[PHOTO: Ross Kinnaird]

It looks like chocolate milk wasn’t the only drink for Bryson DeChambeau after his second US Open win. The two-time major winner started with the cocoa delicacy, but soon moved on to more adult beverages as the night progressed. Signing everything in sight and filming as many TV interviews as possible has to be nearly as challenging as winning a major, so we totally understand why Bryson moved over to the stronger stuff.

"I probably left Pinehurst around 12:30 last night and it was a great time..

I'm actually a big wine guy and we drank some champagne too" ~ @b_dechambeau #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/V9dnP5owLS

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) June 17, 2024

After cleaning the trophy of any sand left over – DeChambeau tossed in a bit from the 18th bunker to save for later – the victor decided to forgo beer and vino it up after his come-from-behind championship win.

“I actually did wine,” DeChambeau revealed on “The Pat McAfee Show”. “I’m a big wine guy. It was beautiful. Everyone drank out of it. I handed it around and it was a lot of fun. Everybody that was there, we celebrated accordingly. We had some champagne out of here too. We shot it around the room. It was fun.”

When asked if he wiped off the wine from the trophy before the champagne started flowing, DeChambeau responded that he’s “not that classy”. It was time for drinking, not for disinfecting.

#WATCH: Bryson DeChambeau is drinking wine from the U.S. Open trophy in New York this evening alongside Eric Trump ( via @DBTTofficial) pic.twitter.com/sBd1jMv3UJ

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) June 17, 2024

The LIV golfer said in 2020 that after wins, he doesn’t usually go for the alcohol: “I’ll party, but I won’t drink. It’s just not my style.” He looks to have loosened up in the past few years, with DeChambeau chugging a beer out of a shoe (a.k.a. a “shoey”) at the most recent LIV Golf Adelaide event and with quite the alcohol-infused celebration [below] after winning the 2023 LIV Golf Team Championship in Miami.

Despite the 12:30-ish departure from Pinehurst, alcohol revelry and Johnson Wagner private lesson, DeChambeau still made it to the “Today Show” in New York on Monday morning, US time. This man needs a nap and some ibuprofen!

DeChambeau said as much to McAfee: “I’m a little wrecked right now, I’ll tell you that.”

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[PHOTO: Gregory Shamus]

Bryson DeChambeau is at his best when he has a problem to solve. The solutions, usually, end up looking pretty strange. But the solutions always end up working.

It’s probably the thing I most admire about Bryson, and the thing the rest of us can learn the most from.

Bryson started his professional career as a shorter hitter, a sketchy putter, and an unimpressive wedge player. He was a serial under-performer as a result: in his first 21 events as a professional, he missed 11 cuts. After a T-2 finish at the 2016 Puerto Rico Open – his only top 10 finish since a year earlier – DeChambeau finished T-44 in his next start, then promptly missed another eight consecutive cuts. In his first 11 major starts as a professional, he notched exactly zero top-20s.

In some alternate universe where golf exists, Bryson DeChambeau is a middling tour player who eventually loses his card and ends up working at a driving range somewhere.

Instead, DeChambeau pushed his way towards a different destiny because somewhere along the way, he stopped caring about what other people thought about his game. He’s one of those players who doesn’t care how something looks, or what others think about how it looks. If it helps him, he does it. If it doesn’t, he doesn’t. There’s no sense of shame or embarrassment. To him, the only stupid thing is not doing something you think would help because you’re worried about looking weird.

It’s also a quality I find most endearing about the game itself. Golf is a humbling game that forces you to confront your own ego in a quest for improvement. Keep yourself honest: how much pride are you willing to swallow to get a little better?

1. Understand acceleration profiles

The garage in DeChambeau’s house is littered with prototype putters of every variation you can imagine. Long putters; short putters; side-saddle putters; light putters; heavy putters; one partially 3D-printed putter he likes the look of but didn’t put in play because he couldn’t scoop the ball easily with it.

One of those it-looks-weird-but-I-don’t-care areas for DeChambeau is his putting stroke. He used to be a pretty bad putter, even when he was a very good amateur golfer. But through radical trial and error, he landed upon a system. It works for him, and there’s some stuff we can learn, too.

There are lots of parts of DeChambeau’s putting system, but one of the most interesting and underrated is his extremely detailed approach to speed control, which is probably the most important part of putting.

Before every round DeChambeau places a ruler by his ball, and a tee 30 feet away. His standard is something like 10 inches: Meaning that when he takes a 10-inch backstroke, with a through-stroke that isn’t either accelerating or decelerating severely (he calls that his “acceleration profile”, which he checks using a Foresight QuadMAX), he knows the ball will roll 30 feet.

But if that day, he makes a backstroke that’s 10 inches long and watches the ball roll 33 feet, he knows the greens are 10 percent faster that day than his standard, so he adjusts his read and speed on every putt accordingly. If the ball rolls 36 feet, he knows they’re 20 percent faster.

Our brains work best when we give it parameters, and give stable reference points to make judgments from. That’s what DeChambeau does every day. The rest of us obviously aren’t going to go to the same degree, but we can adopt the same idea: starting every round hitting the same length putt, monitoring how far we’re taking the putter back and how fast it’s moving through, and paying attention to the result.

US Open 2024: Why does Bryson DeChambeau hover his driver like that?

2. Beware of the small muscles

Have you ever noticed that the grip on DeChambeau’s putter is upside down? That’s because he rotates his left arm as far left as it will go, then grips the putter. It means the palm of his left hand is facing almost directly out in front, a near-180-degree difference than the way most golfers grip their putter with their left hand – that’s why his grip is on backwards.

Bryson’s backwards grip quite literally locks his left arm so far left, that he can’t move it any more left.

“There’s so much range of motion in all these little muscles in the hands and wrists and arms,” he told me once. “I don’t want any of that.”

His grip makes pulling putts, he says, basically impossible. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s interesting that the man who Bryson beat at Pinehurst pulled his crucial two-and-a-half-footer left of the cup on the 70th hole. The small muscles appeared to take over at exactly the wrong moment.

3. One miss is fine, two is killer

Speaking of pulls I must admit: watching Rory McIlroy on the range on Saturday evening before his final round, it didn’t seem like I was watching a man who was about to win a major championship.

