Maybe its real: the love. Maybe the low-fives, the fist bumps, the hollering, all of it, represents a change of heart. Maybe we didn’t know him before. Maybe he changed. Maybe it’s an act.
Because Bryson DeChambeau wasn’t always loved. He was brilliant and brash and cocky and hard to embrace. He was polarising. Different. He thought he had the game worked out. Him? Why him?
It was kooky stuff, too, designed by science. DeChambeau was golf’s Elon Musk. Thinking outside the box? He refused to recognise the box. No box.
He came out on tour wearing a flat cap as a homage to Ben Hogan, one of the greatest players of all time, and Payne Stewart, one of the most beloved American players of the last 50 years. So, what was he saying about himself with the flat cap? Modesty didn’t forbid him.
DeChambeau turned up at the Masters in 2020 and said the par at Augusta for him was 67. “That’s not me being big-headed,” he said. The denial was hopeless. In his next 13 rounds at the tournament, he only hit that number once. But that’s what he was like. At Augusta, all the other players whisper and genuflect, like they’re in church. DeChambeau was incapable of lowering his voice.
Defecting to LIV Golf in the middle of 2022 felt like the final breakdown in whatever relationship existed between him and the masses who followed the PGA Tour. Condemnation rained down on his head. He was vilified for his ego and his greed. It was easy to beat down on DeChambeau. Everybody had years of practice.
But everything is different now. As the US Open last year, he reached out to the galleries in a way that he had never done before. He signed autographs and stood for selfies and gave his time, generously. After every good shot he looked up and acknowledged the cheers. He smiled.
The flat cap is long gone and the BA Baracus muscles that he had cultivated during the pandemic have been planed back too. The know-it-all shtick has been toned down. Relatable is a buzzword, but that’s what he has become.
[ The 80s: when men were men and TV shows were once a weekOpens in new window ]
He started doing videos on YouTube that seemed to strike a chord with people who wanted to watch golf and have a giggle. Some of it is preposterous and much of it is overblown and cartoonish, but he has an audience of 1.8 million on that platform now. Many PGA Tour events on free-to-air TV channels fall well short of those numbers. Not for the first time in his career, DeChambeau was a phenomenon.
In the morning wave at the US PGA Championship on Friday he dragged the biggest galleries around the course. In his three-ball were Gary Woodland, a US Open winner, and Viktor Hovland, one of the most exciting players in the game. The fans, though, only had eyes for Bryson.
Can we call him Bryson?
On the roped passageway between each green and the next tee box there is ample room to walk down the middle and look straight ahead, but DeChambeau deliberately walks by the rope and makes contact with every outstretched hand. Most of them are filming the interaction on their phones and shouting encouragement. “Go Bryson.” Simple. Warm. Loud. Repeated on a loop.
None of the other players are prepared to engage in that way during a round. Not on every hole. If it’s an act, DeChambeau has perfected it.
At the Majors he has become a player again. In his last eight appearances, he has recorded four top-five finishes, including a victory at the US Open last year and a runner-up finish in the US PGA, when he shot a staggering bogey-free 64 on the last day.
This week he was one of the favourites because, as he said, Quail Hollow is a “bomber’s paradise” and he hits the ball miles. On the 11th hole on Friday his caddie advised him to hit his drive over the right corner of the bunker, just on the dog-leg. For safety. Bryson agreed and then thrashed it over the first bunker and the second bunker, obliterating the dog-leg and splitting the fairway.
On that hole his drive went 327 yards; on the previous hole it went 351; on the next, 347. At the 16th on Thursday, he hit it 362 yards. His good shots are spectacular; his bad shots are spectacular.
By the end of round two he was in the hunt. The tournament needed him.
Do we love him? We love the act. That’s enough.
