Chamblee Rips DeChambeau for Major Struggles: 'Chasing Grant Horvat'

Bryson DeChambeau arrived at the summer of 2026 as a player in freefall. Two years earlier, he had won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst with a bunker shot on the final hole that beat Rory McIlroy—a moment that seemed to announce his arrival among golf's elite. But the intervening months had been unkind. Three major championships in 2026, three missed cuts. Augusta, Aronimink, Shinnecock: each one a failure to make the weekend. At the U.S. Open, he missed the cut alongside respectable players like Viktor Hovland and Patrick Reed, but for a man of his caliber, the company offered no comfort.

The arc of his decline had been visible for anyone watching. In 2025, he had posted three top-ten finishes in majors—a T5 at The Masters, a T2 at the PGA Championship, a T10 at The Open. Solid results, the kind that suggested a player still operating at a high level. But missing the cut as the defending U.S. Open champion at Oakmont had stung. Now, a year later, the pattern had worsened into something harder to explain away.

Golf's commentariat was not kind. Nick Faldo, the six-time major champion, offered a surgical critique: DeChambeau had no understanding of links strategy. "He said last year he was going to attack the links," Faldo said. "Well, I've never attacked a links. You thread it. You feed it down the fairway." The implication was clear—DeChambeau's power-first approach, the same one that had won him majors on traditional courses, was a liability on the windswept layouts where precision and restraint mattered more than distance.

But it was analyst Brandel Chamblee who delivered the sharpest blow. "It's almost like he went from chasing Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to chasing Grant Horvat," Chamblee said. The reference landed hard: Horvat is a prominent YouTube golfer, talented by any measure but operating in a different universe from the world's best players. The implication was that DeChambeau had traded ambition for content creation, that his focus had splintered between competing at the highest level and building an audience online. "It's like he wants to outdo every YouTuber in the game of golf instead of outplay everybody in the game of golf."

The criticism had some structural logic to it. DeChambeau had joined LIV Golf, which meant he played most of his competitive golf away from the traditional tour. The only real measuring stick left was majors—the only stage where he faced Scheffler, McIlroy, and the rest of the world's best on equal footing. When he failed there, the narrative filled the void. And yes, DeChambeau did make YouTube videos. He had made them in 2024 too, when he was winning majors, but that detail seemed to matter less when results were good.

There were counterarguments worth considering. DeChambeau had established himself as a top-three player in the world in 2024 while simultaneously creating content. His unconventional methods—the 3D-printed single-length irons, the upstart shaft companies, the idiosyncratic chipping technique—had worked before. At Royal Portrush the previous year, he had finished T10, ahead of English players like Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose who were supposedly more naturally suited to links golf. He had also dealt with injuries this season, a detail that might have explained some of the decline.

But golf, as the saying goes, is a game of results. DeChambeau had one major remaining—The Open at Royal Birkdale—to salvage something from the wreckage of 2026. The critics were skeptical. His strategy was wrong, they said. His focus was divided. His time had passed. He could prove them wrong by playing well this weekend. Or he could go make a YouTube video with Grant Horvat and accept that the conversation had moved on.