‘Stone-cold skulled it’: Bizarre moment the world’s most famous golfer became a hacker

As a two-time major winner, Bryson DeChambeau is one of the world’s best golfers. With a social media audience of over five million followers, the American is one of the world’s most famous golfers as well.

Currently negotiating for a potential $US500 million ($700 million) contract extension with LIV Golf, DeChambeau is on track to become the world’s richest golfer.

But in bizarre scenes on Thursday at LIV Golf in Adelaide, DeChambeau also showed he is human. He’s one of us.

Teeing off on the par-five 10th hole at the Grange Golf Club, DeChambeau badly topped his drive – a shot deeply familiar to part-time golf hackers everywhere.

The ball smashed into the ground a metre away from DeChambeau on the tee box and squirted up the fairway. It wasn’t quite the type of shocking shank that also hits a tree and rolls back to your feet, because DeChambeau’s drive still carried for 180 metres, helped by a friendly and open fairway.

But for a muscular golfer who averages 300 metres off the tee and once hit a drive 470 metres, it was a humbling – and pretty astounding – mishit, of the type which is rarely seen from the world’s best players.

“There’s something you don’t see every day,” LIV Golf commentator David Feherty said. “He stone-cold skulled it.”

DeChambeau’s stint as a golfing mortal didn’t last long.

With his next shot, the 2024 US Open champion smashed a three-wood 275 metres, landing it on the green of the par-five hole. He missed the eagle putt but still finished with a birdie, and fully restoring normality, DeChambeau also ended the day as co-leader with Australia’s Marc Leishman.

Leishman shot a bogey-free six-under 66 in the first round at the Grange to be a co-leader DeChambeau.

And the American’s fellow major winners Dustin Johnson, who landed two eagles in his five under, and Jon Rahm (four under) lurk ominously.

Anthony Kim shares second place at five under, a shot ahead of Abraham Ancer and Northern Ireland’s Graham McDowell who both banked rounds of 68.

Leishman entered the opening round in the shadows of his compatriots Cam Smith and the emerging Elvis Smylie, who won on his LIV debut last weekend in Saudi Arabia.

Smith, after carding bogeys on his initial three holes, fought back to finish even par, while the 23-year-old Smylie shot three birdies in his two-under 70.

Fellow Australian and Ripper GC teammate Lucas Herbert finished one under.

Leishman had no such dramas in a superb start to the fourth edition of LIV’s Adelaide tournament.

The 42-year-old peeled off four birdies in a seven-hole stretch at the sandbelt course in Adelaide’s beachside western suburbs.

And Leishman, chasing a second victory on the LIV circuit to follow his triumph in Miami last year, banked two more birdies on successive holes, the 16th and 17th.

With AAP