Rory was frustrated at a variety of misses late in his third round, which continued into his final round.

“The miss on 16 [left] was a reaction to the miss on 15 [right]. The miss on 17 [right] was a reaction to the miss on 16 [left],” he said on the range.

Rory’s most common miss was high and right, which was annoying but, ultimately, fine. The wheels ultimately came off when he started reacting to that right miss with a panicky left miss. That’s what he was so frustrated about on the range on Saturday.

Keep an eye on that high right miss from Rory. It's been lingering all week.

It happens when he gets the club a little stuck behind him. He can get away with it with his driver, but less with his irons.

Happened on 15 and 17 Saturday, and on the 4th Sunday. pic.twitter.com/OhdTaaEZnU

— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) June 16, 2024

Rory knows this, but the oldest cliché in golf is a true one: golf is a game of misses. One annoying, even persistent, miss isn’t the enemy. Rory built a two-shot lead on the back-nine with that lingering right miss. It’s when you start over-correcting for that miss in a way that sends the ball in every direction that the downward slide begins.

4. Perfection doesn’t exist – for anyone

Along those lines, I love this quote from Ludvig Aberg. When the rest of us see Aberg, we see a tall, handsome man with a perfect golf swing. Aberg is wiser enough to know that’s not true. Perfection? That’s a myth. It’s a game of misses when you’re on the course, and a game of tendency-management whenever you’re not.

“As a golfer, you’re always going to have tendencies. You’re always going to have something in your swing that you’re going to work on,” he said. “That’s the case for me, as well. We worked on those tendencies. Sometimes it just shows up. You can’t be perfect all the time.”

5. Tee it high – even with irons?

My week at Pinehurst started on Monday, when I bumped into Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee. Chamblee was in the booth for NBC all week, so he was out early scouting Monday’s star-studded practice round of Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth when he pointed out something interesting.

“Look how high Tiger tees the ball with his irons,” he said.

It was right. JT’s ball was nearly flush to the ground on the par-3 17th. Tiger’s was probably a quarter of an inch off the turf.

“It gives him a few extra degrees of launch,” Chamblee said, “and a few feet higher ball flight, so he can hold greens these firm a little better.”

Tiger’s ball did just that. It sailed into the air, and came down soft onto the back portion of the surface.

It’s the details that matter in the US Open, when the margins between good and bad are at their thinnest. Tiger doesn’t have the physical tools to match anymore, but his mind remains as sharp as ever.

6. An A+ piece of advice

I was extremely delighted and slightly jealous that my colleague Chris Powers had the best game-improvement tweet of US Open week. I truly can’t say it any better myself…

It is so hilarious to me how grip conscious the No. 1 player in the world is and yet still every chopper I play with death grips it like a baseball bat and wonders why they hit a 90-yard slice pic.twitter.com/ALJfjseFJ2

— Christopher Powers (@CPowers14) June 12, 2024

7. Give yourself the right kind of feedback

What would you do if you were about to play a US Open you were extremely unprepared for? I would probably start playing a lot of golf.

Robert Rock, the 47-year-old who came out of retirement to unexpectedly qualify for the US Open, did exactly the opposite. And it was actually kind of genius.

Rock spent his weeks leading up to Pinehurst hitting balls into a net. He played just a handful of holes over those weeks, and then went back to his net afterwards. He used a video camera to film his swing, but the net was his way of divorcing himself from his own expectations. It’s hard to stress about where the ball is going when you literally don’t know where the ball is going.

Instead, Rock’s goal was simply to improve his technique, knowing that was his path to his best golf. To focus on the process – the one thing we can control, as golfers – and less on the result, which we can’t.

8. The kings of the golf swing

Every other week of the year, The Cradle is an incredible par-3 course that players travel across the globe to enjoy. During US Open week, it’s a driving range for pros. A super-nice driving range, but on Thursday afternoon Max Grayserman intentionally found the very worst part of it. Squirrelled away in the far right corner, he spent about an hour hitting golf balls on an uneven patch of sand.

Coincidentally, on the other side of the range, Canadian Nick Taylor was holding his club out in front of him like a samurai sword before each shot.

The two things players and teachers care most about is where the clubhead is hitting the ground, and where the clubface is pointing when it hits the ball. That’s what Taylor and Grayserman were doing:

• Taylor was holding his club that way to create a sense of awareness between the back of his left hand and the clubface.
• Grayserman was hitting balls from the unforgiving sand to force himself to make crispy contact with the ball first.

Club before ground, face square at impact. Important stuff happens in between, of course, but those two are the kings of the golf swing. It’s funny how during the biggest weeks, you see players start to pay homage to that.

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[PHOTO: Sean M. Haffey]

Question: I was watching the US Open with the pro at my club who said the extra length on Bryson DeChambeau’s wedges helped him pull off the bunker shot at 18. Is that true?

Answer: It certainly didn’t hurt, and DeChambeau believed it, saying afterwards, “That bunker shot was the shot of my life. I’ll forever be thankful that I’ve got longer wedges so I can hit it farther, get it up there next to the hole.”

Perhaps that is why DeChambeau’s caddie, Greg Bodine, was so confident in DeChambeau’s ability to pull it off. “G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up and down. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker.’ I said, ‘You’re right. I need a 55-degree. Let’s do it.'”

That 55-degree was a Ping Glide 4.0 model. As with all of DeChambeau’s irons, his wedges check in at 37.5 inches in length. That’s the length of a 6 or 7-iron and 2.25 inches longer than Ping’s standard 54 or 56-degree Glide 4.0.

Still, does it really make sense that a longer shaft helped with a shot that noted statistician Lou Stagner estimated at less than 1.7 percent chance of success? We reached out to Sonny Burgo, master clubfitter for Pete’s Golf, a perennial Golf Digest 100 Best Clubfitter for some context.

US Open 2024: Bryson DeChambeau called it ‘the bunker shot of my life’. Here’s the stat that proves it

“It would make sense in theory that the longer length would help, but there are always trade-offs,” Burgo says. “What you would gain on that random long bunker shot might well affect the full shot in terms of distance control or turf interaction. Wedge shots will probably fly higher, too.”

