The Shot

By Lee Pace

Courtesy USGA

Final groups of the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, a quarter-century apart.

Payne Stewart in 1999 needs a par to hold off playing partner Phil Mickelson, but his tee shot on the uphill, par-4 finishing hole misses the fairway to the right. He’s in five inches of suffocating rough, the grass wet on a cool, misty day. He punches out, has 78 yards to the hole, hits a three-quarter sand wedge to 18 feet short of the back-right hole location.

Stewart makes the putt, and his right-hand fist pump, right-leg extension celebratory pose will be immortalized on film and later in bronze for the ages.

“Perfect — a perfect way to win,” Stewart said. “I think everyone in the field will attest to how great No. 2 is, to what a special place Pinehurst is. To win here means a lot to me.”

Bryson DeChambeau in 2024 needs a par to hold off Rory McIlroy, who’s playing one group ahead. He yanks his tee shot left of the fairway, the ball traveling more than 300 yards uphill and coming to rest under a magnolia tree, up against a root and sitting on the native hardpan sand that was exposed during the 2010-11 Coore & Crenshaw course restoration. He has 147 yards to the hole, punches out and the ball comes to rest in a bunker sitting front-right of the green.

Courtesy USGA

He has 54 yards to the traditional final-day, back-right pin. He uses his immense physical strength to explode out of the sand to four feet, then makes the putt. As the ball rolls into the cup, DeChambeau extends both arms, arches his back, looks to the heavens and sets off on several seconds of unabashed joy.

“That bunker shot was the shot of my life,” DeChambeau said. “I’ll forever be thankful that I’ve got longer wedges, so I can hit it farther, get up there next to the hole.”

So now “Payne’s Putt” has alongside it “Bryson’s Bunker” in the pantheon of all-time greatest shots — not only in 129 years of Pinehurst history but also in major championship golf.

Courtesy USGA

Jack Nicklaus’ 1-iron hitting the flag at Pebble Beach in 1972, Tom Watson’s chip-in at Pebble a decade later, Seve Ballesteros’ winning putt at St. Andrews in 1984, Bob Tway’s bunker dunk at Inverness to win the 1986 PGA Championship, Tiger Woods’ chip-in at Augusta in 2005 … all iconic monster shots in golf.

“Bryson’s shot has to be as good as any of them,” says 2021 Open champion Jon Rahm.

“There’s no question Bryson’s shot was one of the best shots in U.S. Open history,” says Curtis Strange, a two-time Open champion and former North & South Amateur winner at Pinehurst. “His shot was one of the toughest, it not the toughest, shots in golf. Magnify that with last-hole, U.S. Open pressure on a world stage? It was an amazing shot.”

The week after the Open, Pinehurst officials at the request of DeChambeau caddie Greg Bodine sent via FedEx an urn of sand from that bunker to DeChambeau’s residence. The golf staffers and caddies have half-jokingly wondered if the windows in the clubhouse behind 18 green are now in danger with retail golfers attempting that shot and hitting the dreaded skulled shot flying who knows where. The club’s social media staff even mused after the Open that the preponderance of balls landing on the roof might escalate.

All around the golf course, the Village and the Sandhills, knowledgeable golf students looked on in awe.

Courtesy USGA

“The long sand shot, that’s the hardest shot in golf,” says former PGA tour player Pat McGowan, who watched his son, Michael, play the first two rounds of the ’24 U.S. Open at No. 2. “Oh my gosh, what a shot. He could stand there and hit 100 shots and not get it any closer. He could have skulled that over the clubhouse and made a double. But Bryson is so strong he just muscled it out.”

“The stat of a PGA Tour player getting up and down from a bunker from that distance is 1.7 percent,” says Pinehurst teaching pro Kelly Mitchum. “To do it on the final hole of a U.S. Open is pretty remarkable.”

Gus Ulrich, the longtime teaching pro at Pinewild Country Club and golf coach at Sandhills Community College, was struck with the authority and resolve DeChambeau exhibited during the minute before the shot.

“What impressed me was Bryson did not over-analyze it,” Ulrich says. “He didn’t rush it by any means, but he didn’t grind over it and agonize like, ‘Oh, I gotta make this to win the U.S. Open.’ He made up his mind pretty quickly, walked in and hit the shot. I think that’s what you have to do in that situation. The more you agonize over it, the harder the shot becomes.”

DeChambeau reflected on that very mindset afterward. Asked what he would remember most about the final two hours of a drama-laden back nine, he said: “Probably my caddie telling me I can do it out of the bunker. G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up-and-down. That’s all you have to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker.’ I said, ‘You’re right. I need the 55-degree. Let’s do it.’”

Courtesy USGA

Course superintendent John Jeffreys was standing behind the green in DeChambeau’s line and considered there were about a half-dozen layers of ground undulation between the golfer and the hole — a “false front” leading up to the putting surface; a narrow plateau in the front portion of the green; a downslope and swale in the middle of the green; and finally, an upslope leading to the back crest where the pin was set.

“There’s a lot more to that green than you would think approaching it on that angle he had,” Jeffreys says. “There were a lot of areas to contend with that can help you or hurt you. What made the shot so great was he landed in on the downslope behind that first little plateau. That propelled the ball forward and it ran up to four feet.”

And the rest, as they say ….

No doubt they’re making room as we speak in the history-laden hallway of the resort clubhouse to celebrate Bryson’s Bunker.

Images Courtesy USGA

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace has written about golf in the Sandhills since the late 1980s and has authored a dozen books about clubs, courses and the people who’d made it special over more than a century.