A Little Humanity
Could Go a Long Way
Three months after the zenith of the Brooks Koepka vs. Bryson DeChambeau feud, and two days after DeChambeau briefly erupted at a fan’s taunts at the BMW Championship, the PGA Tour intervened: no more “Brooksie” shouts, under pain of ejection. When the chants began in early summer, DeChambeau insisted they were flattering; now, it is nearly impossible to believe that the Tour’s announcement was not precipitated by DeChambeau’s influence.
Perhaps the whole matter is finished now: Koepka has not needled DeChambeau in weeks, and DeChambeau certainly seems to have had his fill. If the episode feels unfinished, though, then perhaps that feeling lies in the announcement’s imperfect solution: a large segment of the Tour’s fanbase has openly turned against DeChambeau, and ordering them not to use one specific taunt seems like a narrow solution to a broad problem.
That problem, of course, is not a simple one. There is Koepka, who — regardless of whether his intent was malicious or playful — took the feud to another level by enlisting fans to his cause. There are fans, who view heckling as a birthright. And then there is DeChambeau, a complicated character whose narcissism has made him an easy target.
Setting aside whether the scorn directed at DeChambeau is deserved (an easy question, in my view), there is the question of whether DeChambeau is unduly wounded by all this. By now, that question too seems an easy one. DeChambeau’s facade has never been believable. Even under the touchless scrutiny of golf media, DeChambeau’s self-purported expertise in physics fell apart at his own doing. His insistence that galleries’ heckles didn’t bother him strained credulity. After revealing himself as a vaccine denier, he followed the heaps of unfavorable publicity by refusing to speak with print reporters — hardly the sign of an intellectual titan. And ultimately, his eruption following the BMW Championship proves the inevitable: DeChambeau has reached his breaking point.
It’s a point at which DeChambeau never expected to find himself. From his earliest moments as a professional, DeChambeau foresaw himself as a change agent — the sort of player for whom statues are built and lifetime achievement awards are handed out. And so he played the part. He wanted to be a hero, so he acted like one. He wanted fans to love him, so he acted beloved. But adulation is the one part of fame that brand managers cannot curate: it still must be earned. And DeChambeau, God love him, never earned it.
That’s not to say DeChambeau deserves pain. There’s a fine line between teasing and traumatizing, and this episode — regardless of its participants’ intent — seems to have crossed that line. On the surface, DeChambeau clumsily plays the part of a superhero, trying his best to smile through it all. Deep down, though, in a place I’m not sure even DeChambeau allows himself to acknowledge, I’m convinced there’s a painfully human psyche — a part that aches to be loved and cannot accept that it eludes him.
A person past their breaking point is, of course, broken.
But therein lies proof of DeChambeau’s humanity. We have all been broken. We have all felt humiliated by our own humanity — betrayed by it. Professional athletes might be accustomed to heckling, but that doesn’t mean they get used to it, nor should they. Neither DeChambeau nor anyone else owes the world a show of public vulnerability. But if DeChambeau could muster it — if he dropped the facade, acknowledged his own anguish and frustration, and stopped playing superhero long enough to admit his own humanity — then it could go a long way in not only changing the tone of this episode, but in changing DeChambeau’s public image.
Maybe that would cost DeChambeau the feeling of invincibility that most professional athletes — self-deluded or not — wear like armor. But it would make him more human, and my guess is that it would make him happier.
In the end, dropping the change-agent pretense, being secure in his own skin, and living the benefits of that security could be DeChambeau’s highest legacy.
. . .
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