In the summer of 2021, a sizable segment of the golf-watching populous would have happily sacrificed a paycheck or perhaps even their firstborn in exchange for a Bryson DeChambeau-Brooks Koepka pairing on the weekend at a major championship. Such was the hysteria around the Bryson-Brooksie rivalry.
You remember those halcyon days, right? Their beef actually had begun a couple of years earlier when Koepka called out DeChambeau’s pace of play at an event in Dubai. More slow-play tension surfaced later that year at the Northern Trust, and then in early 2021 came the abs jab heard ‘round the world when DeChamabeau said Koepka’s stomach muscles lacked (gasp!) definition. And so to it went until that May when a leaked Golf Channel video from the PGA Championship showed Koepka rolling his eyes and cursing as DeChambeau interrupted an interview Koepka was taping. Soon enough, fans at Tour events joined the fray, taunting DeChambeau with cries of “Brooksie.”
And on and on it went — a social-media dig here, some mud-slinging there — with many fans giddily following the theater and aching for the players to face off head to head in a PGA Tour event, or better yet, a major. That never happened, at least not since the feud had become a thing. Koepka and DeChambeau had played together in the fourth round of the 2016 Masters, when DeChambeau was still an amateur, and then again in the third round of the 2018 Tour Championship and the first and second rounds of the 2019 Arnold Palmer Invitational. (In those four rounds, for what’s it worth, Koepka’s scoring average was 71.50 to DeChambeau’s 70.75.) But since then? Nadda.
Then, in late 2021, the feud seemed to begin to lose steam. The two rivals hugged it out at the Ryder Cup in September before a month later squaring off in a made-for-TV match in Vegas that featured more zzz’s than zingers.
And then…
Well, then the golf world was turned on its head. In 2022, the Saudi-financed league, LIV Golf, began snatching up some of the world’s best players: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and, in June of that year, both Koepka and DeChambeau. However the two old sparring partners felt about one another in the past, they were now cohorts in a controversial new golf experiment. And their defection seemed to bond them, or at least break down some walls.
“Personally, I have the utmost respect for him, and the decision he made moving to LIV,” DeChambeau said of Koepka in an August appearance on the Bob Does Sports Podcast. “I think we both respect each other a lot more now.”
More recently, Koepka has also spoken of his one-time nemesis in surprisingly glowing terms. In February, Koepka took to Instagram and said of his beef with DeChambeau: “Believe it or not we squashed it. We’re good. I actually talk to him quite frequently because of what’s going on here at LIV. Pretty much on an every-other-day basis. We’ve got a good open line of communication, we’ve figured it all out and we’re good.”
How open are those lines, really? On Saturday, we might get some insight. That’s because for the first time in seven years, the players will be paired together in a major — in the third round of the PGA Championship at Oak Hill. Koepka, who is at two under (three off the lead) and DeChambeau, who is at three under, will tee off at 2:30 p.m. local time in the third-to-last pairing.
For Koepka, it marks the second straight major that he’s been in the thick of things on the weekend; he failed to protect a two-shot 54-hole lead at the Masters in April, losing by four to Jon Rahm. For DeChambeau, well, it’s been a moment. He did tie for 8th at the Open Championship last summer, but he went off in the first pairing on Sunday. Before that, his last top-25 finish at a major was his win at the 2020 U.S. Open.
“I know what to do,” DeChambeau said Friday evening at Oak Hill. “I’ve done it before. It’s been a few years, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it, and if it’s not my time, it’s not my time, and I feel like I’m definitely trending in the right direction finally.”
On Saturday, Koepka will be along for the ride.
