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When Bryson DeChambeau claimed his second U.S. Open with a clutch 55-yard, up-and-down par from the bunker on the 72th hole at Pinehurst No. 2 last year, the dramatic moment was lauded as a finish for the ages.
Unlike his first U.S. Open win in 2020 at Winged Foot, where pandemic restrictions prevented fans from being on-site, DeChambeau had the chance to flex his crowd-pleasing muscles at Pinehurst. He perfectly executed the most important shot of his career with tens of thousands of fans encircling the green – in addition to millions more watching on the broadcast – and took full advantage of the exposure.
Throughout the week, DeChambeau interacted often with the gallery. That hasn’t been the norm in pro golf, and certainly not in pressure-packed major championships. But DeChambeau – long known for his intensity, a seemingly insatiable drive for improvement and a scientific, data-driven approach to the game – was showcasing an evolution in real time. He was in the midst of a re-brand as a man of the people, and he wanted the crowd to know it. When his winning putt dropped – punctuated by an emotional double fist-pump and a stirring ovation – DeChambeau was, indisputably, a fan favorite.
“You guys have meant the world to me,” DeChambeau said in his victory speech. “I can’t thank you enough. You are a part of this journey this week.”
DeChambeau then said he wanted everyone on-site to have a moment with the U.S. Open Trophy. It was a thoughtful thing to say. But then, remarkably, he made good on his promise, jogging into the lingering crowd, trophy aloft, to share it with the masses.
DeChambeau’s relationship with fans – and the media – has not always been so rosy.
In 2015, he became only the fifth player (joining Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Ryan Moore) to win the NCAA individual title and the U.S. Amateur Championship in the same year, while competing at Southern Methodist University, where he was a physics major. DeChambeau turned pro the next year, and his analytical approach quickly earned him the nickname “The Scientist.” He had a knack for headline-generating antics. DeChambeau burst on the scene wearing a Payne Stewart-style cap – a nod to his idol and fellow SMU alum – during tournament play. He touted the benefits of his one-plane swing, played a custom set of single-length irons and was eager to try anything and everything in a quest to improve, from experimenting with side-saddle putting to testing each of his tournament balls in a bath of Epsom salt to determine whether any were out of balance.
DeChambeau backed up his unorthodox methods with success on the course, winning eight times on the PGA Tour between 2017 and 2021. But as his profile continued to rise, so did the criticism. In 2019, clips of his sometimes-lengthy pre-shot routine began to circulate on social media.
When fellow pro Brooks Koepka was critical of DeChambeau’s pace of play after being asked about it in a press conference, it kicked off a war of words between the two that continued for the better part of three years. Meanwhile, DeChambeau had embarked on his most transformative physical endeavor yet, gaining 50 pounds in an attempt to max out his distance off the tee. The experiment was successful: He rocketed to the top of the PGA Tour’s driving distance ranking and won the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in 2020 by six strokes for his first major championship. He even competed in – and nearly won – a professional Long Drive competition.
But DeChambeau’s image suffered during the Koepka feud. He was taunted by Koepka’s fans during tournaments. The drama followed DeChambeau and Koepka to the 2021 Ryder Cup, which the USA lost. The two leveraged the animosity into a 2021 made-for-TV, 12-hole match, “Bryson vs. Brooks,” with Koepka closing out DeChambeau in nine holes.
After missing the cut at the 2022 Masters, DeChambeau underwent surgery to repair an injury to his left wrist. That August, he was among the cohort of top players to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf. Just three months after that, DeChambeau’s father died.
“I was knocked down pretty hard in 2022 for numerous reasons, numerous scenarios, numerous things,” DeChambeau said. “I had some great friends and great people around me tell me, ‘Keep going, keep pushing.’ So, I dug myself out of a pretty deep hole.”
DeChambeau’s about-face from taunted player to celebrated fan favorite can be largely attributed to his devotion to the online entertainment space over the last several years. He now commands one of the largest social-media followings in the game, with 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 2.7 million followers on Instagram and 1.7 million followers on TikTok. The YouTube numbers especially seem to multiply by the day. In interviews, DeChambeau has spoken effusively about growing the game with his platform, and the fervor with which he has endeavored to connect and engage with his fans has only grown since his second U.S. Open victory.
According to the National Golf Foundation, more than 50 million Americans are engaged with golf on social media, with almost 40 million of those people being non-core golfers – a number that has increased by 30 percent since 2019.
DeChambeau said he began to understand social media’s power when an early video he posted found an eager audience.
