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The biggest story at The Open Championship was Bryson DeChambeau’s rules violation during his second round.
Ryan Fox winning The Open was captivating in its own right, but DeChambeau still managed to steal the show.
Rory McIlroy was extremely outspoken in the aftermath of the DeChambeau fiasco at Royal Birkdale, and now Scottie Scheffler has had his say on the Northern Irishman’s comments.
DeChambeau was penalized two strokes at The Open after it was deemed that he cleared the pathway to the back of his ball in the rough on the fifth hole during his second round.
McIlroy certainly did not hold back when speaking about DeChambeau‘s actions at The Open Championship.
Rory McIlroy suggested that he’s no fan of Bryson DeChambeau when speaking to the press on Saturday at Birkdale.
“Late night for everyone. Yeah, look, I won’t pretend to be up here and defend Bryson. I’m not particularly fond of him. I think a lot of it’s performative. I think a lot of it’s for attention.“ he said.
“To hold the tournament hostage like that, and to have all of us, players, volunteers, everyone waiting on him to depart, I didn’t feel like it was a great look.
“Look, he’s going to say — like, again, I’m not in his mind. I’m not in his — but it didn’t look good.“
What Scottie Scheffler said about Bryson DeChambeau incident
Scheffler shared his opinion on the matter after his final round on Sunday.
“I think that opens up a greater discussion that — all I can really say is I think maybe we need to be a little bit more strict in the way that we are policing guys, but it’s a little bit of a balance because you’ve got certain guys like a Bryson who every shot he hits is going to be shown on TV,“ he said.
“When you have camera angles that are far away, things can look different than they do when you’re right there.
“We’ve done a good job of — I don’t know, I hate saying stuff out here because I don’t want anything to get taken out of context. All I’ll say is Bryson, I’ve known him for a long time, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater.
“I’ve never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious.
“When you’re watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don’t think he did anything intentionally.
“We’ve seen penalties happen with — like you remember Jon Rahm a couple years ago at the Memorial when his ball moved in the rough, and it’s like to the naked eye, can you really tell that?
“I think sometimes it’s just a difficult position in the game of golf. When I was growing up, if this was the line between things that were — like if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it and this is when you’re doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way. I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should.“
And now Scheffler has offered a response when asked directly about McIlroy taking a personal swipe at DeChambeau.
Scottie Scheffler responds to Rory McIlroy’s comments about Bryson DeChambeau
The world number one addressed the media in Minnesota on Wednesday ahead of the start of the 3M Open.
He responded when asked by one reporter what he made of McIlroy’s ‘personal jabs’ at DeChambeau.
“I think golf’s different in a sense of a lot of other sports because my biggest rival week in and week out is the golf course that we’re playing,“ the 30-year-old said.
“I mean, I could never stop somebody from doing anything in golf. I felt like when I played basketball there would always be rivalries in basketball because you’re going to play defence against a person and that is much more personal in a sense like because I’m actively trying to stop — like if you and I were going to go out and play one-on-one, like it would turn into a rivalry because I’m actively trying to stop what you’re doing, but in golf, we’re always competing against ourselves on the golf course.
“I’ve never been a big fan of personal jabs. I don’t think that rivalry is a big thing in golf just because, like I said, my biggest rivalry week in and week out is the golf course.“
Rory McIlroy shouldn’t have stooped to personal insults when discussing the Bryson DeChambeau fiasco at The Open.
What he had to say about the two-stroke penalty was correct, but the ‘I’m not particularly fond of him’ line made his main point seem less poignant.
