FORT WORTH, Texas – Since we last saw him March, Bryson DeChambeau hit the gym and gained about 20 pounds.
Gary Woodland also hit the gym – and lost about 25 pounds.
On Thursday at the Charles Schwab Challenge, they both shot 5-under 65.
For DeChambeau, his mid-pandemic work is the continuation of the intense workout regimen he added during the offseason, with an eye on gaining speed.
“It doesn't mean I'm going to hit it farther, but I've done a lot of speed training to attain these new ball speeds,” DeChambeau explained. “When I was out here, I was attaining ball speeds of 193, 195 [mph] on certain holes, and quite honestly I can't use it out here [at Colonial]. There's only a couple holes I can use it: No. 11 and No. 1 and No. 2, really.”
DeChambeau, who said he now weighs around 240 pounds (up more than 40 pounds from last September), was limited by Colonial's layout, but he still hit four drives of 330 yards or longer, including a 353-yarder on the first hole, which he birdied, and a 354-yard drive that he pulled well left at the par-5 11th. Both drives were field-bests in terms of distance.
For Woodland, the weight loss was more of a byproduct of the quarantine and a desire to use the time off to get himself in better shape.
“We don't get a big offseason. We usually only have a couple weeks off, and at the end of the season I want to go on vacation and want to do something fun,” he said. “For me, obviously, we couldn't go anywhere, couldn't do anything, so I stayed home, I trained hard, changed the diet a little bit, and I lost a lot of weight.”
Woodland said he hopes the slimmed-down version of himself will help during what promises to be a busy stretch of golf for everyone. He plans to play 10 of the next 13 weeks.
“I have a lot of stuff coming up at the end of the year. I wanted to get my body in a position where I could play a lot more and play a lot better,” he said.