Bryson DeChambeau leaps around in the arms of a contestant who made an ace over DeChambeau's house in Dallas.
YouTube.com/@brysondechambeau
If you think Bryson DeChambeau’s YouTube golf is entertaining now, just wait. The Mr. Beast-ification of DeChambeau’s content is on the way.
Don’t know that that last sentence means? That’s okay. You’re probably 35 or older. (That’s also okay.) Mr. Beast, as he is known on the Internet, is an awkward 26-year-old from Kansas named Jimmy Donaldson, who isn’t just among the most popular YouTubers on the planet. He is the most popular. With 343 million subscribers, he has a bigger audience than anyone else making videos. And it’s not particularly close.
Importantly, for your golf viewing purposes at least, one of those hundreds of millions of subscribers is Bryson DeChambeau.
DeChambeau’s recent turn — both in popularity and also in golfing form — really caught hold at the Masters last April, where he contended for multiple rounds for the first time in his career. It was the same week we all learned about his fascination with Mr. Beast.
“Continuing to grow those platforms in the way we know how is something I’m keen on doing and I’m excited to do for the future,” DeChambeau said, while holding the first round lead. “I think that’s where everything is going. You look at what Mr. Beast has done, and there’s a few other super famous people right now — Jynxzi and Sketch — and they are growing their avenues and their aspects, and it’s cool to see the cross-platforming capabilities. Like these individuals coming and playing golf and seeing how much influence they have is really cool. It’s just another avenue.”
An increasingly popular avenue. DeChambeau’s own YouTube account has grown by a factor of four in the last 12 months, from roughly 400,000 subscribers to about 1.7 million. Winning the U.S. Open in dramatic fashion certainly helps. But DeChambeau also developed a relationship with Donaldson, eventually creating some content together. We call that a collab.
In the notes of his own video, Mr. Beast linked to DeChambeau’s YouTube page, the industry version of a courtesy ‘thank you’ that might direct a few subscribers his way. But the real offering he gave to DeChambeau was the idea of stepping back from the camera and letting other people do the work for you. Mr. Beast’s entire existence is built on pitting normal people against each other, or even themselves, in wacky challenges he and his crew film. Everyday you survive in the wilderness, you get $10,000. Face your biggest fear for $800,000. Keep your hand touching a jet longer than anyone else, you win the jet.
With DeChambeau, Mr. Beast gave one contestant (Aaron) a chance to win $100,000 if he could just beat DeChambeau on a single hole. Only, the contestant was going to play to a golf hole cut 50 times the size of DeChambeau’s target, taking the idea of a big cup to a new level. DeChambeau won an impromptu playoff, but the concept was perfect. It gave Aaron just enough hope that he felt the weight of being watched and the pressure of what he could do with all that money. These are the few, golden ingredients that earn millions upon millions of views, but it all starts with a challenge.
For those who have tracked DeChambeau’s content endeavors, the entire draw of his YouTube channel is challenges. (You could say the same for almost all YouTube golf.) One week he’s trying to break 50 from the forward tees with a famous teammate. The next week he’s trying to shoot the course record at a random public course. He’ll take on other YouTube golfers, only DeChambeau has to play lefty.
The common denominator in all those challenges is obvious: DeChambeau as lead competitor. He’s been a protagonist in every challenge — it is his YouTube account — which serves a great purpose because he’s one of the 10 greatest golfers on the planet. But using DeChambeau as prop no. 1 has a ceiling that Mr. Beast doesn’t face, because he plays golf that is unrelateable. And the infective nature of Mr. Beast content is that the challenges are so simple in nature that viewers have no choice but to imagine themselves taking part, wondering just how long they could survive in the wilderness while cashing $10,000 every day.
Now, DeChambeau is taking his stab at that same type of gamification. Just last week DeChambeau posted for the first time a video that mimics Mr. Beast so exactly you’d think it was produced by his own staff. Over the course of 26 minutes, DeChambeau is seen as a golfing Willy Wonka — the video is sponsored by a chocolate company, after all — traipsing around a course in Dallas challenging a bunch of amateurs to various golf competitions. Sometimes he steps in as the sophisticated opponent, but often it was just an amateur playing against another, or against themselves.
Make a 3-footer for $1,000? Press your luck on a 6-footer for $2,000. How simple is that?
Beat Bryson in a chip-off? Not so easy, but a lot easier when he offers you three attempts.
Take one swing with your pitching wedge to hit the green from 137 yards. If you succeed, you’ll be $5,000 richer. (Before Uncle Sam takes his cut, of course.)
The reason this content works is partly due to DeChambeau’s energy. He feels like a generous carnie creating games on a whim for the prize of one-month’s salary. It’s also due to the golfer’s fallacy — because embedded within all of us is a belief of our very best golf shots. (And a misremembering of most of our worst.) Golf on a macro level is damn difficult. But golf on a micro level feels far more predictable. Far more doable. That’s what brings us in.
Then, of course, there is the wackiness that makes us watch all the way to the end. That’s a Mr. Beast speciality. Teasing viewers via the title, the thumbnail image, the first few seconds and constant references to the theatrics that might be coming. In the Mr. Beast video that DeChambeau starred in, the headline was “Beat Ronaldo for $1,000,000.” Well, viewers were asked to sit (or sift) through 19 minutes of other competitions and advertisements before watching a random person take on one of the greatest strikers of all time in a penalty kick target shootout. (No spoilers on how that turned out.)
For DeChambeau’s recent video — which has netted a million views in the first five days — the carrot at the end of the stick was a hole in one challenge, just like the kind DeChambeau gave himself in the fall, trying to make an ace over his own house. DeChambeau set up an amateur named Jimmy in the same position on the edge of his driveway and pointed him in the direction of his backyard green, roughly 95 yards away. He offered Jimmy a 7-hour deadline. Perhaps you’ve already heard about the result, or even watched it yourself. He needed just five swings.
What followed those swings was unbridled joy — from both host and guest — the kind we see top professionals exude only a few times a year. Only this one we could all relate to. We all defy belief every once in awhile on the course. It was just conceivable enough that those of us at home could dream about what we’d do in a similar situation. And plenty good enough to keep us wondering what challenge comes next.
Sean Zak is a senior writer and author of Searching in St. Andrews, which followed his travels in Scotland during the most pivotal summer in the game’s history.
