Getty Images
ROCHESTER, NY – The last time Bryson Dechambeau stood on top of the golf world, there was some concern that he might shoot straight into orbit.
It was late September 2021 — about two years before DeChambeau found himself leading Thursday in this PGA Championship — and Bryson looked like a man on the verge of finally conquering his demons. Just a week earlier, he had nursed an American to a Ryder Cup victory, and his stunning 350-yard drive at the first hole on Sunday at Whistling Straits proved to be the defining moment of the event.
Now, after a summer of buxom, “proxy,” and bomb-hitting, he’s traveled hundreds of miles to the middle of nowhere for a glorious test of the manhood of the human race: the World Long-distance Championship. But Bryson didn’t go to the desert to prove his impressive height or enhance his reputation (although those were nice side benefits); He’s gone to save the sport of long-distance driving, which has been dying a slow death in the wake of the pandemic.
“All of these guys have families and lives,” Bryson told me then. “They’re just trying to survive, a lot of them do, and I think they need to get support — support from the golf world, financial support. That’s the best way for me to do that. So why wouldn’t I?”
It helped, of course, almost Bryson had won World Long Distance Championship. Fans came flocking to Mesquite, Nevada, to watch him compete. The shepherds lined up at the door to talk to the brass of the league. The Golf Channel is back in the fold.
Sports saved. And from his perch in the corner of the room, it looked like Bryson might as well. He seemed really happy in the fall of 2021. The golf world smiled at him. The internet (briefly) stopped making fun of him. For a moment, DeChambeau felt on the edge of the abyss of the very thing that had always seemed too smug to reach: honest-to-goodness international stardom.
Then it all collapsed.
It’s been nearly two years since that fall—a lifetime, if you ask Bryson. Who knew that the man who looked so poised to take over the world of golf in September 2021 was actually on the brink of disaster?
First came the hand injury that took away the early part of his 2022 season and any remaining confidence from the previous fall. Then the ugly effects of under-training and over-recovering simultaneously resulting in MCs or WDs in all but four events during the main season. The nail in the coffin came just before the US Open, when DeChambeau became one of LIV Golf’s most prominent defections, a move that re-isolated him from much of the golf world.
He fell off the map after finishing T56 in the National Championships and was there for most of the summer. This, he says, is when he learned something was very wrong.
“I did a Zoomer peptide test, which basically tells you what fuels your blood when you eat it,” he said. “I was allergic to corn, wheat, gluten, and dairy. Everything I loved so much, I couldn’t eat.”
Allergy testing indicated the inflammation, which helped explain the strange vertigo-like phenomenon he experienced at a number of events, including the 2020 Masters Championships. Stripped from his diet, he went from 5,000 calories a day to 2,900, and his body responded in kind.
“I relaxed like crazy,” he says. “I lost 18 pounds in 24 days. It was insane. It wasn’t fat. It was all water weight. You know how I looked before. I wasn’t skinny.”
With a better understanding of his health, Bryson went into the offseason trying to salvage his golf game, but range time did little to turn the tide. The harder he trained, the more difficult things grew.
As anyone who’s made it to the top of the golf mountain will tell you, getting back there is the sport’s hardest accomplishment (“Like, I’ve done this before, why can’t I do it every day?” says Bryson). The work of restoring a lost look involves not one hack but hundreds of them stacked together. Sometimes the breakthroughs don’t come.
“There were times when it was like, ‘I don’t know if this is worth it,’” he said. “But every day I had a glimmer of hope that I could get back to it.”
As the calendar turns to this year, DeChambeau’s brick pile is finally starting to grow. The addition of new swing coach Dana Dahlquist helped, as did Greg Bowden (former luoper Tony Finau). Between last week’s LIV event in Tulsa and this week’s PGA start, Bryson “did a few things” on the range. The game has become closer.
On Thursday in Oak Hill, everything seemed to come together. Bryson arrived on the court looking straight-sculpted, his muscles rippling across the back of his shirt and down his arms. As the warm-up continued, he looked remarkably relaxed – a stark change from the once sultry player who would dagger-stare through the crowd in his championship days.
In some ways, this is symbolic of a larger shift in his life. Gone are the days of hitting golf balls into oblivion in pursuit of swing speeds and CNS development. These days, he says, the less time spent on the range, the better.
“As I’ve told you guys before, I struggled with my drive,” says Bryson. “You see me out there on the run. That’s something I don’t want to do. I don’t want to stay there all night, but I had to figure out what I did well in 2018 and what made me so successful at the time.”
Now, DeChambeau finds himself reaching the end of what he calls a “five year” journey away from his northern star as a golfer. It’s fair to point out that those five years included a huge World Championship win, a top-five ranking, and many, many million dollars. It is also fair to point out that these developments may have come at the expense of his happiness.
“I want to be stable now,” he says. “I’m tired of changing, trying different things. Yeah, can I hit it a little bit, can I try to get a little bit stronger? Sure. But I’m not going full force.”
Of course, Bryson would never be able to get over the parts of his personality that allowed him to become such a huge, speed-ball chasing player. He is still obsessed with nutrition and health. Still carries every change with the severity of a heart attack. On the track, his movement isn’t far behind the one that set fire to the U.S. Open course at Winged Food’s six-stroke.
On Thursday at the PGA, it was amazing how Bryson looked at the long drive racer for 2021. Things fell apart after that moment of harmony, and who’s to say they’ll never get back together? Nobody, not even Bryson.
“You have to be willing to jump over failure to succeed,” he said. “It’s just about giving yourself hope every single day.”
On Thursday at the PGA, he hopes the work was worth it. After two years of standing on top of the golf world, he can get back at it again and better than he ever was. Also different.
“It’s kind of addictive,” he said with a smile.
It’s as if he knows it everyoneHope – to be better than we were the day before. Of course, that doesn’t mean he — or any of us — made it happen.
But there is certainly honor in trying.