It was a unique opportunity for the Koepka brothers, who had rarely seen each other in recent years as Brooks focused on winning majors and playing on the PGA Tour while Chase sought to make his mark on various developmental tours around the world.

“Our schedules never matched up,” Chase said. “Now they’re matched up and it’s awesome being able to spend time together. Our relationship has gotten better.”

But now a potential break-up looms. Not by choice, of course, but by performance.

Chase enters LIV Golf Chicago as one of four players in the Drop Zone on the individual points standings. Non-captains ranked 45th or worse after the regular season will be relegated out of the league. Chase currently ranks 48th with just one point. He has this week’s event and next month’s tournament in Jeddah to climb out of the Drop Zone.

Otherwise, he’ll be relegated, which means he’ll have no status for the 2024 LIV Golf League unless he plays his way back in during the promotional tournament later this year.

In essence, Brooks may be forced to jettison his own brother from the Smash line-up unless things improve.

LIV Golf

The situation is urgent, to say the least. That’s why they’ve practised together every day the past two weeks in the lead-up to Rich Harvest Farms. While Brooks has been priming his game for next week’s Ryder Cup, he’s also been helping Chase solve the issues that have led to this predicament.

It’s a perspective that’s familiar to Brooks, as he struggled with his own play while battling injuries before pulling himself out of it in the last year with two LIV Golf wins as well as his fifth major victory in May at the PGA Championship.

“I told him, I’ve been through that stretch where you’re not playing well,” Brooks said. “He’s working hard, I’ll give him that. That’s why I haven’t gotten on him. I’m proud of him. He’s gutted through this thing, and eventually it’s going to turn right side up, and that’s what I just keep telling him. I’ve been in those shoes two years ago. It will come around.”

But will it come around in time for Chase to keep his spot on the Smash roster? He has six regular-season rounds left to make a move.

“It’s all in my hands,” Chase said. “If I play well, I can get myself out of it. It’s not like this is the first time anyone’s been in this situation and played their way out of it. It can be done. Luckily, I’ve got two weeks. If it doesn’t happen this week, it can happen in Jeddah.”

For it to happen, he’ll need to solve the issues with his short game.

Chase is currently ranked 47th in scrambling, and 46th in putting this season. Those rankings are out of 48 LIV Golf regulars. Since he’s not a bomber like his older brother, Chase must rely on his short game to score. But it just hasn’t happened for him this season — and as he struggled to find a solution, it impacted other parts of his game.

“Honestly, it’s been bad, to the point where I felt like I had the chipping yips,” Chase admitted. “It’s not been fun.”

He and Brooks have focused on hitting the reset button. They’ve put in long hours, arriving at the gym at 6am and not returning from practice until 8pm. Putting and chipping games have been intense. The goal was to make practices so hard that playing a competitive round actually would be easier.

Meanwhile, they’ve tried to adjust Chase’s approach. Stop concentrating on the results and just go out and play golf. “Not results-focused this week,” Brooks said. The stars couldn’t be aligned more properly for a big week for Chase.

Last year at Rich Harvest Farms, he tied for eighth on the traditional leaderboard and finished ninth in points. It’s his best result in 18 regular-season LIV starts. So, he should have good vibes on the course.

There’s also the party-hole element on the par-3 17th, mimicking the Watering Hole in Adelaide earlier this year. Chase, if you recall, had the shot of the season in the final round in Australia when he produced a hole-in-one and set off a raucous celebration with flying drinks and endless chest bumps.

“Tell you what — I’m gonna get a lot of boos if I don’t repeat, which will be a tough ask,” Chase said with a smile. “But I think it’s awesome we’re able to do a hole here in the States.”

And in the first round, he’ll play with Smash teammates Kokrak and Matthew Wolff, as all non-captains will be playing together as teammates on Friday. “He’ll be comfortable with Wolff and myself,” Kokrak said. “It’ll settle him down, especially from the start.”

Ultimately, though, Chase’s fate for next season will be decided with his performance. If he can find his short game this week, he can produce a good-enough result to move outside the Drop Zone and give himself some breathing room going into Jeddah.

If he doesn’t, then he’ll go to Saudi Arabia in mid-October facing do-or-die pressure. Having just become an uncle to Brooks’ newborn son Crew, Chase dearly wants to maintain a parallel schedule to his brother, sharing in family get-togethers as well as sharing common goals as teammates.

“He’s rooting for me to play well and get out of the situation that I’m in,” Chase said. “We’re both rooting for each other. If you ask him, the first name he looks for on the leaderboard is my name. And it’s the same thing when I look for his name.

“We stick together as brothers and push each other as hard as we can. That’s why this is so special.”

Main image: LIV Golf

The post Brooks looks to Ryder Cup, but it is crunch time for Chase in LIV Golf survival race appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
SANDWICH, England — The question didn’t have to cause any damage. Bryson, why don’t you shout fore? DeChambeau could have swatted it away quite easily. I try to, but sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I forget. It’s definitely something I need to work on. That would’ve been the end of it. Instead, when asked on Tuesday in his pre-tournament press conference at the 149th Open Championship, he opted to play defence.

