LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It’s not the incessant bickering or self-absorbed callousness of the divide that’s poisoned professional golf the last three years and left the game feeling empty, although that has certainly alienated its share of fans. The true measure of how LIV Golf and the endless supply of Saudi money has impacted the game was on full display Sunday at Valhalla Golf Club.
Xander Schauffele was brilliant, a major champion at last with a performance that makes all his near misses seem like steppingstones. Ditto for Viktor Hovland, who so quickly rediscovered his winning form after an otherwise wildly unpleasant start to the year. Schauffele and Hovland are the known commodities and part of the PGA Tour’s “signature” product that’s on display more weeks than not. They both play brilliant golf with charismatic smiles and the most acute social sensitivities.
But Bryson DeChambeau – whose initials “B.A.D.” are displayed proudly on his yardage book – is the variable, a wildcard who decided to ply his trade on LIV Golf and, in doing so, robbed the Tour and its fans of the kind of polarizing star that makes sports so compelling.
To call DeChambeau an antihero would be unfair and inaccurate, but he is very much an antagonist whose stated goal is to reshape how the game is played in his unique imagine. Single-length clubs, a fixation on speed and strength and a mind that always seems to be three shots ahead.
In a world filled with Fords and Chevrolets, DeChambeau is a Tesla, and the contrast between the leading men was there for the world to see Sunday at the PGA Championship. Schauffele was focused and fixated, keeping his emotions and his energies in check, while DeChambeau was larger than life.
DeChambeau set the stage for his emotional Sunday late on Day 3 when he chipped in for eagle at No. 18. “Exhilarating,” he gushed when asked how he felt after his finish. “I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”
If we’re being honest, the game hasn’t felt like that in a minute.
DeChambeau had a solid week at the Masters where he tied for sixth — although that was largely based on an opening 65 that he followed with rounds of 73-75-73 — and his results on the LIV circuit this year haven’t suggested that a breakthrough was close with his best finish a tie for fourth in Saudi Arabia in March.
But as last year’s PGA Championship proved, those who bolted for LIV who were world-class players are still world-class players. In the case of DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka who won last year’s PGA, they are also the secret sauce to entertaining golf.
This is not a slight to Schauffele, who won Sunday’s bout at Valhalla to claim his first major, or world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who won the year’s first major and nearly every other event he’s played this season, but the professional game is at its best when all the top players, from the Tour and LIV, are in the mix.
Never has this been more obvious than on Sunday as DeChambeau set out two shots off the lead and bouncing off the walls.
He birdied the second, fifth and sixth holes but at Valhalla, which yielded historically low scoring including the lowest under-par score (21 under) in men’s major championship history, he was still looking up at Schauffele on the leaderboard and when he missed the ninth green with his approach and scrambled for par, the internal dialogue became jarringly external.
“Come on, do better, you idiot!” he admonished himself on the way to the 10th tee.
DeChambeau answered with birdies at Nos. 10 and 13 and when he stepped to the 16th tee, he was, again, just two shots back. It was a moment he met with arguably his worst drive of the day, a snap hook that caromed off an oak before settling back into the fairway.
“I said thank you to the tree,” DeChambeau grinned. “I just wasn’t driving it my absolute best this week and was uncomfortable on the tee shot and I pulled it left, and I got super lucky. I looked at [caddie Greg Bodine], and I go, ‘OK, this is what it takes to win major championships.’”
From 218 yards, DeChambeau launched an 8-iron right at the flag and he high-stepped down the fairway as the ball sored through the warm air before stopping 3 feet from the hole for a birdie that pulled him to within a shot of the lead held by Schauffele.
The roars had hardly subsided when he crushed his drive on the 17th hole an outrageous 336 yards (196 mph ball speed) as the masses chanted, “Bryson, Bryson, Bryson.”
There are countless players who are entertaining but few who do it with the passion and personality of DeChambeau and his finish on the 18th hole at Valhalla was the definition of performative: a 327-yard drive that found a fairway bunker and a second shot from an awkward lie that led to a tougher-than-it-should-have-been birdie to tie Schauffele at 20 under, followed by a predictably animated celebration.
Entertaining to the very end.
“When the moment comes, knowing what to do, what to say, how to act, is really important,” said DeChambeau, whose closing 64 was his best round in a major and the day’s lowest round at Valhalla. “When I was younger, I didn’t understand what it was. Yeah, I would have great celebrations and whatnot, but I didn’t know what it meant and what I was doing it necessarily for. Now I’m doing it a lot more for the fans and for the people around and trying to be a bit of an entertainer that plays good golf every once in a while.”
It’s an important distinction that far too few in the game understand. Being really good at golf is the primary, and most important, ingredient to a successful product but there’s also a performative element to the game that many either fail to understand or don’t care. DeChambeau is not in that group.
For 72 holes this week, the 30-year-old mad scientist barked and boosted, willing himself to a place that was, by any measure, entertaining.
Even when the clock ran out and Schauffele put the title away with a birdie at the 72nd hole, DeChambeau embraced the spotlight with a swagger and unbridled self-belief that’s not always appreciated but is always honest.
“I shocked myself a couple times, yeah. Putted fantastic. I don’t feel like I missed one big-moment putt out there,” he said. “There’s obviously a couple misses, but every time I needed to get up-and-down I got up-and-down, and every time I needed to make a 6-, 7-footer I did. So definitely surprised myself, impressed myself and I know I can do it again, it’s just going to take some time.”
Sunday at the PGA Championship is no time to grandstand for peace and unity, but DeChambeau reminded everyone, in the loudest and most unbridled of terms, that the game is better with the “entertainer that plays good golf every once in a while.”
