The past 12 months had it all — crazy winning streaks, new major champs, a major-week arrest (!) and more. With 2025 on the horizon, our writers are looking back at the most memorable moments from 2024.
No. 15 — Charley Hull goes viral | No. 14 — LIV, LPGA CEOs say goodbye | No. 13— Solheim Cup parking fiasco | No. 12 — Phoenix Open chaos | No. 11 — Lydia Ko’s Hall of Fame resurgence | No. 10 — PGA Tour/Saudi PIF merger stalemate | No. 9 — Keegan Bradley named Ryder Cup captain | No. 8 — Lexi Thompson steps away | No. 7 — Xander Schauffele’s major breakthrough | No. 6 – AK’s return to golf | No. 5 — Nelly Korda’s dominance
Biggest golf moments of 2024 No. 4: Bryson DeChambeau’s vast reach
When you think of Bryson DeChambeau’s 2024, what comes to mind first?
If you’re of a certain age or from a certain sector of the golf-fan populace, surely his U.S. Open win at Pinehurst No. 2 most resonates. With Rory McIlroy leaking oil down the stretch, DeChambeau, on the 72nd hole, authored one of the greatest clutch moments in major-championship history, stuffing an awkward 55-yard greenside bunker shot to 4 feet to secure par and, ultimately, his second U.S. Open title in five years.
If you’re a different — read: less traditional — breed of golf fan, though, there’s a good chance you most associate DeChambeau’s 2024 not with that week at Pinehurst — or, for that matter, any of his other three major starts or 13 appearances on the LIV Golf tour — but instead for his round with Donald J. Trump…or Tom Brady…or Tony Romo. If you get your golf fix by way of Bob Does Sports or Garrett Clark, maybe DeChambeau’s hit-and-giggles with those YouTube giants was your most enduring DeChambeau memory of the year. Or maybe you’re not much of a golf fan at all, but on a sleepy sports evening in December, you happened upon DeChambeau in a made-for-TV match in Vegas. Or maybe you even caught him on your TikTok feed last month when your algorithm served you a chronicle of the 16 days he spent trying to make a hole-in-one over his Dallas house.
This is DeChambeau’s latest superpower: thanks to the vast reach of social media and his own relentless commitment to self-promotion, he has become hard to miss, even if you’re not looking for him.
Praising DeChambeau’s branding prowess is to take nothing away from the stellar year he had on the course, especially at the majors. At the Masters, he tied for 6th. At the PGA Championship at Valhalla, he came roaring back on Sunday, shooting a seven-under 64 with his “B game” to finish runner-up, one shot behind Xander Schauffele. Then came Pinehurst, where he took down McIlroy in front of a decidedly pro-McIlroy crowd. DeChambeau’s only hiccup at the majors came at the Open Championship at Royal Troon, where his brute force was no match for the gusty conditions; he missed the cut by six.
On the LIV tour, DeChambeau failed to win but had seven top-10s, finishing 8th in the overall standings. However you feel about LIV’s competitive format, DeChambeau’s indoctrination into the Saudi-funded league has seemingly unlocked something in him. On the PGA Tour, he was a huge talent but an outsider. Now, he’s surrounded by outsiders, disrupters and so-called rebels. As he told the Telegraph earlier this year: “I came to LIV and suddenly there were players in the same boat as me. Because they were getting stick as well, not from the LIV fans but seemingly everywhere else. I was not alone in being disliked and could share these feelings with my teammates and my colleagues.”
DeChambeau could be himself, which is exactly what he’s done on his social-media platforms, this year more than ever. His popular “Break 50” YouTube series, in which he and his playing-partner guest try to shoot 49 or better from forward tees, has garnered such large audiences — most episodes have driven more than 2 million viewers each — that he convinced Trump to join him, during a period when the former president was deep in a campaign dogfight with President Biden. That episode has now been watched 13 million times. As of this writing, DeChambeau has 1.65 million YouTube subscribers — 140,000 more than the PGA Tour.
That statistic would not be lost on Phil Mickelson, who a few months before signing with LIV in 2022, publicly lambasted the Tour for its unwillingness to share media rights with the players. Mickelson alleged that the Tour was making tens of millions of dollars annually “on their own media channel,” to which the players did not have access.
Turns out players don’t need those highlights to grow their own personal channels. DeChambeau has proven that playing golf for fun with other famous golfers and golf-lovers is another wildly effective approach to building audiences. It’s a simple formula: let fans in and they will come in droves. DeChambeau has another 2.2 million followers on Instagram, and his TikTok legion is 1.4 million strong. In his social-media bios, he identifies himself as a “Content Creator & Pro Golfer.” Note the order of those titles.
Following his U.S. Open win in June, DeChambeau was asked if professional golf needs more players like him.
“I hope so,” he said. “My mission is to continue to expand the game, grow the game globally, domestically. YouTube has really helped me accomplish some of that.” He added, “It’s direct conversations to people that truly engage with what I’m doing.”
Scottie Scheffler was the best golfer of 2024. But the most influential? That was Bryson DeChambeau.
Alan Bastable
Golf.com Editor
As GOLF.com’s executive editor, Bastable is responsible for the editorial direction and voice of one of the game’s most respected and highly trafficked news and service sites. He wears many hats — editing, writing, ideating, developing, daydreaming of one day breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely talented and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the features editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey with his wife and foursome of kids.