“It was 2021, I think, when we produced our first video,” he said from LIV Golf’s Nashville event, just days after his win at Pinehurst. “It was a week-on-tour video, and it got a million views. That was with no production budget. We just went out there filming and then pumping it up on YouTube. No paid ads, no media spins or anything like that. It just happened. Everybody loved it.
“I said, wow, there is some potential here,” he continued. “How do I make this not only legitimate but how do I do it all the time and create content that
people want to see, so they can be entertained and also see who I truly am? That was the foundational buildup, and it’s grown into what it is today.”
Social media enabled DeChambeau’s image renaissance to kick into overdrive. In 2022, he abandoned the bulk he acquired for driver domination, shedding 20 pounds in a month. His game rounded back into form. He contended at the 2023 PGA Championship, tying for 4th, and won two individual LIV Golf titles. And he leaned in even harder on content creation.
“I’m always trying to do my best for the camera. It keeps me in that mind frame of, ‘I’m an entertainer,’” DeChambeau said at Pinehurst. “Leveraging and allowing me to utilize that platform has opened up a whole new aspect to professional golf where I think it’s been a little underutilized. There can be some positive growth in golf with those interactions.”
Skeptics have described DeChambeau’s constant audience awareness and dramatic on-course theatrics as a schtick – a means to an end, with the end being the continual accrual of new fans and followers. But DeChambeau says his demeanor is organic, and that he’s simply following the emotive path carved by his idols, Woods and Stewart.
“I’m just passionate,” DeChambeau said at Pinehurst. “I really care about doing well out here and showing the fans a side of me that was locked up for so long.”
DeChambeau’s on-course performance has fueled natural interest in his social media channels, but he’s proven himself to be supremely adept in the online ecosphere of click-inducing engagement off the course. His YouTube channel has become a showcase for increasingly viral content. His “Breaking 50” series – in which he invites a guest or guests to play a scramble with him from the front tees in an attempt to break 50 – has featured influencers, fellow pros, celebrities and even President Donald J. Trump, and has garnered millions of views.
DeChambeau’s content ranges from personal, insider revelations to instruction to clicky challenges, like documenting whether he can break a course record on a given day, or, famously, how long it will take him to make a hole-in-one on a blind shot over his glass house to a backyard green. Spoiler alert: It took 16 days of attempts, and the series of videos showing him trying and at last achieving the feat has been viewed more than 110 million times on TikTok. Weeks later, DeChambeau invited a random follower to attempt the feat for $100,000. When he did it in five swings – and the two of them went nuts celebrating – that video went viral, too.
Being a successful professional golfer and a magnetic online entertainer were previously considered to be mutually exclusive endeavors. But DeChambeau has proven that it’s possible to do both. And when already-famous pros commit to content creation, the upside can be significant.
Three-time major champion Padraig Harrington, 53, has amassed a sizable social following – 180,000 subscribers on YouTube and 150,000 followers on Instagram – primarily by posting informative instructional videos.
“I enjoy doing it, and I’ve always said: If you like my content, you like my content. If you don’t like my content, go watch somebody else,” said the 2022 U.S. Senior Open champion. “I’m not putting myself under the pressure that I have to be perfect and I have to suit everybody. I think that would become very stressful.”
Harrington’s popularity has opened the door to a new generation of fans, with in-person interactions often focused on how much they like his videos rather than his Hall-of-Fame playing resume. Still, he says, he’s not ready to become a full-time influencer.
“I want to keep it in its place, and so I do it on my own terms,” he said. “There’s a lot of pre-thought and effort. A surprising amount does go into it. At all stages throughout the year, every moment I’m on the golf course with my pro-am partners, I’m thinking of, what’s the next tip I can do?”
Former LPGA pro Mel Reid recently launched a podcast with NBC/Golf Channel broadcaster Kira Dixon – “Quiet Please! With Mel and Kira” – and says building an off-course brand has become an essential ingredient when it comes to landing partnerships and sponsorship opportunities.
“At the end of the day, I’m not just a golfer,” she says. “I love snowboarding, I like cooking, my life’s changed now being a mother, I got married. So my brand is constantly evolving, and that’s just something that we work quite hard on with the partnerships that we do.”
DeChambeau’s accomplishments in the online space have not gone unnoticed by his peers.
“He’s completely flipped his image through his social media, which I think is pretty incredible because nowadays, a lot of professional golfers are quite content to just be professional golfers,” Reid said. “But the ones that do more, I think it opens up a lot of doors, especially in the women’s game, because we don’t get the platform, we don’t get the coverage, we don’t get the eyes on us quite like the men do.”
