There was a time when Bryson DeChambeau’s body transformation was as much a part of his storyline as his golf accomplishments.
Using something called Muscle Activation Technique, the SMU product put 40 pounds of muscle on his 6-foot-1 frame, something that helped him break through for his first major championship at Winged Foot as he won the 2020 U.S. Open.
In 2021, DeChambeau looked as if he could start at nose tackle for an NFL team. But by the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, where he doubled his number of major titles by edging Rory McIlroy, the 30-year-old looked more like a running back or a safety.
In advance of the LIV Golf Team Championship, which will take place from Sept. 20-22 at Maridoe Golf Club outside of Dallas, DeChambeau looked back at that era with a different lens than most.
While most would have used words like brawny or burly to describe DeChambeau’s physique during that timeframe, he felt the added weight made him look different.
“You can say I was fat,” he said. “It’s okay.”
Now svelte and as popular as ever, DeChambeau is happy he worked through his experiment, one that saw him claim to drink at least a half-dozen protein shakes per day while consuming 3,500 calories. But he now says he feels stronger in his current state.
“Ultimately, I’m always going to see things through. If I believe in something, I’m going to see it through to the end. If there was anything that didn’t work, I will take that out of the picture, which I have,” he said. “There are things that didn’t work, obviously, and I’m now down to a weight where I feel like I can sustain this for the rest of my life and just continue to get incrementally stronger over the course of time because I do feel stronger than I was when I was at the height of my weight gain.
“I wouldn’t say that that weight gain is what attributed to strength. I feel like it was a test to see how fast I could grow, and there were ramifications to that.”
Bryson DeChambeau at The Old White at the Greenbrier. (Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports)
Although he’s not grinding in the gym the way he once did, fitness still plays a vital role in DeChambeau’s life. He feels now, however, that he’s discovered the right balance.
“I figured it out. I’m now in a place where I’m super comfortable, and I continue to get a little bit stronger, albeit I’m not speed training every day, I’m not going at it every day,” he said. “I still have that speed inherently in me, and whenever I want to, I can get to 205 ball speed within 15 balls. That reserve is still there. It’s just I don’t push it very often because I don’t want to injure or hurt anything, and it takes a while to get to those speeds consistently.
“Again, my focus is transition to winning tournaments and being competitive in major championships and winning them.”
In his first 18 starts on the PGA Tour after golf returned from COVID, DeChambeau won three times – including that 2020 U.S. Open – and had seven other top 10s – including a tie for third in the Charles Schwab Challenge and a tie for fourth in the PGA Championship.
That led some like Rory McIlroy to consider similar measures in an attempt to stay on an even plane.
“I think there’s a ton of respect in that. I don’t think it’s anything more than him seeing a potential and going, okay, am I missing something? As competitive as he is, as competitive as we all are, I think they were looking at it from a perspective of, man, I don’t want to get left behind,” DeChambeau said. “That’s in a positive way. That’s not in a negative way at all. It was like, wow, I want to see if I can do that, too.”