Will Bryson DeChambeau ever be satisfied?

Washington Post

a day ago

OAKMONT, Pa. — Bryson DeChambeau is a nerdy golfing colossus with two major championships, a booming YouTube channel and the leader of the free world on speed dial. A near-pariah not long ago for his brash confidence and his role in splintering the sport, he's now the closest thing golf has to a transcendent star, with the supernatural ability to both hit golf balls and schmooze with virtually anyone.
But what if he wasn't a golfer?
'He might be trying to put people on Mars,' suggested Chris Parra, one of his college coaches at SMU. 'People say it's uninhabitable, right? He'd want prove them wrong. He loves proving people wrong.'
That's one hypothesis. Another:
'I've always said if he didn't have this, he'd be a cocaine addict on the side of a road somewhere,' his estranged childhood coach, Mike Schy, said with a laugh. 'A lot of people forget that he was a physics major — one of the hardest majors you could probably do. My fear was always: What is he going to do when he leaves school and has like eight hours a day that he's got to fill?'
And DeChambeau?
'Well, I'd be on the side of the street or I'd be in a research lab, something like that,' he joked Tuesday. 'Just kidding. I would say I'd probably be doing something around biomechanics.'
Indeed, DeChambeau is part scientist and part showman, part behemoth and part robot. Both loathed and loved, he'll be a main character this week at Oakmont Country Club, where the 31-year old Californian-turned-Texan is trying to defend his U.S. Open title and become just the seventh man to win the event at least three times, a group that includes golf royalty Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
DeChambeau is unlike any of them. Or any other golfer. Possibly any other human. During this year's Masters, he couldn't sleep one night and wandered onto the backyard putting green of a local couple, striking up a conversation with strangers and working on his short game under floodlights. He golfs with President Donald Trump and recently chipped balls at the White House. He put his name on a lawsuit against the PGA Tour after jumping to Saudi-backed LIV Golf, and yet three years later he's usually the biggest draw on the course. His galleries are often packed several people deep, as though a pop star has arrived at the green.
'It's amazing to watch the number of people and the way he's reacting to the fans these days,' said Kevin Kisner, a fellow pro player and a part-time analyst for NBC Sports. 'And I think the transformation is amazing. I commend him for realizing that he needed to probably change that. And a lot of guys don't take the time or the effort to do it.'
Watch one of his rounds up close, and you'll see a man enthusiastic about everything, a dog surrounded by squirrels. He appears genuinely curious about his playing partners, eager to discuss business, golf equipment, favorite courses, funny YouTube videos.
He introduces himself to tournament volunteers, course workers and caddies. He shakes hands and bumps fists. He compliments swings, celebrates made putts and offers occasional tips. He doesn't change off-camera — or perhaps is so accustomed to the spotlight that he acts as though the camera is always on. 'Hi. What's your name? Beautiful name,' he told a young girl during a recent round.
He is a spring-loaded cannon in the tee box and a soft-handed artist on the green. During a practice round, he likes to dig deep into the toolbox: buried lies, flop shots, U-turn putts to imaginary hole locations.
He's prone to checking his phone and doesn't shy away from banter. On the 15th fairway of Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia during a pro-am last week, a playing partner casually asked about DeChambeau's most recent visit with Trump. 'He's a good guy. Super generous, super hospitable. He's like your grandpa,' DeChambeau responded, 'who's a bit of a narcissist.'
Golf's leading man also has the capacity to drive the ball 400 yards, a side gig as a YouTube creator with 2 million subscribers and an endless fixation with self-improvement.
'I can't tell you how many times I've heard him say: 'Mike, Mike, I figured it out. I found the answer. This is it, this is it, this is it!' Schy said. 'Of course, a week or two later, he'd tell you, 'No, no that wasn't it after all.'
'I asked him one time — he was probably 17 and was really into the one-plane motion and was really hitting it very, very well. I asked him, 'So what are you going to do if you come to a place where you go, That's it; I've finally figured it all out?' And, you know, he didn't really have an answer to that.'
