OAKMONT, Pa. — Bryson DeChambeau operates on a wavelength that is entirely his own, and as DeChambeau can surely tell you, wavelengths vary when they travel through different mediums, like air or water.
The Bryson who travels through LIV Golf is not the same as the Bryson who traveled through the PGA Tour. He contends in more majors. He is more comfortable in the public eye. Whatever LIV players say publicly, the reality is that when they played on the PGA Tour, they were at the center of their sport, and now, for most of the year, they are on the fringe. This affects them, understandably. But perhaps because DeChambeau has never been at the center of any social circle, LIV Golf has been liberating for him (and only him).
Before LIV, DeChambeau loudly proclaimed that he wanted to inspire people by playing golf unlike anybody before him. At the time, he just seemed socially unaware—the dork who boasts about the homecoming float that he rides upon alone. But every LIV golfer upset the establishment by joining. DeChambeau cannot possibly create a larger disruption than the one his peers have already caused.
“Look,” DeChambeau said Tuesday at Oakmont Country Club, where he will try to repeat as U.S. Open champion, “I view my legacy as not just winning golf tournaments. I view it as: How much good can I do for the game outside of playing professionally? That’s a metric that I hold myself up to. The start is YouTube. There is so much more that’s coming down the line.”
His YouTube channel is, indeed, quite popular, and when DeChambeau talks about “inspiring” people, he means it. Yet his view of the sport is incredibly myopic. DeChambeau seems oblivious to how LIV Golf alienated many golf fans, and while it is generally accepted that men’s golf is strongest when the best players compete with each other often, DeChambeau said Tuesday that he hopes to sign another deal with LIV when his contract ends next year. He conflates what is good for him with what is good for the game.
As he spoke about his clubs Tuesday, DeChambeau said “we iterated on the design of the face.” He iterated on the design of his own face as well. Every press conference is filled with smiles and mannerisms that seem practiced. I would describe his current speaking form as carefully crafted, but not necessarily fake. He viewed his public persona, like a breaking 18-foot-and-9-inch putt, as a problem that needed to be solved, and so he very deliberately tried to solve it. I think this is the only way he could do it.
“Before, I was pretty up front, and would just say things the way I wanted to, when I wanted to,” DeChambeau said. “Now I’m more strategic. There are some cool style points that come from it.”
At this year’s Masters, DeChambeau nodded at the jibes and jokes at his expense: “You guys can say whatever you want. I’m just a little different.”
No. He is very different. Astoundingly different. Different in almost every way. People who are different should not feel forced to act the same. DeChambeau seems to embrace this.
“Once I became more authentic to myself, just realizing who I am—especially doing YouTube content—and being O.K. with who I am, I feel like I became more comfortable,” he said.
To understand just how different DeChambeau is, a quick story: Tournament driving ranges tend to clear out early on Wednesdays. Players have done their work. They need rest, and most of them like to clear their heads before the competition begins the next day.
On the Wednesday before this year’s Masters, DeChambeau was the last player on the range. He hit nearly 400 balls.
Pounding that many golf balls can cause even the fittest athletes to feel achy the next morning—especially when you swing your driver as hard as DeChambeau does. Later that week, he said, “I've done this a few times now, and I know when my limit is.” But what stood out to me was not the physical cost. It was that he felt it was worth it.
For nearly everybody else, hitting 400 golf balls in one session the night before the tournament would be counter-productive. Their minds would wander. Small flaws and bad habits would creep into their swings, and they might not even notice. Long sessions at home, with an instructor by their side, are a different story—that is a time to refine swings, try something different, work on specific shots. But on the night before the tournament, a player’s 392nd swing is more likely to do harm than good.
DeChambeau shot 69-68-69 in the first three rounds of the Masters. His ability to sustain an extremely high level of concentration for an extended period is truly extraordinary. No other top player here this week can match it.
This U.S. Open will be the 13th major since PGA Tour players started defecting for LIV. PGA Tour players won 10 of the first 12. Brooks Koepka and DeChambeau won the others. (When Jon Rahm won the 2023 Masters, he still played on the PGA Tour, so he won that event as a Tour player.)
If you climb too far into a golfer’s head you will get lost, but those results probably do tell us something about Koepka, DeChambeau and everyone else.
Long before anybody left for LIV, Koepka proudly proclaimed that regular PGA Tour events were not really his jam. He also said he thought majors were easier to win than other events, because so many players couldn’t handle the pressure and eliminated themselves. So it made sense that Koepka kept playing well in majors after he stopped playing PGA Tour events … but it also makes sense that he eventually fell off.
Koepka loves events with some juice, and LIV events have no juice. The atmospheric gap between a LIV event and a major is much larger than the atmospheric gap between a PGA Tour event and a major. Koepka loves competition, and he surely likes golf a lot more than he lets on, but I don’t think he loves it the way most of his peers do. He needs something to sustain his drive all year, and LIV Golf can’t really do it.
DeChambeau is the opposite: When he isn’t competing, he prefers the range to the course. To him, golf is an endless series of math problems he can’t wait to solve. He loves the adrenaline of competition, winning, the attention of the masses and the money that comes with playing so well. But he is enraptured by preparation—and for him, preparation is more or less the same no matter where he spends his non-major weeks.
There is exactly one player in the world who can show up at the U.S. Open, say his YouTube channel is “really what gets me up in the morning,” and mean it—and still contend for the championship. Bryson DeChambeau. That’s it. Myopia has its perks.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bryson DeChambeau Continues to Go His Own Way, and It Just Might Work at Oakmont.