Jess McAlister, founder of Catalyst9, a talent-management marketing firm that counts influencers Tisha Alyn (1.3 million followers on TikTok) and Alexandra O’Laughlin (220,000 followers on Instagram) among its clientele, says social media has taken on an increased importance in the last several years.
“It’s about marketability,” she says. “And in golf, really in the last five years, sponsorship and endorsement contracts now include social media posts and presence. And it’s not just a copy-and-paste from your agent anymore. You need to be on camera and you need to be engaging.”
While the rewards of accumulating a large online following can be substantial, players who are active in the space admit that the potential for negativity can take a toll.
Six-time PGA Tour winner Max Homa, who first rose to online prominence by wittily critiquing users’ golf swings on Twitter and has nearly 700,000 followers on the X platform, said in March that he’s leaving it behind.
“I think I’ve finally had a come-to-Jesus moment that it’s for the sick,” he said. “I was sick. I’m just trying to get healthy now.”
“I have not enjoyed that app,” he continued. “It’s not very fun. It’s fun to watch our little highlights or lowlights, and that stuff is fun. The rest of it’s probably not great, so I’m going to stick to TikTok.”
Australian Min Woo Lee won the 2016 U.S. Junior Amateur and has five wins since turning pro in 2019, including his first PGA Tour victory in March. A slick social-media presence helped him acquire more than 1 million followers between TikTok and Instagram. Lee – along with his major-winning sister, Minjee – received a prime storyline on this season of Netflix’s “Full Swing,” where he revealed that maintaining an online persona adds another layer of pressure.
“It’s amazing to have people’s support at places that I don’t expect,” Min Woo said on the show. “It’s a big part of why I play. And every time I post a video just before a tournament, I think, I better play good.
“People are gonna just say I’m a social media guy. Yeah, it kinda makes me mad,” he continued. “You can get dragged into it and it can hurt your feelings, I guess. But I try to not let that affect me.”
One U.S. Women’s Open champion who has plenty of experience with the weight of expectations is Michelle Wie West. Now a wife and mom of two, the recently retired LPGA star has 600,000 followers on Instagram, and says she appreciates social media for giving her a platform to share direct and personal perspectives.
“Social media has been a good experience for me because my whole life, my whole childhood, I’ve had articles written about me,” she said. “When I was playing and Instagram and social media became a thing, that’s when I really felt like I could take charge of my own narrative.
“Even after retirement, when articles aren’t being written about you, you still can share your story, without a huge media outlet or press releases,” she continued. “I think the story that you end up sharing is a lot more organic.”
Wie West said she’s intrigued by the growing appeal of YouTube, too.
“It’s really interesting, this new age of YouTube golf,” she said. “I need to know more about it. But I’m definitely here to take inspiration from everyone, and I think it’s a really cool way to engage and connect with your fans.
“I especially love Bryson’s content because he makes golf so relatable,” she continued. “A lot of times, professional athletes are unattainable, but he’s making his experience and his journey through golf very resonant to the general public. And I think that’s really great, especially as the game is growing. We need more people like that.”For DeChambeau, the content-creation machine is still humming along nicely – and the ceiling is seemingly infinite.
“My mission is to continue to expand the game, grow the game globally. YouTube has really helped me accomplish some of that,” DeChambeau said. Days later, he added: “There’s 700 million potential golfers, and I think right now there’s just over 100 million that are playing consistently, and we want to get closer to that 700 million.”
DeChambeau has said his online strategy has been influenced by the success of MrBeast, a YouTuber who developed a propensity for producing viral content that often involves extravagant challenges and giving away huge amounts of money. He currently has 378 million subscribers on YouTube, making him the platform’s No. 1 creator.
“I saw what MrBeast did in 2016, all the way up to where he is now, a kid from Greenville, North Carolina. Just an entertainment character, not an athlete,” DeChambeau said from LIV Nashville. “I said, why can’t an athlete do something like that? He’s inspiring millions of people. Why aren’t we maximizing that? Why isn’t there an opportunity to do that? I saw that light, and I said, look, I want to try this.”
In November, DeChambeau joined the likes of Tom Brady and Cristiano Ronaldo by making a cameo in a MrBeast challenge video. DeChambeau’s role: play a hole against a MrBeast subscriber for $100,000. The catch? The subscriber got to play to a massively oversized hole. The two tied the hole the first time, with DeChambeau ultimately prevailing in sudden death.
The video has 242 million views... and counting.