Most pros prefer to flight their wedges into greens on the lower side, and distance control is paramount. However, we are not here to nitpick a two-time US Open champion’s equipment decisions but to answer your question. In that regard, the longer shaft appeared to provide more speed and more height, which resulted in one of the great shots in US Open history.

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[PHOTO: Getty Images/radaratlas2]

After winning his second US Open, Bryson DeChambeau wouldn’t leave Pinehurst No.2. He trotted around with the trophy, signed everything he could and even filmed perhaps the best “Live From” segment of all time. On the exact other end of the spectrum was Rory McIlroy, who was in the air, flying away from North Carolina, less than an hour after the final putt dropped.

Rory McIlroy's plane #N585RM left #Pinehurst at 7:29pm and is headed back home to West Palm Beach, FL. pic.twitter.com/K6up23nxIU

— radaratlas2 (@radaratlas2) June 16, 2024

“Rory McIlroy’s plane #N585RM left #Pinehurst at 7:29pm and is headed back home to West Palm Beach, FL,” radaratlas2 reported. The Northern Irishman got out of dodge and then some after yet another close call.

US Open 2024: Rory McIlroy making a quick exit from the Pinehurst carpark is a painful sight

“Within seven minutes of Bryson DeChambeau’s ball landing in the cup, the ripping sound of tyres skirting on pavement whipped through Pinehurst Resort as Rory McIlroy’s courtesy Lexus SUV pulled out of his 2011 US Open champion parking place and drove away from the day he’ll never escape,” wrote Brody Miller of The Athletic.

“The US Open ended at 6:38pm. At 7:29pm, McIlroy’s Gulfstream 5 took off, leaving the Sandhills of North Carolina without his fifth major championship but with the collapse that will define him forever.”

We don’t necessarily blame McIlroy. Sometimes you have to just abandon ship, especially if the ship is sinking due to multiple missed putts on a Sunday at the US Open, but it just goes to show you how much can change in a matter of minutes. Less than two hours earlier, the four-time major winner had a two-stroke lead at Pinehurst with a handful of holes left. Just a few swings later, he was in the air heading to West Palm Beach… trophyless.

Golf is cruel and unforgiving. This seemed unusually so.

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It’s the obvious question in the wake of Rory McIlroy’s shocking short-range misses on the 70th and 72nd greens of the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst: can the Northern Irishman ever recover from such a trauma? Is there a way back for a man who has now gone almost exactly a decade without winning at the highest level of a game in which he otherwise excels?

The good news is that it can be done. McIlroy is not the first player to have perpetrated what those of a cruel disposition instinctively label “a choke” and what the more understanding among us might term an “unexpected lapse”. Five men stand out. And all five retained sufficient nerve to at least contend again for major titles. So if history is to be our guide, hope remains for McIlroy.

Sam Snead

Coming to the final hole of their 18-hole playoff for the 1947 US Open at St Louis Country Club, Lew Worsham and Snead were tied. Worsham was 40 feet from the cup and on the fringe after his approach; Snead’s effort pulled up only 15 feet or so from the flag. After Worsham left his chip 29-inches away, Snead left his putt woefully short, which provoked a measurement to see who was to play next. Turned out it was Snead who, flustered, missed. Worsham then holed for the title, relegating Snead to the second of what would eventually be four runner-up spots in his national championship.

Famously, Snead never did win the US Open. But subsequent to that shocking miss he won five majors and had 28 other top-10s (nine in the US Open). So, outside the championship that must have driven him crazy, his ability to perform under pressure was, it would appear, largely unaffected.

Doug Sanders

Perhaps only Jean Van de Velde and his triple-bogey finish to the 1999 Open Championship at Carnoustie has gained more golf notoriety than Sanders’ miss on the 72nd hole of the Old Course at St Andrews 29 years before the Frenchman descended into farce via heavy rough and the Barry Burn.

Needing only to get down in three shots from maybe 75 yards short of the putting surface, Sanders failed to do so. His approach was thinned enough to send the ball roughly 35 feet past the flag. The first putt pulled up four-feet short and the second missed low, the always colourfully clad Georgian misjudging the left-to-right break.

While he would never again come so close to winning a major title – “some days I go maybe 10 minutes without thinking about it”, he would joke – Sanders retained enough game to record top-10 finishes in each of the next two Opens.

Hubert Green

Disturbed by a radio commentator, Green backed off the four-foot putt he needed to make if he was to force a playoff at the 1978 Masters with Gary Player. Second-time around though – as so often when a re-start is forced upon a golfer – Green never settled and missed.

Still, at only 31 and the reigning US Open champion, the Alabama pro was in his prime as a player and had time to recover. Which he did. Although he was never again so close to a green jacket, Green’s career continued to be successful. Top-10s were recorded at each of the next two Masters, one more in the US Open and a second in the Open Championship. More significantly, he won a second Grand Slam title at the 1985 PGA Championship. So, reassuringly for McIlroy, victory is still attainable in the wake of potentially career-ending devastation.

Scott Hoch

This wasn’t pretty. Twice. Only 10 feet from the flag on the final green in the final round of the 1987 PGA Championship at PGA National, Hoch three-putted to miss a playoff in which Larry Nelson defeated Lanny Wadkins. That was bad enough, but two years later, the North Carolinian perpetrated the “feat” from which he is, sadly, perhaps best known.

No more than 20 feet below the cup on the 10th green at Augusta National, Hoch had two putts to win on the first playoff hole against Nick Faldo and claim the 1989 Masters. But it wasn’t to be. Hoch made the classic error of rushing his first putt two-and-a-half feet past. Then, clearly aiming too far left, he missed for a second time. Faldo would go on to claim the first of his three green jackets with a birdie on the next hole.

Still, for Hoch, always a consistent performer tee-to-green, his career in majors was far from over. After 1989, he played well enough to record as many as 13 top-10 finishes in golf’s four biggest events. Two of those, a T-7 and a T-5, came at Augusta.

Dustin Johnson

If one experience is to give McIlroy hope for the future, it is that of Johnson. Instead of holing a 12-footer for eagle on the 72nd green at Chambers Bay to win the 2015 US Open, he crushingly three-putted to miss a playoff and lose by one shot to Jordan Spieth. Still, the big South Carolinian returned just 12 months later to claim his national title. Undoubtedly aided by a uniquely imperturbable temperament that allowed him to survive a rules controversy during the final round, Johnson won at brutal Oakmont to erase from his mind the traumatic experience even he must have remembered happening a year before.