“I do shout fore,” he said, despite recent video clips that say otherwise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The entire tenor of the conversation shifted. He felt attacked, and the media had its headline, and social media had its ammunition. Again. And this came before any queries about the feud that simply will not die. He seems to wish it would.

And therein lies the great contradiction at play. Bryson DeChambeau has repeatedly put himself at the centre of a dizzying media circus he clearly does not enjoy. That was evidenced all too well this week at Royal St. Geroge’s where DeChambeau rolled in a nervy five-footer for par on the 18th hole Friday to make the cut on the number at one-over 141. With that, DeChambeau will get two more rounds in southeast England to try to put some distance between himself and another hugely distracting off-course disturbance.

“We forget as outsiders that every player has their own personality,” says Dr. Bhrett McCabe, a sports psychologist who works with a host of PGA Tour players. “Some people like to be left alone, some like to keep a really tight circle. For these types of people, outsiders can be very concerning, almost threatening. We have to remember these guys have personalities.”

DeChambeau conveyed a similar sentiment in that same press conference on Tuesday when asked if he might thrive off controversy. (He does not).

“Everybody is human. I’m definitely human. We all make mistakes and things happen. We have emotion. And I think that sometimes people objectify us big players at the top of the game too much, and they don’t realize that we are human and we make mistakes and things happen. … Do I like showcasing something unique and different? Yeah, but I guess what comes with that is controversy, and I guess that’s something that I don’t necessarily deal the best with sometimes.”

Only the controversy that perpetually follows DeChambeau does not come as an automatic byproduct of him being unique and different. Few who have given it more than five seconds of thought have taken issue with his single-length irons, or his math-based approach, or his late-night range sessions, or his quest for speed. Quite the contrary. His singularity is his most charming attribute. It is the reason he has his umpteen sponsorships. It’s why he’s a main attraction in every golf tournament he plays in. Among PGA Tour pros, there is something of a consensus: No matter your personal feelings about the guy, you have to respect his work ethic.

It’s the other stuff that rubs people the wrong way, that prompts Jason Dufner and Luke Donald and Justin Thomas to take public shots after DeChambeau’s one-over 71 during the first round, when he delivered another self-inflicted wound.

The question that prompted the already infamous “driver sucks” comment was an innocuous one, too. Encouraging, even: “You only hit four fairways from 14. Despite that obviously not looking great, you must take a lot of heart that you’re still o and still in with a shout despite kind of wayward drives. If you straightened those up, you certainly must think you must be contending by the end of the week.”

There was no reason to go there. It wasn’t a trap. After battling back on Friday with two late birdies to shoot an even-par 70, DeChambeau struck a tone that suggests he finally understands that.

“I played the game growing up so I could win tournaments and be one of the best players in the world, not really to be famous. Obviously, it comes with it. I know that. But growing up, it was all about just playing golf.”

A reporter then pointed out that it is, in fact, possible to be famous without being controversial.

“Oh, absolutely. I would love that to be the case. There are probably three or four things going on right now that everybody latches on to and says out there on the golf course. It is what it is. I’m 27, I’m human, I make mistakes. Yesterday was another one of those. I continue to keep making mistakes, unfortunately.

Andrew Redington
DeChambeau plays his second shot on the 17th hole Friday, en route to an even-par 70 and making the cut on the number.

“It’s frustration. Not thinking the right way, saying the right things. I’ve messed up in my career, and every time I mess up, I learn from it. This is another learning moment … in regards to the media, I’ve struggled sometimes with the words I say, and it’s my fault.”

Self-awareness had replaced defensiveness, at least for a day, and self-awareness is key.

DeChambeau desperately wants to get back to basics. He’d love a reset button, to quiet the external noise and narrow the focus to what happens between the ropes, which is often extraordinary. He is a brilliant golfer, and he has been since before the bulk-up. One does not win the U.S. Amateur and the NCAA Championship and the U.S. Open and eight PGA Tour events on a fluke.

For those who followed DeChambeau around Royal St. George’s on Friday, one thing was unmistakably clear: vocal minority aside, the fans by and large hold no hard feelings. They welcomed him to every tee and elbowed each other for a better view. They egged him on to hit driver and groaned when he pulled an iron, and he quipped back, which tickled them pink. There is a big, big world outside the Twitter vortex.

Charlie Crowhurst/R&A
Dechambeau interacts with fans on first hole Friday during his second round at Royal St. George’s.

When Bryson’s golf is the story, he is a huge asset to this game. Golf needs every ounce of different it can get, and the guy wearing a funky hat who slams protein shakes and swings like he’s in a long-drive contest certainly qualifies. Think back to Bay Hill, when he damn near drove a par 5 and won the tournament to boot. Media coverage was overwhelmingly positive, and he relished the attention.

It’s really not that complicated, nor is his reputation beyond repair. He said, with a look of genuine contrition, that he’ll learn from this latest mistake. Hopefully he does, if only for his own sake.

The post Bryson DeChambeau clearly wants a reset. It’s possible, if he takes his own advice appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.