At the Masters this year, DeChambeau hit 925 balls on the practice range over six days, far more than anyone else. These marathon range sessions have become a key part of his legend, but they're certainly not new. Asked recently about the origins of his work ethic, DeChambeau recalled something he read in a Ben Hogan book when he was around 13, a new golfer with more ambition than talent: 'A day that you aren't practicing is another day that somebody else is getting better than you.'
'I quickly started to realize I have to work harder and harder and harder, and it got to this place where it was eight hours a day of practice on Saturdays, hitting golf balls,' he said. 'There were Saturdays where I'd count golf ball buckets and see if I could hit over 1,000 balls in a day.'
He often would. He would empty the last bucket and look down at his hands, seeing torn skin and dried blood.
'It just became a bit of an obsession of 'How do I get better than others?'' he said. '… I definitely lost a lot of my childhood practicing golf, but I wouldn't change it for the world.'
The preoccupation was mixed with a yearning to please and a drive to experiment. Schy and DeChambeau worked on a single-plane swing — where the club head stays on a fluid path from backswing to impact. They adopted irons with single-length shafts and paired them with large grips. Later Schy introduced DeChambeau to his beloved Krank driver.
'He seeks validation,' Schy said. 'He wants to win and to be the best. But it has to be different. He has to able to say: 'Nobody's doing this. I'm the only one.' That's always, always been his quest.'
DeChambeau often referred to Schy as a second father, but the two had a falling-out shortly after the golfer won the U.S. Open last June at Pinehurst. Schy felt he wasn't properly recognized and went public saying DeChambeau wasn't holding up his end of a deal to fund a junior tour in California named after DeChambeau's late father, Jon. DeChambeau's camp denied this, and his agent said Schy tried to extort $2 million from the golfer after the U.S. Open, a charge Schy denies.
'It's an unfortunate situation,' DeChambeau said at last year's British Open. 'I've loved that man for all of my life.'
Schy said he's still rooting for DeChambeau and hopes the two can reconcile.
'I think I've learned over the years that this is all a never-ending journey,' Schy said, 'and the goal is to hopefully try to keep improving — not only as a golfer but my hope would be that he'd improve as a person.'
Said DeChambeau: 'Mike has been an inspiration and incredible for me growing up as a kid to just practice and do what I needed to do to get better. He may not have had all the answers, but he led me toward the right answers, and I learned that work ethic was the most important thing.'
A decade ago, DeChambeau had just won an NCAA championship and was on the verge of winning the U.S. Amateur. He was 21 and about to become just the fifth player to win both titles in the same year, a list that includes Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Woods. A reporter asked, 'What do you view as your role in golf moving forward?'
Even then, audacity was among the biggest tools in DeChambeau's bag. He responded, 'I hope that I can honestly revolutionize the game of golf in a unique way — in a way that tells everybody, 'Do it your own way.''
In retrospect, he was signaling to the golf world just what kind of disrupter he would become. He breaks down courses, equipment and his own mechanics unlike anyone else, constantly searching for an edge. He once explained that when he was younger, he practiced writing cursive backward and left-handed — 'to help my fine motor skills with my hands, create more sensitivity and increase my brainpower.'
Said Parra, the SMU coach: 'He strives for greatness in a way that he believes is not the norm. Bryson's looking for his own perfection.'
The boldness, the idiosyncrasies, the detailed analysis — it all rubbed many people the wrong way. DeChambeau heard the critics, and he couldn't always tune them out.
'I think as time has gone on, I think you realize that we're all human and it's okay if somebody has a perspective,' he said. 'And you just try to show them through your actions, not what you say, but through your actions of what you're doing for this great game of golf. That's all I focus on now.'
DeChambeau has changed equipment, and he has changed tours. He has changed the people around him, and he has changed his body, bulking up to an almost comical degree, then slimming back down. Meantime, the sport around him shifted in a way that accelerated his rise.
