NASSAU, Bahamas — Bryson DeChambeau had enough.
“There was a point in time — I’m not kidding — where I just felt like I wanted to leave the game,” the 28-year-old DeChambeau told The Post exclusively during his pro-am round Wednesday in advance of this week’s Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Club.
“I just felt like, ‘I don’t need any of this. Why? Why put myself though all this torture?’ “
DeChambeau, who’s built himself into the longest hitter in golf and one of the most compelling and popular figures in the game, was swirling uncontrollably in a maelstrom of negative attention and he felt trapped.
He was in a vortex and there were times it seemed he couldn’t get out of his own way — sometimes through outside forces and sometimes by his own volition.
Sure, he seemingly had everything going for him as an eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, a U.S. Open champion, a two-time Ryder Cup team member and nearly $26 million in career earnings.
But DeChambeau also found himself as a subject of controversy seemingly every time he woke up to face a new day. He felt it all going off the rails and it left him wondering if it was all worth it.
There was the Brooks Koepka so-called feud, with Koepka the instigator.
There was his caddie, Tim Tucker, parting ways with him hours before the first round of the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit, where he was the defending champion.
There was him calling out his equipment after the first round of British Open, saying his “driver sucks,” which drew a harsh public response from Cobra, the equipment company that pays him millions of dollars to use their clubs.
There was his incident chastising a rules official at the 2020 Memorial as he took a 10 on the par-5 15th hole and missed the cut.
There was the 44 he shot on the back nine in the final round of the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines after he was leading, dropping to a tie for 26th.
There was his positive COVID-19 test that prevented him from competing at the Olympics.
There was his reasoning for not getting vaccinated, telling reporters in early August at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Classic that he’d “rather give it to people who need it” at a time when vaccines were widely available for everyone.
After those comments, DeChambeau was excoriated on social media and that felt like a last straw. That’s when he said he seriously pondered his future.
After that St. Jude week in Memphis, DeChambeau shut down all interview requests and, other than some brief comments at the Ryder Cup where the players have required media obligations, he hasn’t been heard from publicly since.
“I got hit pretty hard,” he said. “That’s why I kind of walked away, because people were damaging (my) character. It was all the stuff that was going on in social media. I was like, ‘I really don’t need this. I can walk away and be totally fine the rest of my life, be happy and go and hit the long ball and call it a day.’ “
But he didn’t quit.
“I couldn’t let down the people that were around me, the people that truly believed in me,” he said. “So, I said, ‘No Bryson, you can do this for a long time.’ I had great people around me, and things changed for me. I got back to a place where I felt like I could continue.”
One of those people in DeChambeau’s corner was Chris Pratt, the actor who’s starred in the TV series “Parks and Recreation” and a number of movies. Pratt is a golf junkie and he and DeChambeau met at the Genesis Invitational a few years ago at Riviera in Los Angeles.
“Chris Pratt told me, ‘Look, when I’m doing a movie and people are saying the movie’s terrible and I’m not a good actor, that doesn’t define me,’ ” DeChambeau said.
“I respect him, respect his opinion. He’s got a lot of great life advice from things he’s been through — some troubling times (divorce from actress Anna Farris and social media heckling over his assumed political beliefs).
“He told me when I’m out on the golf course, people are going to define you and relate you to the golf. What really defines you is the person you are outside the game of golf. You’ve got to look at it as as an opportunity to show people who you truly are.”
DeChambeau comes off as a person who means well but gets in his own way on occasion.
He’s a complicated and fascinating figure. He does so many charitable things off the course and outside of the spotlight, such as regular hospital visits to kids, that the public doesn’t see. Yet he’s become a polarizing figure in the sport, which is not what he signed up for or ever envisioned.
“I never played golf to become famous,” he said. “I did it because I love it and I wanted to find a unique way to beat everyone. And it’s worked out a little bit. That doesn’t mean I’m the most dominant player, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be No. 1 in the world, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be the best player that ever lived.”
He said he’s had a crash course in how to deal with all of the firestorms and attention he’s drawn to himself.
“You learn to deal with it,” DeChambeau said. “You have to learn on the fly. There’s no training manual.”
There was no training manual for whatever has taken place between him and Koepka, which sparked a summer’s worth of heckling and eventually led to a made-for-TV charity match the day after Thanksgiving in Las Vegas.
DeChambeau, who was defeated by Koepka in the 12-hole match, called it “definitely a weird dynamic,” adding, “At the end of the day, we raised a lot of money for charity. The only way I was going to play a match against him was if it was for charity. We raised over $3 million and I put over $100,000 of my own money toward Shriners Hospital, St. Jude, APGA and Feeding America.
“I’m more proud of that fact than if I would have beat Brooks,” DeChambeau went on. “Like, I really don’t care. It’s 12 holes and I’m ranked higher than him in the world (DeChambeau is 7th and Koepka is 16th). He has more majors than me (four to one). Great. I respect what he’s done. Full disclosure: I’ve got great respect for him.”
DeChambeau remains perplexed how the entire Koepka ordeal began and has mushroomed.
“It’s not necessarily great for the game of golf,” he said. “We want to focus on competing and having a rivalry. It’s not a boxing match. He incited it. Look, I understand his play. I understand the PIP aspect of it (the PGA Tour’s new Player Impact Program that pays huge bonus money to the movers and shakers among the players.) I see the whole picture, and it’s OK. I am not worried about it.
“I will keep producing content and entertainment value for the public, because that’s who I am. I’m an entertainer. Am I always going to be the perfect human being? No.”
Life has happened fast for DeChambeau. Maybe too fast.
“When it’s all said and done, I want to be known for growing the game,” he said. “I know this life is going to pass by really quickly and in 10 or 15 years I’m going to be better than I am now. But then it’s going to be gone. Hopefully, I can provide young kids information.”
What drives him most now?
“I want to hit the ball with a ball speed of over 200 miles per hour every time I tee it up,” he said. “I’m right there, within a couple miles per hour, and if I’m going and I feel heated, I get over 200 pretty consistently.
“I want to win Augusta, all the majors, have the career Grand Slam and continue to win events. I’ve won Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus’ event, and that’s pretty cool. I want to eventually win Tiger [Woods’] event (Genesis Invitational), and have all three of those. That’d be cool.”
Like a mad scientist, he’ll never stop tinkering.
“My goal with the swing is to figure out what produces speed relative to gym work,” DeChambeau said. “What in the gym is going to help me get faster with the golf swing?”
An adjustment DeChambeau has had to make is developing patience, because regardless of how much he thinks he has everything scientifically figured out in his calculator brain, golf is the most imperfect game of all, with bad breaks and bad bounces lurking with every swing.
“I’m a perfectionist,” DeChambeau said, “but I’m also a realist.”
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