Bryson DeChambeau’s statement praising LIV Golf is painful for PGA Tour

Bryson DeChambeau has lauded LIV Golf for allowing him to reach his current level following life-changing heartbreak just months after switching from the PGA Tour.

DeChambeau joined LIV Golf in June 2022 after the Saudi Arabian-backed breakaway organisation caused a major split in golf, with many top players from the PGA Tour facing media and fan backlash for taking on the new challenge. The 30-year-old described how his move to LIV Golf turned him into a villain in the eyes of some for joining the breakaway group. However, it proved to be vital to his career.

Just months after making the switch, DeChambeau lost his father, Jon DeChambeau, a former PGA Tour pro, at the age of 63 due to diabetes complications. The U.S. Open champ told the Telegraph how his outset on golf changed. “When my father passed, as it is for everyone, that was a huge deal to me and I started to realise the eminence of life like, at some point, it’s all going to end,” he said. “So yeah, you’ve got to be gracious with the time you have.

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“You know, I’m always going to be a person that wears my emotions on my sleeve and yeah, I try to continue to do better with that. It made me see that at some point in time, you have to be ok with failing and messing up and you can laugh at yourself once in a while. There’s more important things.”

DeChambeau explained how his switch to LIV Golf helped him escape and reset following the weeks and months after his father’s passing. “It would have been impossible for me to have come this far again without LIV,” he added. “It gave me the time to get healthy and develop.

“I came to LIV and suddenly there were players in the same boat as me. Because they were getting stick as well not from the LIV fans but seemingly everywhere else. I was not alone in being disliked and could share these feelings with my team-mates and my colleagues.

“But slowly that has changed and whether it was the thing with the PGA Tour [the ‘framework agreement’] people are coming around to what we are all about. It’s about moving an inch and ideating a mile. We have come a long way and we continue to move progressively in small incremental amounts. It’s just going to domino at some point.”

After clinching his second major title in June by winning the U. S. Open again following a nail-biting final hole finish against Rory McIlroy, an emotional DeChambeau dedicated his triumph to his late father, he said: “First off, I wanna say Happy Father’s Day to every father out there,” and concluded, “Unfortunately, my dad passed [away] a couple years ago, and this one’s for him.”