Who will ever forget the outrage a couple of years ago when Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and some other PGA Tour stars made the decision to take the hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed money and jump to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf circuit?
They were referred to as traitors and deserters by PGA Tour supporters and what then seemed like a large, vocal portion of golf fans. They were called un-American for taking the “blood money” from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
At the time, outspoken NBC golf analyst Brandal Chamblee lambasted DeChambeau and the other so-called LIV turncoats every chance he could.
“[DeChambeau] says he’ll have a new legacy. He absolutely will have a new legacy, and it will be tarnished as a 100-year-old silver trophy that has been untouched up in a closet,” Chamblee railed then. “When I hear these [LIV] players say that they are ‘growing the game’ … it makes me want to puke. They’re destroying the game. And they are destroying their reputations.”
Destroying their reputations, huh?
Let us now fast forward to Sunday’s U.S. Open where tens of thousands of golf fans in North Carolina and millions of others on national TV were cheering on DeChambeau, chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” as if he were some sort of conquering American war hero and roaring their approval when he made his final fist-pumping par putt to vanquish the crumbling Rory McIlroy.
Yes, the same loyal Rory McIlroy who had been LIV”s loudest critic and the PGA Tour’s biggest supporter during the feud with LIV. How do you think Rory must have felt when he saw and heard the love and adoration being heaped upon DeChambeau?
Do you think he wondered: “Why didn’t I just take the LIV money, too? I’d be a whole lot richer and just as popular as ever.”
In hindsight, Chamblee and other LIV critics couldn’t have been more wrong. The LIV golfers didn’t destroy their reputations at all; they just fattened their bank accounts. And as far as DeChambeau’s legacy, it is far from tarnished. In fact, DeChambeau is more beloved now than ever, thanks to his massive drives off the tee, his engaging personality as the big, likable lunk, his ultra-popular social media channels and the Arnie-like way he embraces the fans.
Let’s be honest, shall we? Chamblee and the other LIV critics have been just a very loud and vocal minority over the last couple of years. Most Americans have no real issue with the LIV golfers and never have. In fact, many of us, if we were being honest and if we were given the same opportunity, would have taken the guaranteed LIV money, too.
I wrote when the split first happened and I will reiterate now: Why would we expect American golfers — who, when you think about it, are essentially their own separate independent corporations — to turn down Saudi money when other major U.S. corporations (see Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, the United States government, etc.) are doing big business with them?
It’s become increasingly clear that the LIV golfers have won and won big. DeChambeau and Koepka reportedly got $125 million signing bonuses to jump to LIV, which, by the way, is more than Tiger Woods has made in totality on the PGA Tour. And, yes, they have been able to acquire this generational wealth without noticeably harming their images.
When Koepka won the PGA Championship last year, the galleries were cheering him on just as they would have been if he were still on the PGA Tour. The same with DeChambeau on Sunday.
The fans are speaking out loud and clear and what they’re saying is this: We don’t give a damn which tour a golfer plays on, we just want to see the best golfers in the world competing against each other.
Granted, we would like to see it more often than just the majors. We’d like to see DeChambeau back at PGA Tour events like the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he mesmerized the swollen galleries three years ago when he was bombing 370-yard drives in his mind-blowing attempt to drive the ball over a lake and onto the green at the par-5 sixth hole.
If you ask me, the more we get to see DeChambeau, the better. Which is why the Official World Golf Rankings are a joke for not recognizing LIV events in their ranking system. It’s because of this that DeChambeau, who is the most popular player on the planet, won’t be on the U.S. Olympic golf team.
By the way, what’s going on with our selection process when arguably the two most celebrated athletes in America, DeChambeau and Caitlin Clark, have been snubbed by the U.S. Olympic team? For crying out loud, did somebody put the College Football Playoff Committee in charge of picking our Olympic teams, too?
Even McIlroy, whose collapse on Sunday will go down as one of the biggest meltdowns in golf history, has gradually changed his stance on DeChambeau and the other LIV golfers who left the PGA Tour.
“I’d like to congratulate Bryson,” Rory said in a social media post after the U.S. Open. “He is a worthy champion and exactly what professional golf needs right now. I think we can all agree on that.”
And there you have it.
Bryson DeChambeau was once a pariah who was accused of helping to destroy the game of golf.
Now, suddenly, he is so popular and so beloved that he just might be able to help save it.
Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on X (formerly Twitter) @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen
