Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus had completely differing views on one specific hot topic of debate a few years ago now, and Bryson DeChambeau was at the center of it all.
Watson and his good friend Nicklaus are two of the greatest golfers of all time, while DeChambeau has grand ambitions of at least getting close to both of their records.
Nicklaus won 73 PGA Tour events including 18 majors, while Watson has 39 PGA Tour victories and eight major championship triumphs to his name.
DeChambeau won nine times on the PGA Tour, and has been victorious at the US Open twice. He also has three LIV Golf wins to his name.
However, he will have his work cut out if he is to ever match what the two American greats achieved throughout their careers.
It was Watson who gave Nicklaus more trouble than anyone else during the latter stages of tournaments according to the great man himself.
They shared a fierce rivalry on the golf course, but were huge admirers of one another as well.
Nicklaus was one of the first people to console Watson after his heartbreaking defeat to Stewart Cink at the 2009 Open Championship.
The two Americans have always been extremely close. However, an incident involving DeChambeau back in 2021 saw them on opposite sides of the fence in their views.
Tom Watson disagreed with Jack Nicklaus after Bryson DeChambeau incident
Watson was hugely impressed by DeChambeau’s explosive power during the Arnold Palmer Invitational back in 2021.
The now 32-year-old stepped onto the par-five sixth tee at Bay Hill Country Club and began whipping the crowd up into a frenzy.
Do you think LIV would survive if Bryson DeChambeau returned to the PGA Tour?
He then took a line never seen before, aiming just right of the green, meaning that he had to carry almost all of the water down the left hand side of the hole.
DeChambeau smoked his drive and left himself just a 75-yard wedge second shot into the 555-yard par-five.
Watson was so taken aback by the LIV Golf star’s performance at Bay Hill that it led to the five-time Open champion initially disagreeing with Nicklaus on one key aspect.
When speaking to Golf.com in 2023, Watson said: “A few years ago, when Bryson DeChambeau took it over the water on the 6th at Bay Hill, and the crowd went wild, I thought, ‘That’s really exciting. You can’t mess with the ball’.
“But I’ve changed my mind. For the good of the game, they need to reduce how far the ball goes. What they’ve proposed is to bifurcate, though. I don’t like that. I think everybody ought to play with the same golf ball. For the pros, it would take less than a week to adjust.
“For the rest of the world, it would take longer. But there are ways, including playing from the right tees. The question then becomes, what happens to the inventory of illegal golf balls? Who is going to bite the economic loss? There’s still a lot to talk about, but I think it needs to happen.“
Watson changed his mind not long after watching DeChambeau in action, with his views on the golf ball rollback now aligning more with Nicklaus.
What Jack Nicklaus and Bryson DeChambeau said on the golf ball rollback
The 18-time major champion has continually spoken out about the urgent need for the golf ball rollback to be implemented.
Back in 2018, he said: “The game is too long, and the golf ball is the biggest culprit of it. We used to play golf courses that were 6,500 yards, or 6,600 yards, and that was a championship golf course.
“Today they are 7,500 or 7,600 yards. The older golf courses, the tees, the greens, were very close together, but the golf courses built today, they spread them out for real estate purposes.
“I think it just takes longer to play now, and I don’t think that’s good. I think the golf ball is something that, if you bring it back 20 percent, that will bring it back to about what it was in about 1995 when we last played with a wound golf ball.“
Nicklaus also went into detail this year about how the golf ball rollback will offer the sport a more sustainable future.
The Golden Bear said: “I think that will only help sort of put a line in the sand, hopefully the line doesn’t go anywhere. We can’t just keep buying land. You can’t just buy the golf course next door. Not many people can afford what Augusta did at Augusta Country Club, you just can’t do that.
“We don’t have any land to buy. I mean, I can go buy houses and knock ’em down. I obviously can’t do that, but, you know, that’s what we would have to do. But the game’s controlled by how far a golf ball goes. If you control it within some reason then we know that a golf course that is here today will still be sufficient 20 years from now.“
The golf ball rollback will come into play in 2028 for professional golfers and 2030 for amateurs.
As Nicklaus and Watson both explained, the move should ensure that some of the greatest old traditional golf courses are not made obsolete.
Meanwhile, DeChambeau had a completely different view on the matter back in 2024, simply saying, “I don’t like it.”
Only time will tell as to whether the move is a smart one or not. There will most likely be plenty of pros and cons, but it remains to be seen whether one will outweigh the other.
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