Just as encouraging for McIlroy will be the knowledge that Johnson has so far recorded 13 other top-10s in majors, the undoubted highlight his victory in the 2020 Masters.

Rory McIlroy withdraws from Travelers Championship, says US Open loss was the ‘toughest day’ of his pro career

• • •

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[PHOTO: David Cannon]

They were yelling his name as Bryson DeChambeau inspected the 55 yards of sand and green and brown and fate between him and redemption. All day, all week, DeChambeau had turned to the direction of the shout to nod or tip his cap, embracing and reciprocating the attention he has forever craved, but even for golf’s premier showman this was no time for stagecraft. What he would do over these 55 yards, needing to get his ball from a greenside bunker to a back pin in two shots or less, would be the theatre. The man who has been the greatest show in golf delivered a finale befitting his reputation, his shot from the soil soaring out of the Carolina sandscape, plopping onto the green and skidding towards the pin, stopping four feet from the flag featuring his childhood idol, Payne Stewart. There was no revolution wrought like his triumph at 2020 Winged Foot. This championship was not made to bow before his prodigious length, as the driver consistently put him in spots Donald Ross didn’t know were on the map. For the better part of five hours it wasn’t smooth and it was far from easy. It was simply the performance of stubborn will and conviction that comes from the countless hours of work and dreams and disappointment, a cost that can never be measured and a price only he knows he paid.

That’s why, when the cloud of sand produced by his swing billowed and dissipated, DeChambeau emerged with both arms pumping towards the ground, and when his ball disappeared for the final time moments later those arms fiercely pierced the sky as he unleashed a primal scream. DeChambeau signalled to anyone that had a pulse that while Pinehurst did its best to knock him down he had refused to yield, capping a resurgence whose improbability is bested by the fact that the game’s former divisive figure has become one of its most beloved.

In a masterclass of fortitude, DeChambeau stayed steady as the rest of the field wilted, and for his efforts he is the 2024 United States Open champion.

“I’m so happy I got that shot up-and-down on 18,” DeChambeau said through laughter after this one-over 71 on the final day nipped Rory McIlroy by a stroke. “Oh, man, I didn’t want to finish second again. PGA really stung. Xander [Schauffele] played magnificent. I wanted to get this one done, especially at such a special place that means so much to me, SMU (Southern Methodist University), my dad, what Payne meant to him, 1,000th USGA championship. Stack them on top.”

He’s not the DeChambeau you remember, not quite. The Hogan cap is gone, his once-beefy profile now slimmed to a sinewy figure. His hat and shirt and bag are adorned with a skull and crossbones. Yet those are merely aesthetics, and what was seen and felt this week has nothing to do with appearance. Because the DeChambeau of old was a character golf did not want in its script. At last year’s PGA Championship, DeChambeau was loudly booed on Oak Hill’s first tee in his Saturday pairing with Brooks Koepka. When he feuded with Koepka in mid-2021 fans mostly took Koepka’s side. Crowds at the Open Championship the past two Julys, when the fans are more in tune with the havoc golf’s civil war has wrought and only give forgiveness when it has been requested, have treated him with aggressive indifference. The patrons of the Masters do not have an appetite for the brashness of one who calls Augusta National a par 67. LIV Golf fans… well, three seasons into the schism it remains unclear if LIV has fans in America. DeChambeau has desperately craved popularity since his arrival and, for the most part, his celebrity has not been of warmth but curiosity.

Yet what was seen at Valhalla and cemented at Pinehurst testify that reality is in the past.

Wherever he walked this week, DeChambeau was greeted with claps and cheers and a soundtrack that played the cry of “Let’s go, Bryson!” on repeat. And whatever was said, DeChambeau acknowledged their efforts with an effort of his own, often saying “thank you” or grabbing the bill of his cap, which only turned up the volume on those claps and cheers and cries. It should be a lesson to all professional golfers that those outside the ropes don’t expect much; they just want your acknowledgement that they exist.

“They just say things that make me interact and engage,” DeChambeau explained. “I’m just able to play off of that. It’s direct conversations to people that truly engage with what I’m doing. It’s such an awesome, awesome platform for me to show who I truly am. Those fans out there really helped push me out there today. Even when stuff wasn’t going well, I’m just looking on the screen back there, I have nothing there, no business even trying to go for that. But you know me; I don’t play boring golf. Again, even though I hit it in the bunker, the fans are still chanting my name.”

US Open 2024: Bryson DeChambeau called it ‘the bunker shot of my life’. Here’s the stat that proves it

However, golf tournaments are not awarded on sentiment, especially US Opens at Pinehurst. This championship is known as the brute of majors, the one that is prone to breaking scorecards and bullying players, sometimes in ways that can seem artificial. It tests every facet of a player’s game and mind and heart. DeChambeau found that out early, his three-shot 54-hole lead over Rory McIlroy whittled to two before he teed off and down to one after a bogey at the fourth hole. The one-shot advantage eventually turned into a two-shot deficit after McIlroy birdied four times in a five-hole stretch, with DeChambeau answering with a birdie of his own at the driveable par-4 13th, setting up a matchplay-style finishing stretch.

When things are going well for DeChambeau, his length begets an aggressive mindset that makes every hole a birdie opportunity. It may not be nuanced or enlightened golf yet that muscle is a magnetic pull for a significant portion of the golf populace. But minutes before his round DeChambeau had to substitute a new driver head and it was clear he never calibrated the tool properly, hitting just five fairways for the day. Playing often out of Pinehurst’s native areas, DeChambeau was forced to play smart, looking away from the pin just to get his ball safely on the green. The thing is, DeChambeau is more than muscle. This week he displayed a short game that was impervious to nerves and full of creativity, keeping the big numbers at bay and keeping him in the ballgame.