Especially among young people, DeChambeau might be the most recognizable and influential person in the sport. Far more fans watch him swing a golf club in his lighthearted YouTube videos than during his live competitions on LIV Golf.
'I've always seen this side of him,' Mickelson said, 'this playful fun side, intelligent side, interesting side of him. … Now everybody gets to see it because he's able to showcase that and not have who he is be filtered by a middle person.'
While his YouTube channel offers a direct connection to fans — he has far more followers than the PGA Tour, LIV Golf or any other pro — he also finds other ways to break through. After he won the U.S. Open last year, saving par with a miraculous 54-yard bunker shot on the final hole to douse Rory McIlroy's hopes, DeChambeau paraded around Pinehurst until after midnight, sharing the trophy with fans, smiling for every camera, even returning to the 18th hole to talk through the memorable shot with Golf Channel's Johnson Wagner. It wasn't image rehabilitation as much it was a reputational eruption.
'He's the game's ultimate marketer right now,' NBC analyst Dan Hicks said. 'I think he's been incredibly smart with his transformation. … I think he's the same guy, but he's just used the showmanship routine to really take his stardom to a whole new level.'
DeChambeau finished in the top five at this year's Masters and PGA Championship. He won a LIV event in South Korea last month, and his game is well-suited for Oakmont. Still, he turned to a new set of irons this week, in search of an edge. And he hopes to soon debut a new golf ball after further testing.
'But I'm excited to keep researching and trying and experimenting and optimizing,' he said. 'My goal right now is just to optimize myself to another level, and if I can't, so be it.'
He'll probably always be known for his epic range sessions, but DeChambeau said he doesn't hit nearly as many balls as he used to because he has never felt more comfortable with his equipment and his mechanics.
As his manager, Connor Olson, pointed out, DeChambeau is now transferring that energy elsewhere, exploring investments, brainstorming YouTube ideas, discussing partnerships for both himself and the Crushers, the LIV team he captains.
'A lot more time grinding on business ventures these days, I'd say,' Olson said.
Now that he has celebrity and a devoted following, DeChambeau is figuring out what to do with his platform, a subject he has discussed with Trump.
'What he does to build his brand and content, the way his brain works, how he thinks through ideas, the people he surrounds himself with — it's all extra,' said Scott O'Neil, the CEO of LIV. 'The way he engages partners and sponsors, the president — this guy is a once-in-a-lifetime type of talent, on the course and off.'
That partnership will soon be put to a test. DeChambeau's contract with LIV expires next year. He's hoping to negotiate a new deal by the end of this year, saying, 'I know my worth.'
'They see the value in me. I see the value in what they can provide,' he said. 'And I believe we'll come to some sort of resolution on that. Super excited for the future. I think that LIV is not going anywhere.'
While some major champions jumped ship and pocketed LIV's money only to see their games suffer, DeChambeau attributes his success and his increasing popularity to his decision to leave the PGA Tour in June 2022. The lighter competition schedule gave him more free time, and he has used that time to test himself in new ways.
'YouTube has massively helped, I can tell you that,' he said, 'being able to just release the emotions in the way that I know I can. When I was a kid, I was super emotional, obviously, but I got frustrated on the golf course, I got really excited on the golf course.'
'Then when I got on tour, it was like everybody [said]: 'Hey, no, come on, just be in control. Control yourself. Control yourself.' There were times where I got frustrated but also times where I realized: 'Hey, no, I should be expressing my emotions, because that's me. I don't want to be someone that I'm not.''
Even if he captures another major title this weekend, DeChambeau is unlikely to be content. He wants to affect the entire sport, and then do it again and again.
'I think Bryson, in his mind, would really like to do some great things for the game,' Parra said. 'Obviously, he does it different than everyone else. But you do see a lot of guys that have made a lot of money and get a little complacent. They're okay with finishing 20 to 50th. That's not Bryson. Bryson is not going to stop.'