Brooks Koepka and Bryson Dechambeau could not be any more different. Yet they are joined together by the lead they share at the end of the first round at the Masters. They shot contrasting six-under 66s — Koepka was bogey-free and DeChambeau had nine birdies against three bogeys.

Koepka lives in a world of his own that is made up of Major titles and seldom, if ever, looks over his shoulder at anyone else’s game or plans. Just a quick look at the conditions — not the players, please not — and then goes all out. The best comes out when the going gets tougher.

No time wasted

Then there is DeChambeau, for whom no detail is worthless and studies every morsel of information as if it were the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle he has been trying to solve.

Both have five PGA Tour wins each, but Koepka’s five include three Majors, two of which came in 2018. But four of Dechambeau’s five PGA wins came in an electric 2018.

Koepka has eight Top-10s in 25 Major starts, while DeChambeau has none in 10. DeChambeau’s last Major appearance as an amateur was in 2016 at the Augusta National and he was the low Amateur in T-21st. At the very next Major, the US Open, this time as a freshly minted pro, he was T-15 and that remains his best to date.

When Koepka leaves for a Major, he picks up his ‘A’ game from the shelf and rolls it inside his golf bag, as it were.

And when DeChambeau leaves home for any tournament, maybe even more so for this Masters, he packs in billions of bytes of info, ranging from as varied areas as golf clubs to weather, grass and wind speed.

He feeds them into processors installed in his mind to spew out results in micro-seconds before each shot. Koepka wastes no time before any shot; DeChambeau finds even hours too little for the perfection he seeks.

Koepka, simply looks down the fairway, flexes his ample muscles — though now 24-pound less following intentional weight loss from an already supremely fit physique — and smashes the ball down, before whipping the iron shots and caressing the putts home.

The third man

One does not care what others do and the other cares about every detail under the sun and together they seem to be on a path to dominate the Masters, and maybe other Majors, too.

As Koepka and DeChambeau, with a combined age of 53, lead the march at the Augusta National, a 48-year-old grizzled veteran and owner of three Green Jackets — the last of which he earned in 2010 — is trying to match them and lies just one behind after 18 holes.

Then there is another man, who could claim to being the best known man on this planet — Planet Golf or otherwise — seeking a fifth Green Jacket, 14 years after he took home the fourth; and a 15th Major, 11 years after his 14th. That man is Tiger Woods, who for some moments even held a share of the lead on the first day. He is two-under and four behind Koepka and DeChambeau, both of whom he respects but wants to beat badly.

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