Bryson DeChambeau spent years trying to fit into a mould that wasn’t his. He wanted to be cold, impassive, almost mechanical. He pursued being a kind of Iceman. He even went so far as to write that word on the ball as a reminder of what he wanted to be, like Ben Hogan, the player who fascinated him most when he was young. But it didn’t work. It wasn’t him. And, as DeChambeau himself has recounted in an interview with Tom Hobbs, head of the X Flushing It account, it wasn’t until he hit rock bottom that he realised he needed to turn his career around.
“I remember writing ‘Iceman’ on my ball to try to be the stoic person, but that wasn’t me. My mum can tell you that,” Bryson confesses. “In the end, I went too far trying to be that person and realised I couldn’t be. I was going to be someone different. And it wasn’t really until I was 28 or 29 that I learned who I really was.”
The trap of imitating idols
At the root of it all is an almost romantic devotion to a way of understanding golf. DeChambeau acknowledges that his first major reference was Ben Hogan, “by far”, before discovering Mo Norman and then falling in love with Payne Stewart during his time at SMU. Tiger Woods, he adds, “was always a great inspiration.”
But Hogan was something else. An emotional crush. “It was his swing on YouTube,” he recalls. A video with intense music —from the film Blood Diamond— and a compilation of swings from the Texan that, he says, still moves him today. He was captivated by “the beauty”, “the mystery” of how he hit the ball and that oft-repeated legend that if he had putted half decently, “he would have won everything.”
That idealised Hogan came with a label: the “Iceman.” “There was this classic notion of emotional stoicism, the Iceman, that intrigued everyone, and everyone wanted to be like that,” he explains. And there he drops a reflection with generational weight: “I think that’s why many players are robots today, because of people like Hogan and what Tiger did.”
Bryson describes Tiger as someone who released emotion in victory, but the rest of the time moved in iceberg mode. A pattern that, out of admiration, he ended up trying to replicate. The problem is that his personality was going in a different direction, he assures. He was trying to be someone he is not.
2022, the lowest point: “I had tough times… personal things”
The definitive click didn’t come with a victory or a major tournament. It came with the fall. DeChambeau places 2022 as the abyss of his career, just when he signed for LIV Golf “Yes, when my father passed away,” he admits. And he adds, without going into details: “I had other tough times I don’t want to talk about, personal things, and it was a learning stage.”
That blow was the trigger for a process that may not be directly noticeable in a ranking, but can change a career. That’s how DeChambeau saw it. “It took a long time. I didn’t find my true self until a couple of years ago,” he says. And he concludes with one of the most revealing phrases: “It really took hitting rock bottom and seeing myself in some difficult situations to say: ‘you know what? I recognise that I have to be my authentic self.’ If you’re not your authentic self, how can you live a life that means something?”
From the character to the real Bryson
It’s not that DeChambeau disowns competitiveness or ambition. He has decided to let himself be carried by his personality, his extroverted, cheerful, and to some extent trivial and frivolous character. And that change directly affected his relationship with golf. “I love golf. I think it has given me much more than I could ever have imagined and now I have the utmost respect for it,” he assures. He doesn’t say his love is deeper, but he does say he understands it better now: “Before it was everything to me and now it’s a big part.”
There is another interesting nuance: Bryson has relieved himself of vital pressure. “I have more things besides golf,” he explains, talking about projects that motivate him to “entertain, educate and inspire.” And he mentions his excitement with Crushers GC, his team in LIV Golf, as well as acknowledging that he is “talking with LIV” about a possible extension.
