Bryson DeChambeau went surprisingly deep on the loneliness he felt after winning his first major
Gregory Shamus
Bryson DeChambeau is hardly the first successful person to achieve the ultimate goal and wonder "what now?" immediately afterward. And he won't be the last.
He did, however, go a little deeper than that during a recent appearance on the "Figuring Out with Raj Shamani" podcast.
For DeChambeau, that ultimate goal was winning a major, something he first accomplished at the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot. The victory was extra satisfying for the Mad Scientist because he did it his way—by bulking up and overpowering an iconic venue with mammoth drives that consistently put him closer to the hole than everybody else. One of the many signs of where the game was going, and has gone since.
But the work began long before DeChambeau's bulk-up era. It was something he worked toward his whole life.
"Your entire life, you're told that's what the goal is," DeChambeau told Shamani. "The goal is to get to this trophy. And then you realize when you hit it, you go, I gave up most of my life for this. I gave 20 years of my life to do this and I did it. Well, now what do I do?"
The weight of that thought hit particularly hard for DeChambeau in that era of his life, when he had no one close to him to celebrate with after all the dust had settled.
"I mean, I don't have a family. I don't have kids. I don't have a wife," he said. "And, you know, that's one of the things where I had the trophy right next to my bed. I'll never forget. We had a nice party. We were all having fun. And I go to bed. It's tough to sleep, by the way. Your endorphins and your adrenaline is still going.
"But you sleep for the five, six hours and you wake up and you look over and you're like, oh, I won the U.S. Open. And then right after you say that, it's like, what do I do next? I'm in bed alone. I don't have my family with me. I don't have anybody around. And it's, it's a real moment of frailty and it's not easy."
DeChambeau continued: "I don't have somebody loving on me and giving me a kiss and a kid coming up on the bed and holding my hand and all that. Is that really what I want to do for my life? Is that one legacy I want to leave to? And so it really transforms you and makes you realize what life is about.
"So it's a great thing. It's also a humbling thing and it makes you feel lonely at first. But if you can get past that loneliness, you realize what life is truly about."
Dang … that hit pretty hard.
Fortunately, while DeChambeau doesn't quite have a family yet, he is in a relationship with former professional hockey goaltender Mikayla Demaiter, who he was photographed with last month on Marine One alongside President Donald Trump.
You can hear the full interview with Shamani below, which also features DeChambeau's comments on LIV Golf's bankruptcy and his thoughts on Tiger Woods' fierce competitiveness: