Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions
Bryson DeChambeau's best solution to Bryson DeChambeau's heckling problem is for Bryson DeChambeau to stop being an asshole. This isn't hard.
The afterparty was at Trump National GC Westchester, in Briarcliff Manor, some 20 miles north of Winged Foot, DeChambeau has a close relationship with the Trump family and Trump Organization Executive Vice President Larry Glick; he’s one of several pros who sports the “Trump” logo on his golf bag and has played at several of their properties.
Eric Trump played the role of host and hype man, introducing DeChambeau like a conquering hero as he entered the grill room, trophy in hand. The two most famous men in the room made for quite the side-by-side: Eric, who’s 6’5 and lanky, next to Bryson, who’s 6’1 and not.
The great thing about very, very rich people is it’s relatively fine to hate them. In a society weighted heavily toward the uncompromising heavy hand of capital, a few members of the working class yelling “HEY, ASSHOLE” in between a few frothy cold ones does not matter. Perhaps you consider this flippant or classist, the Yellow Vests would consider this not enough. There are an infinite number of harms inflicted upon the world daily, spending any amount of time wondering whether a white male multimillionaire can hit a ball around a field in relative peace from boozed-up Barstool readers is not one worth solving.
The above piece is friend-of-The-One-Iron Dylan Dethier’s walk-around following Bryson DeChambeau after his first major championship at last September’s COVID-modified US Open. It’s the story of DeChambeau marching his trophy and medal directly to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey to hang out with former Goonies extra Eric Trump and a quorum of sweaty 62-year-olds who share the common bonds of overleveraged condominium developments and medicare fraud. The scene is one you can picture, if not smell. DeChambeau, giddy in all his US Open glory, running around with a glass of Orgain chumming it up with a bunch of guys on regular regimens of colloidal silver before running off to play Fortnite on a Twitch stream.
There are few stories that capture who Bryson DeChambeau is and the state of his self-made bed better. He’s inviting one of the best writers in the game to follow him around to craft his profile, because he loves the attention and loves the opportunity to closely shape his brand. He’s on Twitch to connect with his audience or whatever. He’s the alleged science-loving genius who wants to remake golf into a mathematical formula, yet refuses the COVID-19 vaccine that saves lives daily. He shows up in promotional videos for the Trump family and wore their logo on his bag, but refuses to talk politics. My disdain for DeChambeau is long on record, and I could allow this to turn into a diatribe about how the wide gulf in these completely irreconcilable positions means his carefully culled physics persona is nothing but a fucking grift, but I’d rather just show you this.
And we’re not even to Bryson DeChambeau, the professional golfer, yet.
That Bryson DeChambeau is exploiting a known and obvious flaw in the modern game, bulking up to a zillion pounds to mash drives in any wayward direction without any regard for where a fairway might be — a philosophy suited to work well on the PGA Tour’s lifeless and tasteless setups. It’s hideous golf, in the way a late-round Isner-Opelka ATP 100 Semi looks or top-4 side trying to steal three points away at Tony Pulis-era Stoke. If either of these references slide past you, please google INDIANA BASKETBALL 2018-2019 HIGHLIGHTS. Sure, whatever, Bryson might be bringing some new way of playing golf to the game and it’s assuredly a spectacle to watch — but so was Archie Miller and both games would be better off long term if the two were shoved out to sea on a funeral pyre.
We’re not done. If the anti-vax, pro-insurrection takes or antigolf doesn’t present a reason for disdain, pick any of the leftovers. One of those Bryson wayward drives will wander into the crowd and plunk some bystander in the head, but he seems to not give a shit about anyone besides himself. He’ll clog up play for four minutes and fifty nine seconds looking for fire ants after a Ohio monsoon. He blames his *TOP SPONSOR AND CLUB MANUFACTURER* to the point they have to put out a statement publicly calling him an impossible-to-work-with baby in an effort to preserve the go-to-market of their biggest R&D release. The list goes on, and on, and on.
All of that brings us back to Sunday afternoon, and to the scene at the end of the BMW Championship outside Baltimore, where Patrick Cantlay turned into the matador and DeChambeau the just-too-slow bull. A recurring theme through the broadcast, the recaps, the talkshows, and the thinkpieces has been whether it’s okay to call Bryson DeChambeau, a wildly successful 27-year-old multimillionaire who has given lots of people any and every reason possible to dislike him Brooksy. Brooksy.
A number of these pieces are from other One-Iron pals or guys I deeply respect, like ESPN’s Kevin Van Valkenberg. His wrap from the scene at Caves Valley is brilliantly written and reported, and a must read if you’re looking to put a bow on the surreal scenes of Sunday’s duel. But as much as I love KVV, he loses me here:
I'm being dead serious when I say it could have gotten ugly really fast. Maybe not "Malice at the Palace" bad, but in that moment, nothing would've surprised me. A rope line is little more than a polite suggestion when it comes to security at a golf tournament. DeChambeau had been hearing, and ignoring, that kind of taunt all week. But everyone has their breaking point.
Thankfully, DeChambeau paused, angrily motioning for a police officer to handle the heckler, then continued his march up the hill. The entire exchange took less than 10 seconds. The PGA Tour declined comment when asked about the incident by ESPN. But we've been building to something like this all summer. And I don't know what the endgame is.
It’s certainly a fair and worth citation to state that golf galleries are rowdier than ever, but … are we invoking the Malice at the Palice here? Without forcing an Indianapolis resident to relitigate the 2004 Indiana Pacers, Ron Artest had an actual physical object thrown at him. Jermaine O’Neal had a dude run onto the court and square up! If we’re comping this to other recent player/fan run-ins, let’s note that the Utah Jazz fan harassing Ja Morant’s family was yelling racial slurs. These things aren’t alike, and neither is the common refrain about Bryson’s mental health in contrast with the Simone Biles or Naomi Osaka situations. No one deserves those sorts of inner demons, but Biles and Osaka aren’t running around with a twice-impeached former president’s logo on their gym bags. Hell, we’re not even in the Colin Montgomerie zone here — Monty’s abuse was mostly centered around his weight and fairly transparent xenophobia!
Bryson DeChambeau is getting called Brooksy. And while the boozed up Baltimore bros aren’t on an ethical consumpion vision quest when lambasting the Big Golfer, he’s laying in the bed he’s made in golf and beyond for the past number of years.
We all love a redemption story, but redemption requires reflection. It requires personal growth and some evolution. There’s a natural tendency in golf media to write the redemption story before the individual at the center of the story is actually worth redeeming. Bryson hasn’t done that work. He hasn’t even taken the simplest of steps to show a bit of humility, a bit of grace, a bit of regret. If we’re going to start rehabbing, it requires reckoning with at least some of what the individual has done to lead them down a path where 85% of the ticketed audience in Baltimore, Maryland is cheering Patrick Cantlay as if he’s Outkast on a reunion tour.
Bryson DeChambeau isn’t a member of a marginalized group — he’s a insanely wealthy 27-year-old white male who has actively given you myriad reasons to deeply, deeply dislike him no matter what item on the above list might be your pet issue.
Until he’s willing to reckon with the image he’s willingly created for himself, you don’t owe him any sort of deference just because he’s hitting golf balls in your presence.
Great writing. Peel back the onion.