Ahead, McIlroy started having the damnedest time with his putter. The Ulsterman failed to get up-and-down at the par-3 15th and missed a two-and-a-half-footer for par at the 16th. DeChambeau’s three-jack at the 15th and birdie misses at the 16th and 17th meant the two were tied going into the final hole. A poor drive from McIlroy left a pitch short to the green, his third finishing a few feet from the pin. As McIlroy was facing his par attempt heads in the gallery could be seen tilting their heads towards the approaching sandstorm. There were so many fans following DeChambeau that as they trampled through the pinestraw the soil underneath jumped to form a roaming, ominous cloud. What McIlroy was thinking, we do not know; he missed the four-footer, disappeared into the locker room and jetted off the property.

The issue remained in doubt thanks to another wayward drive from DeChambeau, his ball coming to rest under a tree next to a root. He tried in vain to get relief from the grandstands but was denied, leaving him to punch out into the bunker. His ensuing bunker shot was hit with a confidence you’re not supposed to have over such a distance, from such a spot, in such a moment.

“That bunker shot was the shot of my life,” DeChambeau said. “I’ll forever be thankful that I’ve got longer wedges so I can hit it farther, get it up there next to the hole.”

So what do we make of DeChambeau? Two US Open wins by age 30, just the fourth man with multiple Opens and a US Amateur title. Pinehurst was no fluke, posting a T-6 at the Masters along with his runner-up at the PGA. The type of tour de force display that begs questions of who DeChambeau is as a player, what he can be and where he’ll ultimately go. Conversely, DeChambeau the player is secondary to the change in his perception. There’s no doubt he is now a gallery darling, although that’s not a byproduct of LIV. The boos he received at Oak Hill 13 months ago proved as much. Make no mistake, there will forever be corners of the golf world that will not forget he took hundreds of millions of dollars from an oppressive regime for the sake of improving that regime’s image, then proceeded to sue his former employer for reasons that remain unclear. Correlating his newfound popularity to a persona transformation is also tenuous. Frankly, a lot of his love probably has to due with the fact DeChambeau may be hard to take in large quantities, but now that he’s only seen a few weeks a year, fans appreciate what they didn’t before. That, and sports fans by nature are frontrunners, and when a player’s game is soaring, people will follow.

And yet, DeChambeau the person does seem different. He’s experienced life, the good and bad, including the PR hit from joining LIV and losing his dad in late 2022. He’s more at peace with himself and the recognition he commands. For years it seemed DeChambeau did whatever he could to gain adulation. He’s now got it, not by pandering but being himself. Some of that comes with age, and part of that maturation has come from his LIV Golf teammates, the lone wolf now part of a pack. Perhaps DeChambeau needed to get lost in LIV to find himself.

“I would say first and foremost I respect and understand people’s opinions,” DeChambeau said. “I mean, I was knocked pretty hard down in 2022 for numerous reasons, numerous scenarios, numerous things. 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. Golf swing wasn’t doing well. Ball-striking was terrible. Putting wasn’t great. I had Paul, who’s on the Crushers, Paul Casey, Anirban Lahiri and Charles Howell continuing to push me in the right direction. That was actually a massive help to help get me in the right mind frame from such a low point in my life.

“So how I’ve grown, I’ve realised that there’s a lot more to life than just golf. Treating others, yourself first and foremost, respecting yourself, is super important to being able to treat others with respect, as well. That’s one of the big things that I’ve learned. I’m not perfect. I’m human. Everyone’s human. Certainly those low moments have helped establish a new mind frame of who I am, what’s expected, what I can do and what I want to do in my life. To answer your question quite frankly, what have I learned? Having the right people around you.”

Yes, some of the oddities remain. He’s now playing 3D-printed clubs because of course he is. After the third round he discussed salting his golf balls. His normal actions continue to be meme-able, and look no further than DeChambeau picking up a Masters crosswalk sign this April and carrying it like a knapsack. He reacts to made putts like a frat pro draining a shot in beer pong. In that same breath, no matter what you think of DeChambeau, there’s no doubt he’s colourful, a showman out of the Mickelson mould, and this sport could use some of that in its sea of vanilla. Fans want their athletes to care like they care, and DeChambeau seems to care a hell of a lot.

“No, that’s my passion,” DeChambeau said. “I mean, Tiger was an idol of mine, is an idol of mine. He’s my hero still, the way he reacted on the golf course. Payne, the way he did. Numerous others that have inspired generations that are now here have allowed that to be unique and cool.

“From my perspective, I’m just passionate. I really care about doing well out here and showing the fans a side of me that was locked up for so long.”

It’s fitting, then, that one of the final scenes of the night took place after the closing ceremony. DeChambeau did the requisite photo-ops, interviews, exchanging hugs with family and friends and those who just wanted to get close to greatness. But DeChambeau noticed the fans, many of whom endured the heat and humidity all week to let him know they were by his side, were still lining the 18th fairway. So DeChambeau took off, with trophy in tow, to personally thank them for carrying him home. And as he took more photos and dished out fist bumps and high-fives, his smile growing as he made his way down the ropes, it was clear that he is not just the US Open victor. Bryson DeChambeau is the new people’s champion.

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[PHOTO: Sean M. Haffey]

Now what? Sixty-nine swings into his final round at the 2024 US Open, Bryson DeChambeau was facing a gut-check moment. If he could get his ball, lying a precarious 55 yards from the hole in a greenside bunker on the 18th at Pinehurst No.2, up and down for par, the 30-year-old would claim his second US Open title and continue one of the crazier narrative changes by a professional golfer in recent memory. But that 55-yard shot from the bunker, well it was arguably the most daunting shot he had faced all day.

One of the worst places I could have been, thought DeChambeau when standing over the shot. But that’s when his caddie, Greg Bodine, stepped in, offering a calming voice. “G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up-and-down. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker.’”

It was just the right message at just the right time, with DeChambeau taking out his 55-degree wedge and pulling off a bunker blast that will be replayed for years to come:

THE BUNKER SHOT OF HIS CAREER!@b_dechambeau has this putt left to win the U.S. Open! pic.twitter.com/Vleb6k6PvO

— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 16, 2024

Yes, there were 3 feet, 11 inches left, and only moments earlier, Rory McIlroy missed a putt from three feet, nine inches. But DeChambeau wasn’t going to fail to make the putt, holing to finish off a one-over 71, beat McIlroy by one and set off one raucous celebration.

