“These guys all have families and lives,” Bryson told me then. But Bryson hadn’t gone into the desert to prove his own prodigious length or bolster his reputation (though those were nice side-benefits) he’d gone to rescuisitate the sport of long drive, which was dying a slow death in the aftermath of the pandemic. Now, after the summer of bulking and “Brooksy” and hitting bombs, he’d traveled hundreds of miles into the middle of nowhere for a glorified test of mankind’s own virility: the World Long Drive Championships. Just a week earlier, he’d had shepherded an American victory at the Ryder Cup, his thunderous, 350-yard drive on the first hole on Sunday at Whistling Straits proving to be the event’s defining moment. It was late-September 2021 - some two years before DeChambeau found himself one stroke off the Thursday lead at this PGA Championship - and Bryson looked like a man on the brink of finally conquering his demons.

The last time Bryson DeChambeau stood atop the golf world, there was some concern he might shoot directly into orbit.

Bryson DeChambeau debuted a strange new version of himself at the PGA Championship.

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