"They were making fun of me": Bryson DeChambeau turned mockery into motivation to go pro
Bryson DeChambeau is at Bolingbrook Golf Club in Chicago to compete at the LIV Golf Individual Championship. From the venue, the reigning US Open champion shared the story of how he decided to turn professional.
DeChambeau shared an anecdote during the pre-event press conference. The idea of turning pro came to him when he was just an 11-year-old boy, he said.
This is how Bryson DeChambeau told it (via LIV Golf X account):
"When I was 11 years old I did a clinic in front of a bunch of golfers... the likes of Jason Gore, Nick Watney, [Matt Griesser, known as] 'Sign Boy', Peter Jacobsen, Annika Sorenstam, Nancy Lopez, you name it, they were there."
"I didn't know how to speak, stuttered the whole way through it with Sign Boy and they were making fun of me. I hit three drives and hit them perfect, and every single one of those professionals came up and said, 'congratulations, that's unbelievable what you just did. I'm going to see you out here one day.'"
"And that inspired me to play this game professionally, and it's now my vision to give back in that capacity in different ways, whether its with LIV, YouTube, doesn't matter, that's what I want to do."
Bryson DeChambeau enters the Individual Championship ranked 9th in the LIV Golf season rankings with 93.96 points. With this total, the best ranking he can hope for is third place, for which he will need an excellent result at the event.
The individual championship will be played from September 13-15. Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann will be competing for the season's individual title.
Bryson DeChambeau's early professional career
Bryson DeChambeau had an outstanding amateur career, both as a junior and while playing for the Southern Methodist University.
Among his top amateur accomplishments, he won the NCAA Championship and the US Amateur in the same year (2015). This is a feat accomplished by only four stars before him, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Ryan Moore.
DeChambeau began his professional career in 2016, and his debut tournament was the PGA Tour's RBC Heritage, a week after winning the low amateur at the Masters Tournament.
However, he was unable to earn enough FedEx Cup points to earn his 2017 card, so he had to play on the Web.com (now the Korn Ferry Tour). It did not take him long to prove his quality, winning a tournament (2016 DAP Championship) and earning his PGA TOUR card for the following season.
Starting from 2017, DeChambeau became a consistent player on the PGA Tour. That same season, he won his first tournament at that level (John Deere Classic) and the following year, he won four times. In his fourth season as a professional (2020), he became a major champion by winning the US Open.