Bryson DeChambeau does not do things in half measures, and that is not a reference to his lob wedges being the same length as his three iron. “I want to bring the world together,” he says, and somehow manages to avoid sounding absurd as he does so.
A conversation with the Mad Scientist, AKA The Incredible Bulk, AKA The Multiple Major Winner, is an illuminating experience, if only because of his wild combination of get-out-of-my-way confidence and almost childlike insecurity.
On the one hand, DeChambeau believes he can inspire generations and play “a large part in growing the game from 100 million golfers to 150 million in the next decade”. And on the other, he just craves to be loved. Perhaps one will only follow the other, but the 30-year-old recognises the paradox. “I know I am different and enjoy being different,” he tells Telegraph Sport. “But at the same time I want to be accepted.”
That seemed a forlorn ambition just 14 months ago. On the Saturday of the 2023 USPGA Championship in upstate New York, he was booed on to the first tee in scenes more akin to professional wrestling. It was the low point to which his spiral had been inexorably pointed. “I said it didn’t bother me, but of course it did,” he says. “There was a human being under there. If you had told me then how quickly it would all turn around, I wouldn’t have believed you. I thought it would take much longer.”
‘You can laugh at yourself once in a while’
DeChambeau heads into this 152nd Open Championship as The Great Showman restored. Naturally, Tiger Woods will command the attention of the icon-spotters, the thousands who turn out for just a glimpse of the living legend, while Rory McIlroy’s reaction to last month’s US Open meltdown is certain to attract the lenses. Yet in terms of entertainment and being enthralled by the extraordinary, DeChambeau will have them all heading towards the Big Top.
From hated to feted, in the space of three majors, from at last contending at the Masters, to spectacular failure at the USPGA, to glory at the US Open, where he capitalised on the McIlroy collapse with a bunker shot on the 18th that has already passed into golfing folklore.
A 55 yard bunker shot to win the US Open.
It may not be remembered like Jack’s 1 iron or Tiger’s putt at Torrey, but this legit is one of the best shots under pressure EVER.
The degree of difficulty here is insane.
— Rick Golfs (@Top100Rick) June 16, 2024
How did he do it? “Playing well, helps,” he says with a laugh, although he acknowledges there has been rather more to this transmogrification that he prefers to call “my evolution”.
Most notably there was the life-changing experience of November 2022. John DeChambeau, a former PGA Tour pro, died aged 63 due to complications with diabetes. “When my father passed, as it is for everyone, that was a huge deal to me and I started to realise the eminence of life like, at some point, it’s all going to end,” he explains.
“So yeah, you’ve got to be gracious with the time you have. You know, I’m always going to be a person that wears my emotions on my sleeve and yeah, I try to continue to do better with that. It made me see that at some point in time, you have to be ok with failing and messing up and you can laugh at yourself once in a while. There’s more important things.”
‘LIV gave me the time to get healthy’
The problem was that six months on and through the heckles and the pantomime-villain treatment, the traditional galleries were not prepared to allow DeChambeau to reset. However, in the rebel environs of LIV Golf – which he joined in a $125 million deal – there was the possibility for an overhaul. He escaped his isolation by jumping ship to the legion of the condemned.
“It would have been impossible for me to have come this far again without LIV,” says DeChambeau. “It gave me the time to get healthy and develop. I came to LIV and suddenly there were players in the same boat as me. Because they were getting stick as well – not from the LIV fans but seemingly everywhere else. I was not alone in being disliked and could share these feelings with my team-mates and my colleagues.
“But slowly that has changed and whether it was the thing with the PGA Tour [the ‘framework agreement’] people are coming around to what we are all about. It’s about moving an inch and ideating a mile. We have come a long way and we continue to move progressively in small incremental amounts. It’s just going to domino at some point.”
DeChambeau is pinning his faith in YouTube setting the chain in motion. Since setting up his own channel at the beginning of last year the Calfinornian has gained almost one million subscribers, with his video selections racking up more than 70 million views. There is the “Break 50” series, in which he and a partner try to locate layouts easy enough to shoot in the 40s for 18 holes (from the red tees).
DeChambeau has become increasingly ambitious with his guestlist, and recently even asked for President Trump to play against Joe Biden.
“Why not?” he says. “You get to see people as they really are and this is what YouTube has told me. I understand the whole perception-reality thing. Perception is reality and by having the control to present how I appear with my channel, I…