“That bunker shot was the shot of my life,” DeChambeau said afterwards.

Of course, you’d expect him to say something like that in the glow of victory. But just how good was that third shot? Stats guru Lou Stagner shared this mind-blowing metric on social media shortly after DeChambeau’s win that helps give it some context:

Bryson's bunker shot on 18 was from 55 yards.

He hit it to three feet eleven inches.

Chances of hitting it inside 4 feet was ~1.7%

One of the greatest clutch shots of all time.

— Lou Stagner (Golf Stat Pro) (@LouStagner) June 16, 2024

Here’s another way to look at it. Golf Digest recently developed an interactive tool that compares the games of everyday golfers to tour pros to see how they compare. According to the data, the average approach distance by a PGA Tour pro from between 50 and 75 yards is 16 feet. The tour leader’s average is eight feet.

And that data incorporates all shots from that distance. Presumably, if averages from the sand were broken out separately those numbers would probably be higher.

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[PHOTO: Jared C. Tilton]

The human brain is a relentless association machine, which thrives and sometimes staggers by virtue of its ability to connect one entity to another by thin strings of thought. Standing against the TV tower above the 16th green, in the moments before Rory attempted his two-and-a-half-foot par putt, the sense in my head and stomach was of drama to come – not now, but in the very near future. The universe had granted me a moment, and I noticed in that moment the drone of the blimp, Joe LaCava on the hill nearby taking notes, and a yellow flower I had never seen before growing in clusters around the bunker separating me from Rory. I opened the PictureThis app on my phone, bent down to take an up-close photo, and wondered if the laggy 5G would grant an answer.

Yes: Lantana camara, a species of verbenas. Also known as West Indian lantana, red sage, yellow sage, Spanish flag.

When I looked up, my eyes found the ball just before the first great gasp rose around me. The two-and-a-half-foot par putt was a miss. I had the immediate melodramatic thought that after this, he couldn’t win – correct, overall, but only by accident. What is correct beyond second-guessing, though, is that from now until my brain ceases to function, Lantana camara will mean one thing to me: Rory McIlroy, and the greatest pain I’ve ever witnessed on a golf course.

• • •

I followed the leaders until the seventh hole, where Pinehurst No.2 loops back to the clubhouse. That opening foray feels now like a distant universe, unrelated to our present reality. The course loops into the Sandhills after No.7, and I escaped the sun and waited for them to circle back around. When we left our shelter the second time, Rory and Bryson were tied at seven-under. By the time we hopped fences and climbed stairs and ducked under a holly tree to watch Rory tee off on 14, the tie had become his two-shot lead. It hadn’t quite been 10 years since his last major at Valhalla – I walked with him that day too, sweating even more in the Ohio River Valley than I was in Carolina – but it had been nine years and 10 months, and now, maybe, the drought was ending

It’s difficult to know how to feel about something like that, and it’s too much to untangle here – he has been such a ubiquitous part of so many professional lives for so long, occupying so many roles, sometimes wildly disparate from what came before, that we’d have better luck pinning down the wind. But the concept of him winning was momentous, and I could feel it in the energy of everyone inside and outside the ropes.

There is a patina of dust on this course, the disturbed sand refusing to ever quite settle back to earth, and it looks almost like a smoky haze. We stared through it as Rory drove his ball left, paced down the hill, past Bryson coming up the hill – the first of many times their paths would cross on the final holes. The sun had eased off slightly from its early afternoon intensity, and Rory’s wayward drive was safe; in the pinestraw on the left, but with an angle, just outside the grasping reach of a pine. He pulled his approach left, absorbed the “Rory!” chants, and held on to his thin slice of oxygen with an up-and-down. But Bryson drove the green on 13 and two-putted for birdie, so that thin slice was now a single stroke.

Narratives, at these times, run through the brain at a torrential pace, even as you recognise how useless most of them will become within minutes. The narrative now: nothing could be easy for him, not when you’re fighting the demons of a decade, but this is the day he comes through anyway, and it will be all the richer for the struggle.

But this is all fantasy, and I knew it even then. What’s really true, as the sun lowers, is that we’ve reached the moments where every single shot has the potential of becoming the one you remember forever. If that sounds like a romantic notion, think again; it cuts both ways.

It is 5:35pm in Pinehurst. He sips from a grey Yeti water bottle. No part of me can fathom another hour of this.

• • •

On 15, the 197-yard par 3, he’s too long, and the ball slides to the edge of the native area. The chip is too hard, he’s lucky to keep it on the green, and the par putt is long, 30 feet and change.

To watch someone putt from the side of the green, looking uphill, is an odd experience, because the hole becomes a hidden character. There are no longer two visual elements – the moving ball tracking towards the stationary hole, with the potential of the satisfying impact. Instead, you are watching a white sphere roll along a green plane, waiting for it to disappear, but you don’t even know where that might be. Rory’s putt does not disappear. We’re tied at seven-under.

The narratives spin on: he’s going to blow it again. It was in his grasp and he’s going to let it go. Rory drives into the fairway on 16, Bryson hits to 25 feet on the par 3. We can see it unravelling.

Except things are changing fast now. My friend Adam Schupak of Golfweek is with me among the hordes of media following these groups, and unlike me he’s been wise enough to carry along one of the blue earpieces they hand out that carries the radio feed. The lack of scoreboards at Pinehurst, and especially the lack of video scoreboards, has created a throwback sensation of waiting for information, and often enough now, I’m waiting on Adam. And because my gaze is probably too much like an expectant child, he looks up and to the left, and only looks back when there’s something to convey.

He looks back: “He lipped out!” Bryson has three-putted. And I say back the ineloquent phrase I’ve been relying on heavily for the last hour, and which I’ll continue to revisit: “Oh, s–t.”

A literal second later, Rory hits his approach on 16 to the green. He’s leading by a shot. He has a prayer at birdie. It’s happening again. He has the momentum. It’s his tournament to win, case nearly closes. His birdie putt rolls to two-and-a-half feet.

Lantana camara.

When he misses, Rory employs a strange gesture I’ve seen before: one hand out in an urgent motion, and it means “Stop!” Which seemed here like a supplication both to the ball itself, and to his own mind which was undoubtedly beginning to make mountains of what he’d just done. As we said, we are in the moments when every shot may be the one you remember for a lifetime.

