Bryson DeChambeau is not just a two-time U.S. Open champion, but he’s also quick with a witty comeback.
DeChambeau roasted Rory McIlroy while the two were on the practice range ahead of the Crypto.com Showdown airing Tuesday on TNT.
McIlroy jokingly said that he’d “like to go up against Bryson and try to get him back for what he did to me at the U.S. Open.”
DeChambeau was quick to reply: “To be fair, you kind of did it to yourself.”
The crowd around the two golf stars erupted in laughter and DeChambeau was wearing a smirk on his face after.
The comment of course was poking fun at McIlroy’s epic collapse at the U.S. Open last June at Pinehurst No. 2.
McIlroy suffered one of the toughest defeats of his career when he lost the lead on the back nine, missing a putt a little more than two feet away on hole 16 and then another putt — this time from four feet — on the last hole to finish behind DeChambeau.
DeChambeau punctuated the day by hitting a bunker shot from 55 yards away from the pin on the final hole and saw it land inside four feet before he made the putt to capture the major victory.
McIlroy could only watch on from the clubhouse as it happened.
Due to golf’s ongoing civil war, it’s rare to see McIlroy and DeChambeau on the same golf course outside of the four major tournaments each year.
But Tuesday’s showdown pits McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler from the PGA Tour against LIV Golf’s DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka at Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas for an 18-hole event that will include four-balls, foursomes and singles play over the course of the event.
In the three years since LIV Golf burst on the scene, the sport of golf has been divided between the rebel golf league and the PGA Tour.
DeChambeau and Koepka, along with the likes of other stars such as Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, have left the PGA Tour for LIV. The PGA Tour has banned LIV Golf players from competing in Tour events since LIV launched.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, McIlroy acknowledged how an event like Tuesday’s can be a reminder to golf fans of the divide that exists currently.
“Does it remind people that we’re not playing together all the time? Yes,” McIlroy told the outlet. “But at least we’re making an effort to try to bring the best together more often. And you know, if we can start by doing things like this, I think that’s only a good thing.”
That divide could be coming to an end down the road as earlier this month the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — which backs LIV — reached an agreement for the PIF to invest more than a billion dollars into the Tour’s commercial arm. It finalized a pact that the two sides first announced back in 2023.
