Bryson DeChambeau arrived at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills hoping to play the weekend in a major championship for the first time in 2026. The two-time U.S. Open champion imploded on Friday at the Masters to leave Augusta earlier and never had a chance at the PGA Championship at Aronimink.
Still, DeChambeau said he was confident about the state of his game as he arrived on Long Island. A few days later, DeChambeau was packing up early after shooting 70-75 (five over) to miss the cut by one shot.
DeChambeau didn’t speak with the assembled media after missing the weekend at Shinnecock. But a week later, the Crushers’ frontman and YouTube content king posted a 34-minute video to his channel where he walked through every shot of his two rounds at Shinnecock and explained why he has underperformed at majors this year.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for a little bit now,” DeChambeu said to start the video. “I think it’s important for you guys, especially given that I show myself off in different ways, whether it’s entertaining on YouTube or playing professional golf, I want to do my best in every single event, and the way I’ve played recently is not a true reflection. Unfortunately, I’ve been working incredibly hard, and sometimes it just doesn’t pan out, which kind of sucks, and that’s golf, that’s life.”
Most of DeChambeau’s video is him explaining how the softness of the greens confused him, or the wind didn’t hit certain shots the way he wanted or how he misread certain putts. He said “one of his favorite moments” of the tournament was the first drive he hit with his new TaylorMade prototype driver on the 12th hole. DeChambeau’s drive on the par 4 hit the road that intersects the hole and landed 427 yards away. He went on to make birdie.
When DeChambeau reaches Shinnecock’s first hole (the tenth of his first round), he notes an issue he has been working to figure out. DeChambeau’s drive found the fairway, but his approach landed left of his desired target. The shot landed hole high, but was indicative of one thing DeChambeau has been fighting.
“That’s one of the things I have to figure out with my wedges,” DeChambeau said. “Sometimes they feel like it slips on the face and it’s probably a shaft to head weight combo. So, that’s what I’m working on to figure that out right now.”
DeChambeau played his first 17 holes in one under par and seemed to be set to enter the mix at another U.S. Open.
But his issues started to rear their head on Friday. With the first round called due to darkness, DeChambeau had to come out early Friday to finish the final hole of his first round and then turn back around and play his second. While warming up on the range, his swing felt off. It was a problem he couldn’t solve — one he has been fighting for some time.
“Anyway, this is kind of where it gets weird,” DeChambeau said of Friday morning. “I get to the range on Friday, and all of a sudden, something feels a little off with my timing in regards to how I’m jumping off the ground to get the club to come out. You know, those little right misses that I was talking about became more pronounced. I couldn’t feel like the club was naturally turning over effortlessly. And yeah, it showed on nine and I missed it horribly right. Felt late.”
DeChambeau’s drive on the final hole of his first round flared right and landed in the fescue. He eventually made a 26-foot putt for bogey to finish the first round at even par.
“I’m just in a weird spot,” DeChambeau said after his first round. “So, I had a little frustrating moment after that. But then, I gather myself and I come out and I still can’t figure it out. I still don’t know what’s going on with my golf swing. It feels a little funky. It’s just not turning over like it was the day before.”
DeChambeau’s tournament quickly came unraveled at the start of his second round. He opened with pars at one and two and then made back-to-back double bogeys to fall to five over for the tournament.
“That was my tournament,” DeChambeau said. “That literally was the tournament. If I finish at one over, right from all that, if I finish at one over, I’m what am I seven back? Something like that. You know, there’s plenty of people that were one over going in and [finished] top 10 or played well on the weekend. You just can’t do that. It was really unfortunate the way that whole situation happened. I didn’t feel like I played that bad for that to happen, but you can’t do that at majors. You can’t make two doubles in a row. You can’t just do that.”
DeChambeau further discussed his swing issues, the same ones he appeared to be fighting on the range at the PGA Championship at Aronimink, when he hit a smother hook off the ninth tee.
“Slap cut,” DeChambeau said. “I couldn’t time my golf swing for some reason and it wasn’t unloading. The club head wasn’t coming out from the top. Felt like it was being dragged like radially and just could never get the club head out.”
The video ends with DeChambeau being asked a few questions from off-screen, the same questions he would’ve faced from the media had he taken the few minutes to stop and answer.
“Not good enough golf,” DeChambeau said about his three major missed cuts. “We could say it’s unlucky. We could say, bad judgment. We could say bad swings and all that. But ultimately it comes down to me making better decisions, having a couple things go more my way, and me being more comfortable over the golf ball and not holding it off and knowing why I’m I have that miss, knowing why I’m missing it, and then working on speed with my putting, working on my wedges, getting a better combo so that it’s not as erratic. So even though I wasn’t hitting it my best off the tee — I was still number one and driving off the tee, which is crazy. My iron play is just something I got to work on, man. I got to get it better.”
Unlike Jon Rahm, DeChambeau has been playing a pivotal role in securing outside investment for LIV Golf. Asked if his focus on YouTube and the future of LIV was impacting his play in the majors, DeChambeau dismissed that idea, saying that he just hasn’t felt as good as he used to over the ball and that he and his team are trying to recreate the feeling he had when he shot 58 at LIV Greenbrier in 2023 while noting that it wasn’t long ago he was one of the best major performers on the planet. Things change quickly in professional golf.
“Everybody’s going to have their opinion on it,” DeChambeau said. “But I can tell you I’ve been working harder on my game this past year after the Masters than I have in the past three, four years. The amount of effort I’ve put into understanding my golf swing and what makes that thing come out — what makes the golf club come out more effectively and more efficiently is mindboggling. But I haven’t figured it out. I’ve been working with a great team. We just haven’t cracked the code on why I did what I did at Greenbrier.
“Put one foot in front of the other and keep going,” DeChambeau said to end the video. “There’s not much more I can do than that. Just last year, before the U.S. Open, I was one of the best major championship performers in the world. Come one year later, everybody says I’m the worst. It just is what it is. It’s life, it’s golf. Things don’t always go your way. But guess what? Keep going.”
With LIV Golf on a break, DeChambeau’s next chance to “keep going” will come at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, where he will look to try not to miss all four major cuts in 2026.
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