Golf tournaments come and go, one week blending into the next and then into the next.
Once in a while, however, what happens lingers beyond the trophy presentation.
While the Travelers Championship put a stamp on the final signature event of 2024, the U.S. Open at Pinehurst – particularly Bryson DeChambeau’s role in it and, to a lesser degree, Rory McIlroy’s – continues to reverberate.
It changed the conversation from what isn’t into what can be.
DeChambeau’s second U.S. Open victory was not a referendum on LIV Golf versus the PGA Tour. It was a full-throated, hands-to-the-heavens reminder of what makes championship golf special.
Not every week can be like the Pinehurst U.S. Open where everything – the course, the presentation and the players – came together leading to a Sunday afternoon crescendo that will be remembered into the future.
The last two hours became a duel between DeChambeau and McIlroy, golf’s version of a Marvel movie. It was made better by their imperfect golf. It was tense. It was hard. It was unforgiving.
It became unforgettable.
Not unlike how Chris Stapleton or Rihanna doesn’t fit everyone’s musical tastes, DeChambeau isn’t for everyone.
Had McIlroy won, the elation of the moment would have been no different, but the narrative would have been.
He knows better than anyone how long it has been since his last major-championship victory, and this one was there for the taking. As McIlroy walked off the 14th tee on Sunday with a two-stroke lead, even DeChambeau thought it might be McIlroy’s day.
If McIlroy’s failure was crushing, DeChambeau’s victory and his reaction to it has had a profound impact.
The frustration with the fractured state of the pro game isn’t just with LIV’s intrusion. It’s with what’s been lost on the PGA Tour.
Six months ago, Jon Rahm’s defection felt like a knee-wobbling blow to the tour, and it was, but it’s DeChambeau who has become the new reason to fix what is broken.
Not unlike how Chris Stapleton or Rihanna doesn’t fit everyone’s musical tastes, DeChambeau isn’t for everyone. They haven’t forgiven his brashness, his arrogance and his willingness to take the Saudi money for what he said was the good of the game.
DeChambeau did it for the money because he could have grown the game on the PGA Tour (and, to be fair to him, he seems to sincerely want to bring others into golf). He’s not like anyone else, and that’s a good thing as the improved television ratings for the U.S. Open suggest.
If and when an agreement might be reached between the tour and LIV Golf, there needs to be a pathway back for the players who left. Rahm seemed to think his move would bring peace, but it didn’t.
DeChambeau’s play (he tied for sixth at the Masters and was a Xander Schauffele lip-out away from being in a playoff at the PGA Championship) and his newfound popularity have provided an emotional urgency to getting a deal done.
The reality is that any deal may be months away, but seeing what the game can be when the best players are together should be in everyone’s best interest.
The pro game has been driven by bitterness, greed and stubbornness. DeChambeau has played a part in that, but the reaction to his victory – both his reaction and the public’s – is revealing.
In the minutes and the days after he won, DeChambeau tried to make it everyone’s championship, whether it was sharing in the trophy with neighbors in the cul-de-sac where he was staying a few hours after his victory or walking down a street in Nashville, near last week’s LIV tournament, with it dangling from his fingers.
“When I was younger, I felt like I was called to do something in the game, and getting to this point in my life where I had struggles, I've done some things I shouldn't have done, said some things I shouldn't have said and messing up and learning from those mistakes and learning patience, resilience, determination ... ”
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU
It probably turned some people off, but they wrote DeChambeau off a while ago and there’s no coming back for them. DeChambeau, however, has made an effort to change and, even if you want to cast a cynical eye on some of it, his joy was contagious, and the cheers that echoed through the Carolina pines and wherever DeChambeau has taken the trophy are real.
“When I was younger, I felt like I was called to do something in the game, and getting to this point in my life where I had struggles, I've done some things I shouldn't have done, said some things I shouldn't have said and messing up and learning from those mistakes and learning patience, resilience, determination, continuing to grow in that capacity and then getting to a place where I finally get to showcase my true self and show others what this great game means to me, it's given me so much. It's time for me to give back,” DeChambeau said last week.
“That's what I love most. That's why this was so important for everyone to touch the trophy. I wanted everybody to experience it because it wasn't just for me. It was for the turnaround, everyone looking at me, going, Wow, that person is different than what I thought. It was for them, those people that saw who I now am, who I am.”
DeChambeau is an agent of change. Not everyone followed his body-busting diet a few years ago, and there’s no rush to buy single-length irons with bulging faces, but he has succeeded by doing something different.
Even now that he’s slimmed down and softened his edge, there is something almost cartoonish about DeChambeau, and that’s meant as a compliment to his mold-breaking ways and his willingness to challenge the status quo even if it has sometimes come across as clunky.
He’s an American original. Although the “USA, USA, USA” cheers that followed him Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Open were unnecessarily jingoistic, DeChambeau accomplished more than winning his second major championship.
He may have helped push a broken game a little closer together.
E-MAIL RON
Top: Bryson DeChambeau's embracing of the U.S. Open trophy may have been a wake-up call for golf's leaders.
Tracy Wilcox, PGA Tour via Getty Images