SOUTHPORT, England — The most revealing words from Bryson DeChambeau’s sport-trembling two-shot penalty on Friday night at the Open Championship didn’t come from DeChambeau at all.
They came from his manager, Brett Falkoff, informing the world that his client was considering withdrawing from the Open.
“He’s a lot of things,” Falkoff told a group of reporters as the sun descended low into the horizon next to the practice range at Royal Birkdale. “He’s not a cheater.”
DeChambeau brought this war to golf just minutes earlier, when he refused to say whether he’d continue competing at the Open following his two-shot penalty. He fired the first shots behind closed doors, in the scorer’s tent with R&A officials, and out in the field as he pleaded his case. Now, Falkoff was bringing it to the media, drawing the official line in the sand.
Falkoff’s words were not just revealing for their implied threat. They were revealing because they spoke to DeChambeau’s willingness to stoke a debate already forming in living rooms and clubhouse bar rooms the world over — a debate that has filled every nook and cranny of life far beyond the golf course for many years now. A debate between the individual and the institution.
It has been a hard century for the establishment. The explosion of the internet and the polarization of public life have turned pieces of our existence that were once so boring they made our eyes bleed into a fully electrified third rail. In some cases, the dismantling was well-earned, the result of overwhelming bureaucracy and inept leadership; in others it wasn’t, the result of a vulnerable public good and far too much self-interest.
It might sound strange to compare DeChambeau’s battle with the R&A to these tried-and-true political spats, but you didn’t need to spend much time around either the golfer or the governing body on Saturday at the Open to see that the sides were falling along the same battle lines. On ropelines all over Royal Birkdale, fans screamed the familiar battle hymns. They begged DeChambeau to take it to the establishment, to overwhelm them with his charisma and braggadocio — “Get those shots back!” They looked at the volunteers and employees bearing the black polos and old crest of the tournament organizers with open disgust — “F*** the R&A!!!”
At the very least, it was easy to understand the nature of their preferences. In one corner sat DeChambeau, perhaps the single most powerful individual in the entire sport, a maverick and entertainer whose very existence seems to engender a kind of frenzied masculinity at golf events unmatched by any modern player since Tiger Woods. In the other corner sat the R&A, perhaps the single most cloistered institution in a sport full of them — a collection of individuals so well-connected and old-fashioned their name literally stands for Royal and Ancient.
And yet it was vaguely terrifying to witness how painfully familiar it all looked. How easily and instinctively even these British crowds, freed from America’s cultural battles, smelled blood in the water. How the disdain dripped from their voices as they screamed, in several instances, “STICK IT TO THEM, BRYSON!”
DeChambeau is not the first golfer to find strength in individuality. In a sport filled with reserved personalities, he is one of the few willing to proudly and directly position himself in the public eye. His years as LIV — and the subsequent explosion of his YouTube presence — have only amplified the power of his persona.
He is also not the first golfer to take issue with the stodginess and opacity of golf’s governing bodies as it relates to the enforcement of the rules. It wasn’t even a month ago that folks were up in arms over the USGA’s decision not to penalize Wyndham Clark, the U.S. Open winner, for a similar club-grounding event in the rough at Shinnecock. It was only a few days before that that golfers were similarly peeved over the USGA’s decision to penalize Joaquin Niemann for a player conduct violation … but not divulge the footage of the offense.
In both instances, it might be said that DeChambeau’s anti-establishment bent is good for golf. He is forcing the sport to change, to rid itself of the old ways, to embrace the future — like his pal Tiger Woods once did. He is encouraging the governing bodies to remove the perception of the smoke-filled room and bring their processes out in the light where everyone can see them.
And yet, in both instances, it might be said that DeChambeau’s willingness to take on the establishment reflects a responsibility to uphold its traditions — a responsibility that at least one of DeChambeau’s counterparts found sorely missing from his behavior on Friday and Saturday at the Open.
“I think a lot of it’s performative. I think a lot of it’s for attention,” Rory McIlroy said. “To hold the tournament hostage like that, and to have all of us, players, volunteers, everyone waiting on him to depart, I didn’t feel like it was a great look.”
It was telling that a large part of the public discourse around DeChambeau’s penalty did not surround whether he was actually in the wrong for his behavior from off to the side of the 5th green, and instead focused on if DeChambeau was under a bigger microscope than other players in the field. If you didn’t know any better, you might see the discourse and think a generation of fans (and some competitors!) believed it didn’t matter if DeChambeau had actually broken the rules because his rule-breaking occurred in an environment where other players could get away with it.
“Yeah, it’s hard. Every shot is on camera. There’s a lot of guys that play this week and the shots aren’t on camera. So you can say that that’s unfair or whatever, or it might happen more than it does,” McIlroy said. “It’s obviously impossible to police everyone, and that’s why it is, for the most part, a self-policing game.”
That last part of McIlroy’s answer is prescient. Golf is a self-policing game. When self-policing fails, governing bodies like the R&A are called to clean up the mess.
On the simplest level, DeChambeau’s penalty was little more than that: The R&A cleaning up a mess of his creation. The ruling was fair because it was correct. It was necessary because it was correct. If we cannot agree to enforce the rules when we know they are broken, then we don’t have to worry about if rulings are fair or correct, because we don’t have much of a golf tournament at all.
Even if his Friday night transgressions are forgotten, DeChambeau’s war against the golf establishment will continue far beyond this week at Royal Birkdale. It will be felt every time he steps inside the ropes at a big-time golf event, and some of the changes have the power to alter golf as we know it.
A lot of that change is good. It should be celebrated. But some of it is very dangerous in the hands of just one individual. Some of it is very dangerous indeed.
If Saturday at the Open was any indication, the road ahead is treacherous for golf’s institutions. Power comes at a cost, and the cost of this week’s display of power has been steep.
The truth is that there’s no knowing when the next battle will arrive. In fact, at this juncture, all we know is that the institutions will be challenged. There are battles on the horizon, and the individuals are getting closer to the edge.
You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.
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