• • •

What is the human need to say our prognostications out loud, even when we know they’re created on such shaky ground? There is nothing that feels better than spewing false confidence into the air. I see Dan Rapaport of Barstool, and I tell him it’s over. There’s not a world, I say, in which Rory can recover from missing that putt. He tells me I’m an idiot, and he is correct. But I stand by it, and when I see him again, I might still claim I knew it all along.

Now, for Rory, the remaining holes become a prayer for survival. He’s tied with Bryson at six-under, but the concept of him making a birdie feels impossible. On 17, the last par 3, it’s bad news off the tee – the left bunker. And as Bryson’s approach comes to rest 22 feet away on 16, we’ve entered our final rhythm, which is a mad scramble for pars from Rory, and a hunt for birdies from his charging opponent. He is grasping for a playoff.

Rory makes a stunning sand save, particularly considering the putt he just missed a hole ago, Bryson’s birdie lips out, Harry Diamond rakes the bunker, Rory yanks his drive on 18, Bryson hits to 18 feet, but misses birdie again by the skin of his teeth.

Maybe.

We are in the end game; we are in the realm of dreams and nightmares. The clubhouse looms over the scene, the verandahs packed. You must trudge uphill on this hole; they sit still and watch.

The aristida stricta, the wiregrass off the fairways that turns wayward shots into dice rolls, has dealt Rory a rough fate, with a clump of grass directly in front of his ball. He plays a modified bump shot to the front of the green, hits a brilliant chip to inside four feet, and looks down the fairway as Bryson’s drive hooks way, way left.

Three feet, nine inches. That’s for par, and with Bryson in trouble it could well win him the US Open. At the very least, it’s a ticket to a playoff. But we know what’s going to happen; we know now, at least. Did we know then too?

• • •

The aftermath is a succession of brutalities. Scattered “U-S-A!” chants from the worst people in the crowd ring out when he misses. The ground below the grandstands is lined with dignitaries and photographers and police, and before he navigates between them, Rory turns to take one long look back at the hole.

On some level I am aching with a kind of vicarious pain, the pain I would feel for anyone in this situation, muted somewhat by the potential that a playoff is still possible, but the more immediate thought in my brain is to follow him as long as I’m allowed. How far that is, I’m not exactly clear. He goes down the clubhouse steps into the cold interior. Can I go too? I spot Alan Bastable of Golf.com walking down the steps on the other side, and I follow him like he’s a lead blocker. Nobody stops us.

At the bottom of the steps, there’s a short hallway leading to scoring, and when Rory enters the room, the attendant closes the door behind him. We are all firing up YouTube TV on our phones now, but the cries from above are happening before the delayed feeds. Mary Stamm-Clarke and her sound man are there from Netflix, but they’re shut out of the room too, and for some reason, I look up and a camera is on me. Everybody is sweating. Bryson punches out to the front bunker. The door remains closed. The TV feed shows Rory. I ask Joey Geske of the USGA if I can go in; we both laugh. The door opens. Patrick Cantlay and Joe LaCava exit. The door closes. Bryson hits his bunker shot to four feet; Joe LaCava appears over my shoulder, asking “How close?”

Now we wait for the putt, but a confusing cry rises above – again, we are slaves to slow-travelling information. Did he make it? Did he miss?

The door opens. The light green shirt, the white pants. Rory is out the door, but not so fast that we can’t see the shellshocked look on his face. Through the door, on the TV he was just watching, Bryson DeChambeau is celebrating his second US Open.

We follow Rory out the door, down another corridor, to the champions locker room. The Netflix crew get in; Bastable and I are stopped at the door. Mike Whan, chief executive of the USGA, shows up. “Do we want them in there?” he asks. “Do we want them in there?” We don’t know who he means. A minute later, someone on Bryson’s team comes down the corridor, and he’s holding Bryson’s bag. He reaches the locker room door, and asks us if Rory is inside. When we say yes, a look of total dread crosses his face, but he enters anyway.

Then Rory exists, and he looks worse than before. He’s wearing his failure to such an extent that I have to look away. Suddenly, he’s being followed by a stream of people that includes the Netflix crew and the smiling face of Sergio Garcia. He is ahead of us all, and he exits the corridor into the players’ carpark. One bag goes in the boot of a black Lexus, plate number ET-4795, courtesy of Harry Diamond. They are moving fast. He says his quick goodbyes, gets behind the wheels, backs up. His next manoeuvre isn’t quite a peel-out, but you can hear the tyres fight for traction, and it’s a little fast for the crowded lot.

Rory McIlroy will not be taking questions.

• • •

Can you blame him? To share that unimaginable professional shock, to translate it for public exposure. Maybe you can, and maybe someone else would stay and answer the questions, both profound and inane. But at the very least, it would take a superhuman constitution to overcome the urge to escape.

I also have the urge to escape. I feel it in the words; how I’ve hid behind setting, and circumstance, and detail, one moment to the next, a chronicling of time with only a subtext of emotion; fill in the void if you want, but as of now I’d prefer not to peer in. It feels on some level idiotic to say that his pain is shared, among these fans, among these writers, among anyone with a bone of empathy. But it is anyway, because it’s too acute not to spread; a loss like this has a blast radius, and we’re closer than we’d like to be.

Of course, though, it is diluted when it reaches the outer rings. How to contextualise the pain at the centre? How to describe what the man himself must feel?

Lantana camara. Red sage. Yellow Sage. Spanish Flag.

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Bryson DeChambeau won his second US Open in four years today, converting a difficult up-and-down by sinking a four-foot par putt on the 72nd green at Pinehurst No.2 to deliver another bitter defeat to Rory McIlroy.

DeChambeau’s clutch bunker shot from 50 metres set up the winning putt – the only par save from the front bunker at the par-4 18th hole all week – to beat McIlroy by a stroke at six-under 274. Beaten by one shot last month on the 72nd green by Xander Schauffele’s birdie putt in the PGA Championship at Valhalla, DeChambeau this time caught a break when McIlroy missed a par putt from inside four feet at the last for his third bogey in his final four holes. DeChambeau shot a closing 71 while McIlroy carded a 69.

