Even the Incredible Bulk sometimes needs a challenge.
At least, that’s what we learned over the last two weeks, as golf’s content king Bryson DeChambeau embarked on a 16-day-long journey to drain a chip shot from a matt in his driveway to a hole on his homemade putting green some 100 yards away.
The most interesting piece of the challenge, though, was what came between the putting mat and the green: the stunning, all-glass entrance to DeChambeau’s sprawling, multimillion-dollar Dallas compound.
For the better part of the last two weeks, golf content consumers have watched as DeChambeau has theatrically peppered ball after ball onto the putting green, an experience complete with shot-tracers, two spotters, and a series of frighteningly near-misses.
Finally, on Wednesday evening, Thanksgiving Eve, he broke through. On day 16, shot 14 of 16, DeChambeau fired a ball straight into the air and watched as it landed right next to the pin and fell right in. The resulting celebration, captured in video below, is worth a watch.
Of course, there is more than a dash of Brysonian bluster in the video’s performance. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say his YouTube persona was more prevalent in the series than his pro golf persona. But perhaps that’s also the point.
DeChambeau’s 2024 has seen him expand his presence within the sport to the previously unseen levels, boosting his professional profile with a victory at the U.S. Open in June, and his personal profile by reaching near-ubiquity within the golf YouTube space. The chip-shot effort represents just the latest piece of that puzzle, tapping into some of the challenge-focused methods that have are so popular within the YouTube algorithm.
It’s hard to call any of it a serious pursuit, particularly considering there’s no inherent moneymaking opportunity baked-in to posting on Instagram for 16 straight days. But DeChambeau, to his credit, seems to understand that being a part of the conversation is far more important to a player’s eventual bottom-line than acting purely in pursuit of growing his bank account.
This week, we’re talking about a chip-shot challenge. And next week, Bryson will ask himself the same question gracing his Instagram comments section on Thursday morning:
What’s next?
