Back on Wednesday, before it all went wrong again, Bryson DeChambeau sent a request to his 4.5million followers on Instagram: ‘Like this post if you think I’m going to make my first cut.’
It would seem that 124,000 had misplaced their faith. By the time the third-round commenced at the US Open on Saturday, DeChambeau was nowhere to be seen, which has been a theme of his trips to the majors this season.
If he misses another cut at The Open next month, he will have failed to make the weekend at any of the four. Call it the Bryson Slam.
The bleakness of this latest visit was told in the misery of two double-bogeys in his second round, delivered via a pair of three-putts on the third and fourth holes. Thereafter, all the promise of his opening 70 had gone, another challenge cooked. He shot 75 and missed the cut by one, before leaving the course in silence.
He signed a few autographs for kids, because he has retained that decency in this strangest period of his career, but there were no words for the media. There were none shared at the PGA Championship last month, either, and the frustration attached to those snubs comes from one single detail – DeChambeau is the most interesting man in golf currently.
Or rather, his situation is the most loaded with intrigue. In short, we need to know what is going through his head, which is a fascinating space at the calmest of times, but in the storms of the present, it is the key to the future landscape of his sport.
Bryson DeChambeau missed the US Open cut, the third time he’s done so at this year’s majors
He asked his followers to ‘like this post if you think I’m going to make my first cut’ this week
DeChambeau’s career is at a crossroads with his abysmal form and LIV deal due to expire soon
Because if he walks away from LIV, the circuit will die, which isn’t a crass exaggeration of terminology – it’s how their leadership talk about it, too.
When Daily Mail Sport spoke to a senior element of LIV’s hierarchy at the PGA Championship in Philadelphia, shortly after it became known that the Saudis had walked away from their expensive baby, the source used the phrase ‘kill shot’ within a key context. As in, if the PGA Tour wanted to apply the ‘kill shot’, they would find a way to bring back DeChambeau, whose contract expires at the end of this season.
Plainly, LIV cannot survive without their most marketable character but, evidently, there is a predictable shortage of investors capable of the nine-figure fee needed to keep him.
Returning to that same source in Philadelphia, one strand of a possible workaround was to offer DeChambeau equity in the league itself, compensating for what LIV now lack in Saudi-funded signing bonuses. But DeChambeau is a smart guy and he knows 20 per cent of a ship holed beneath the waterline isn’t the same as cash.
Therein lies the dilemma for the American, and it is complicated further by the lack of enthusiasm he received from the PGA Tour in discussions around a potential return.
Having sounded them out earlier in the spring, the Tour didn’t offer conditions that DeChambeau deemed favourable and many of the members are lukewarm at best on the possibility, so he is caught between a rock and a hard place. His game appears badly damaged by the state of flux.
Asking DeChambeau about it has largely been a non-starter. His public utterances in the past two months, usually in sanitised interviews, have said little beyond his desire to make LIV work and a willingness to become a full-time content creator on YouTube between majors.
The problem there is obvious – his major form has become dire with the benefit of LIV tournaments, so what will happen to his immense talent without access to any meaningful competition?
Aged 30, he is in his peak years and heading for his worst major season as a professional. On Saturday, Tiger Woods’s former coach Hank Haney spoke for many in saying DeChambeau ‘is my favourite touring pro but his swing is so flawed and it is beyond me why he doesn’t fix it’.
That swing is only part of the problem, of course. But it looked lost on Long Island, much like the man himself.
