Golf has a new showrunner

DeChambeau's Open victory puts him in the center of the universe, and casts a shadow on the PGA Tour.

Shortly after he had created history from Pinehurst’s sand and Rory McIlroy’s blood, Bryson DeChambeau returned to the scene of the sublime.

He took the U.S. Open trophy back into the right bunker on the 18th hole at Pinehurst No. 2, posed with it, let the fans touch it again even though he’d paraded it through their hands already. He took a rake and smoothed out the newly hallowed ground. He clearly did not want to leave. He might be there still.

DeChambeau won his second U.S. Open on Sunday. He joins Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods in the distinguished barbershop quartet of those who have won two Opens and one U.S. Amateur. Because of how he did it, the cell structure of professional golf is vastly different from a week ago.

DeChambeau might not be the best player in the world, at least not yet, but he is the unquestioned king of juice. People who don’t watch golf will watch him. Maybe not as many as watched Woods, Arnold Palmer and Phil Mickelson, but it’s the same principle. Fans want a lot of things, but what they really love is to be acknowledged, to know that their heroes realize they’re in attendance, to be part of the show. DeChambeau invited them into his world at Pinehurst, and they’ll form a long line whenever the door reopens.

This is extremely bad news for the home office in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where the PGA Tour is trying to figure out how to join forces with the infidels who joined LIV Golf. DeChambeau is one of those. That weird logo on his cap is that of The Crushers, his LIV “team” that also includes Paul Casey, Anilban Lahiri and Charles Howell III. DeChambeau is banned from PGA Tour events, which are taking a beating in TV ratings. Instead of whining about that, the way Talor Gooch does, DeChambeau has used the superfluous 54-hole LIV events as they should be used, as a long research and development project for the major championships. In 2024 he has finished sixth in the Masters, second at the PGA, and now this. Overall he has played them better than Scottie Scheffler has. Worse yet for the networks and the Tour, it will be harder to make the restricted “signature” events resonate if DeChambeau is not in them.

“Master class,” is what Matthieu Pavon, DeChambeau’s Sunday playing partner, called his performance. “He is a hell of a player. What’s most impressive about Bryson is not that he hits the ball far. Everybody knows it. But I was amazed by the quality of the short game at 18.”

DeChambeau came to that tee with a one-shot lead, because, for the second time in three holes, McIlroy had missed a putt the length of a Sandhills baby rattlesnake. DeChambeau swept his tee shot into the “native area,” a witches’ brew of wiregrass and vegetation and sand that can either bury your ball or put it on a tee for you. In this case DeChambeau was bothered by a massive tree root, and magnolia leaves around his head. He pushed his approach into the bunker. If he didn’t get a blast and a putt, he’d be in a 2-hole aggregate playoff with McIlroy.

It was a 55-yard shot and DeChambeau brandished a 55-degree wedge, the kind he’d been criticized for using. He produced ambrosia. Amid the howl, DeChambeau’s shot left him with an easy uphill putt. He drained it and began a celebration similar to Payne Stewart’s, 25 years ago on the same hole. Stewart was the inspiration for DeChambeau to attend SMU, and DeChambeau wore a pin with Stewart’s likeness on his hat and, in the press conference, put a replica of Stewart’s golf cap on the trophy.

DeChambeau’s lifelong ability to dodge norms was on display all week. He hit 32 fairways out of 52. He hit five on Sunday, and no one hit fewer. He was profoundly lucky to get some of the lies he did, but he was a demon on the greens, saving epic pars on the eighth and the 10th and, of course, the 18th. When he bogeyed 12, he responded by driving the green on the par-4 13th and grabbing a birdie. Then he gagged a short par putt in 15 that made him think, momentarily, that he wasn’t destiny’s child. At that point he was two strokes behind. “I said, nope, I’m not going to let this happen,” he said later. Somehow he played 16, 17 and 18 even-par and won outright.

DeChambeau and McIlroy were 1-2 in driving distance for the week. But even though McIlroy found 14 more fairways than DeChambeau, he hit only one more green in regulation. Put another way, DeChambeau was 32nd in greens in regulation, McIlroy 62nd.

Just as he did when he won the 2020 Open at Winged Foot, during Covid-19 season with only members in attendance, DeChambeau did it with wedges, chips and putts. But throughout all his iterations, he has always known how to win. In 2015 he won both the U.S. Am and the NCAA, joining Woods, Mickelson, Nicklaus and Ryan Moore in that club. Sunday’s win was his ninth on tour and his 40th Top Ten finish, in 147 starts.

When he emerged on tour he brought out the curiosity with drives previously unseen, and out of sight. But he was churlish to rules officials, fans and media members. He said his King Cobra driver “sucked,” which didn’t please the manufacturer. He seemed far too bubbly about his scientific approach and all other things DeChambeau. In 2020 he airily dismissed Augusta National as a “par 67” course for him, although Dustin Johnson set the Masters record that year by averaging 67 for four rounds. He kept saying he wasn’t interested in joining LIV and then, one day, did so. Thus he wasn’t picked for the 2023 Ryder Cup team. The victorious Europeans were thankful.

This time around DeChambeau still works as hard and still has eclectic tastes in equipment, including a driver that is normally used in long-drive contests. In near solitude, he shot a ridiculous 61-58 on the weekend to win the LIV event at Greenbrier last year. But when the attention does befall DeChambeau, he knows how to use it as a weapon. On one teebox Saturday, when fans wanted him to take out the driver, DeChambeau chose an iron. He looked up and apologized. Again, he is taking everyone on this serpentine carvan.

As DeChambeau was partying, McIlroy was gone. This was his third runnerup finish in the past eight majors, and his second consecutive second place at the Open. He has four majors but none since the PGA ten years ago. He did not speak to any media member, including those at NBC, which was out of character. Obviously this wasn’t a good idea, but you didn’t really need his postgame recap to measure the ton of bricks that befell him.

McIlroy’s miss at 16 was from two and a half feet, his miss at 18 from nearly four feet, but above the hole. After a day of unerring drives, McIlroy was all over the lot on the final four holes. He is hardly the first to miss layups late on a Sunday. Doug Sanders’ runaway tapin at the 1970 British Open, which would have beaten Nicklaus, is the classic, but Scott Hoch did it at the 1991 Masters, and Davis Love III at the 1996 Open, and Dustin Johnson at the 2015 Open, and Justin Rose at the 2017 Masters. Let’s not even talk about Jean Van De Velde’s self-immolation at the 1999 British Open, or Adam Scott’s collapse at the same tournament in 2012.

The armchair psychologists among us can say the pressure has consumed McIlroy, or that his constant presence at the front of the PGA Tour/LIV affair has distracted him, along with his bitter divorce that suddenly became a reconciliation. But the truth is that he simply isn’t rising to the many occasions he gives himself. You can want something too much. Ask Lee Westwood and Colin Montgomerie, Euro warriors who never won a major. Ask Greg Norman or, for that matter, Dan Marino or Karl Malone.

It no longer seems inevitable that McIlroy, 35, has another major win in him. Perhaps he’ll need to win by eight or so strokes to make it happen, and that isn’t happening with Scheffler around. But neither Scheffler’s tyranny nor McIlroy’s travails will preoccupy golf fans, whether old or new. Bryson DeChambeau is his own planet now, and when he comes down to live among us four times a year, we’ll put down everything else and watch the eclipse.