Always the innovator, Bryson DeChambeau is pursuing golf’s impossible dream with LIV Golf

First, let’s get it on the record that when Bryson DeChambeau stopped by to play the 12th hole with our group at the immensely challenging Maridoe Golf Club on Thursday, all part of a preview for the LIV Golf Team Championship event coming next month, we used my drive.
Now if you want to nitpick and say we used my ball because DeChambeau tried to clear a water hazard more than 320 yards out (and did, in fact, clear it while hitting his ball into a high rough area) and that we simply settled for my 215-yard blast down the middle, well, that seems like a lot of unnecessary information.
Bryson DeChambeau rips a drive at the par-5 13th hole at today’s media event promoting the LIV Golf Team Championship at Maridoe Golf Club. pic.twitter.com/knqBeKw3hN
Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis, scores and more.
Or with:
By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
We used my drive. End of story.
Did he sink our 18-foot birdie putt for us? Yes, he did. And when he teed off on the next hole, feeling he owed us one, did he outdrive me by 95 yards according to the cart GPS? Also true. But those are the things Bryson has been doing for some time now, launching golf balls into parts unknown, trying to beat the game not just with practice and repetition but with physics and, at one time, a huge weight gain in search of the ultimate power drive.
Bryson DeChambeau makes it look easy, sinking this 18-footer for birdie at today’s LIV Golf media event promoting the tour’s upcoming Team Championship at Maridoe. pic.twitter.com/KZc7MmRMis
“There was one night where I got on the scale at 241, looked in the mirror and said, “I don’t recognize you,’ ‘’ DeChambeau said.
When you look at him now, this year’s U.S. Open champion is a sculpted 218 pounds and still attempts drives — whether on the LIV tour or in major championships — others can’t quite fathom. In his quest to become the perfect golfer, he has achieved a different sort of impossible. Bryson DeChambeau left the PGA Tour for the controversial Saudi money-fueled land of LIV and increased his likability in the process.
While Phil Mickelson has lost countless fans and others have mostly disappeared from the mainstream landscape (LIV Golf, despite the presence of major champions, draws nearly invisible TV ratings), DeChambeau is more popular than ever. He was the people’s choice in Augusta when he was chasing Dallas’ Scottie Scheffler, and the crowds at Pinehurst loved it when his U.S. Open victory supplied the perfect SMU coda to the late Payne Stewart’s title there 25 years ago.
“That’s why I play the game,’’ DeChambeau said. “I love feeling that crowd. The energy is electric, and being able to feed off that only cements my position of trying to play the best golf I possibly can and to entertain as much as possible.’’
It wasn’t that way for him just a few years ago before departing the PGA Tour. DeChambeau seemed remote to fans and was something less than beloved by his peers. He acknowledged Thursday that his beef with Brooks Koepka at least began as something very real — “There was a complete disagreement, yes” — and that Koepka was not alone among his peers who didn’t “get” Bryson’s way of thinking.
”That’s one of the big reasons I started [doing videos on] YouTube. I wanted people to understand who I was, not just a science guy with some weird stuff I’m doing and not relatable at all,’’ he said. “People always talked, ‘Oh, this guy’s personality is weird’, and whatnot. They never took the time to understand who I was, right?
”And once people started to see over time, kind of who I am, it’s changed. And I think YouTube helped that a lot more.’’
He’s far from the first athlete to seek to control his own content but has been exceptional in that regard. In one video “challenge,” DeChambeau enthusiastically ripped open a box of junior clubs and then went out to play scratch golf with the starter set. “I filmed a couple videos, didn’t know how it was going to do, got a million views on one of them and it was a banger right off the bat. I took it as a massive opportunity, a bit of a leap of faith, and it developed into something special.‘’
That video success has enabled him to grow more comfortable with the golf crowds that are desperate to see him win or, barring that, at least launch the ball 350 yards in the air.
Sadly for LIV, DeChambeau’s appeal is almost the beginning and the end of what the upstart tour — likely to be merged or folded into the PGA sooner rather than later — has going for it. While the focus is said to be on a younger audience that gets its content online, you can’t help but notice that when Koepka and Jon Rahm battled in a playoff Sunday, LIV drew a TV audience of 165,000 viewers. Mickey Mouse Funhouse on the Disney Channel outperformed that streaming on a recent Saturday morning.
DeChambeau said that history is there to be made on the LIV tour, if it doesn’t run out of time. Regardless, where his peers have cashed in on LIV while sliding into golf’s witness protection program, DeChambeau has scaled a mountain others could not even envision. The physics expert is having the last laugh while putting smiles on the faces of golf fans around the world. Clearing 300-yard hazards is child’s play for a guy capable of pulling that trick.
X: @TimCowlishaw
Find more golf coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.