“Can you believe that? Oh, my God,” DeChambeau bellowed into the camera as he celebrated with friends behind the 18th green, the same green where the late Payne Stewart got up and down for par to preserve his one-stroke lead 25 years earlier.

US Open 2024: Bryson DeChambeau wins, Min Woo Lee top Australian at Pinehurst

DeChambeau won his first US Open in the pandemic of 2020 in the quiet of Winged Foot, when fans weren’t permitted to attend. At Pinehurst, the Californian – far more popular and engaging now at age 30 – was cheered at every tee and green, even as the crowd also cheered for McIlroy, who finished runner-up for the second year in a row and now has 10 top-five finishes since winning the 2014 PGA Championship. The 35-year-old from Northern Ireland remains stuck on four major titles.

DeChambeau became the 23rd player to win multiple US Open titles, and he is the seventh player in the past 40 years to win America’s national championship twice within a five-year span, joining Brooks Koepka, Retief Goosen, Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Lee Janzen and Curtis Strange. The win constitutes his ninth in a PGA Tour event, though he won’t get credit for it after leaving to join the LIV Golf League in 2022. Since then, he has finished in the top-10 in five of nine majors, including T-6 at this year’s Masters to go with his runner-up finish at the PGA.

“First off, I want to say happy Father’s Day. Unfortunately, my dad passed a couple of years ago, so this one is for him,” DeChambeau said in tribute to his father Jon. “Also to Payne Stewart. He was the reason I went to SMU (Southern Methodist University). He’s the reason I wore the [peaked] cap. Wow.

“I just can’t thank you guys enough for the support this week,” DeChambeau added, addressing the crowd after accepting the trophy and the Jack Nicklaus Medal. “You have meant the world to me.”

Struggling all day to find fairways with his back-up driver after collapsing the face of his regular club on the practice range prior to the final round, DeChambeau managed to gut out the victory. His six-under 274 total matched his winning total from Winged Foot where he won by six shots.

This time, he had his hands full on a hot afternoon in North Carolina with the determined McIlroy, who seemingly was on his way to his first major title in nearly 3,600 days.

The championship essentially boiled down to a three-man battle for much of the day. McIlroy, Patrick Cantlay and Frenchman Matthieu Pavon began the final round three strokes behind DeChambeau, but Pavon fell out of the hunt with three bogeys in his first eight holes.

McIlroy sprung into a two-shot lead with four birdies in a five-hole span starting with a 15-footer at the ninth and ending with five-footer at the short par-4 13th hole. But a putter that had been as hot as the weather betrayed him at the most crucial time. He three-putted from 27 feet at the 16th after not missing inside five feet on his previous 49 attempts. That miscue came after DeChambeau suffered his only three-putt of the championship at the 15th by lipping out from four feet.

US Open 2024: The clubs Bryson DeChambeau used to win at Pinehurst No.2

But the crusher for McIlroy came at the last when he missed the fairway and could only punch out to the front of the green. He pitched well, but the ball ran past the cup. He was clearly nervous when he tentatively struck the left-to-right par attempt. It flicked the right edge of the cup but stayed out. That set up DeChambeau’s heroics after he also pulled his drive into the left native area and had to punch his second from underneath tree limbs and near a tree root.

He scraped it out into the front bunker and then got up and down for the win to capture the record $US4.3 million first prize. Ranked 38th in the world, he is likely to climb into the top 10 after his second major title.

Cantlay, the first-round leader, hung around most of the day and had his chances, but he ended up tied for third at four-under 276 after his second consecutive 70 for his best finish in a major. He was joined by Tony Finau, who birdied the home hole for a 67, tied for low round of the day.

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[PHOTO: Sean M. Haffey]

Rory McIlroy had his fifth major championship all but secured as he stood on the 15th tee at Pinehurst No. 2. Had he simply played the final four holes in one-over-par, he would have come back from three strokes to beat Bryson DeChambeau, who had been shaky, especially off the tee, throughout the final round. His tee shot at the par 3 was headed towards the centre of the green. He could taste it.

Then, chaos ensued.

The Northern Irishman’s 7-iron bounded over the 15th green and put him in a spot where many rounds went to die this week at the 124th United States Open. A gutsy bogey followed. He was still firmly alive. Another bogey at 16, and perhaps the most painful bogey of his career at the 18th, all but killed his chances.

US Open 2024: Rory McIlroy and the newest shade of heartbreak

Even still, at five-under, he watched as DeChambeau got into a spot of bother left of the 18th fairway. After DeChambeau’s second found a bunker in front of the 18th green, setting up one of the toughest shots in golf – the 50-metre bunker shot – McIlroy suddenly had life again. DeChambeau then proceeded to rip his heart out with the shot of his life, putting his third to four feet and securing his second US Open title with a par.

In McIlroy’s defence, it was an absolutely gutting watch. Still, though, as the second-place finisher and a guy who has often had no issue congratulating his peers after a victory, you would have figured McIlroy would have stuck around. The media certainly would have had a few questions. In 2022, after another painful loss to Cameron Smith at the Open Championship, McIlroy was on NBC soon after coming up short, answering every question he was asked as the runner-up.

But this one proved too hard to handle for the four-time major champion. A number of reporters were on the scene in the Pinehurst carpark to watch McIlroy make a swift exit in his courtesy car:

No media for Rory McIlroy, as he loads up the car and quickly leaves the premises. pic.twitter.com/z9FzEoq0hB

— Jason Sobel (@JasonSobelGolf) June 16, 2024

Straight to the car for Rory. pic.twitter.com/dEbYrUQlJA

— Gabby Herzig (@GabbyHerzig) June 16, 2024

FAST exit for Rory. His greatest heartbreak yet? pic.twitter.com/3vEeOjSvtC

— Alan Bastable (@alan_bastable) June 16, 2024

Brutal. Here was McIlroy watching DeChambeau hang on to win, an equally painful video to watch:

I feel so bad pic.twitter.com/1t5887eF4A

— Rory McIlroy Tracker (@RMTracker) June 16, 2024

As of now, McIlroy is in the field for this week’s Travelers Championship. Judging by this early exit, though, it would come as a bit of a surprise to see him show up in Connecticut, and it would also be hard to blame him if he didn’t.

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