprisingly, those comments didn’t go down well at Cobra Golf HQ…
How Cobra Golf responded to Bryson DeChambeau’s driver comments
DeChambeau should have known better than to criticise the club manufacturer that sponsored him at the time.
Ben Schomin – Cobra Golf’s tour operations manager – was not best pleased when news of DeChambeau’s comments at The Open filtered back to the United States.
“Everybody is bending over backwards. We’ve got multiple guys in R&D who are CAD-ing (computer aided design) this and CAD-ing that, trying to get this and that into the pipeline faster,“ Schomin explained. “Bryson knows it. It’s just really, really painful when he says something that stupid.“
“He has never really been happy. Like, it’s very rare where he’s happy. Now he’s in a place where he’s swinging a five‑degree driver with 200 mph of ball speed. Everybody is looking for a magic bullet. Well, the magic bullet becomes harder and harder to find the faster you swing and the lower your loft gets.
“It’s like an eight-year-old that gets mad at you. They might fly off the handle and say: ‘I hate you.’ But then you go: ‘Whoa, no you don’t.’ We know as adults that they really don’t mean that and I know that if I got him cornered right now and said, ‘What the hell did you say that for?’ he would say that he was mad. He didn’t really mean to say it that harshly. He knows how much everyone bends over backwards for him. But it’s still not cool.“
After those war of words between Cobra Golf and DeChambeau, it wasn’t a shock whatsoever when they parted ways at the end of 2022.
He now uses a Krank Fire driver and has much more input in his own equipment than he did during his days with Cobra.
However, if Krank produce a driver that DeChambeau is not happy with, they had better believe he will call them out on it!
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