U.S. Ryder Cup team’s biggest ‘weapon’ lurking in plain sight

As he filled out his roster with his six wild-card selections on Wednesday at PGA Frisco, captain Keegan Bradley praised each member of his American Ryder Cup team.

He lauded captain’s pick Justin Thomas as the “heartbeat” of the team, commended Russell Henley’s “gutsy” competitiveness and applauded Collin Morikawa’s ball striking. But one player drew more praise than others: Bryson DeChambeau.

The two-time U.S. Open champion automatically qualified for Team USA on the back of his sterling performance in majors over the past two seasons. Playing on LIV Golf, DeChambeau is rarely around Bradley and the other core members of the team, but the Crushers GC frontman has done whatever is needed to bridge the divide created by golf’s fracture and become part of the fabric of the 2025 team.

“A lot to say about Bryson,” Bradley said on Wednesday. “One of the most incredible things is he qualified for this team off of eight starts, which is unheard of. But what I’m most impressed [by] is the effort that he’s made to be a part of this team. He’s had to travel, go out of his way to meet us in our places, and he’s gone above and beyond what we would ever ask of a player, and that’s the thing I’m most proud of. You can go on and on about what an incredible player he is and golfer, but what he’s done for this team, putting in the extra effort, is amazing to see.”

DeChambeau didn’t make the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2023, but he was a member of the 2021 team that routed Europe at Whistling Straits. Since that time, DeChambeau’s popularity has soared thanks to a booming YouTube channel and a move to LIV that helped him become more comfortable in his own skin. That comfortability has been aided by the team golf aspect that DeChambeau genuinely enjoys. While it’s impossible to know how seriously to take his record as Crushers captain, DeChambeau’s role as their leader has helped him come out of his shell and shown him that his past struggles in team events were due to poor team-building, which is something he wants to help rectify this time around.

“The way I’ve personally led my team is, I’ve let them be their individual self, their best individual self,” DeChambeau said of his Crushers team of Paul Casey, Charles Howell III and Anirban Lahiri at the Open Championship. “However I can get Paul to be his best, Charles to be his best, and ‘Ban to be his best.

“[That’s] what has led us to be the most successful out there. [What] I’ve learned from team golf is to let the individual be the best individual they can possibly be to add to the team. That’s it. Don’t try to put someone in a bubble and say you need to do this, you need to do that. What I learned best from my college coach, Josh Gregory, was just that: Let me be me. That’s why I did so well in college. That’s how I’ve led the Crushers; it’s the same exact thing. I’ve let them be them. That’s the way I’ll move forward in team competition.”

Call it maturity, a change of scenery or an epiphany, but the Bryson DeChambeau that was once viewed as a PGA Tour pariah — one whose heckling led to countless columns on bullying during the 2021 season — is now one of the game’s most popular figures. Being part of a team has helped him find an area in which he thrives — contributing to a collective goal — and be more authentic, which has earned him an avalanche of fan support worldwide. The Bryson DeChambeau who was previously viewed as an outsider at team competitions is now a golf megastar who seems to thrive in that setting and is freed up as a more genuine version of himself.

While Bradley’s unselfish decision not to pick himself as a playing captain might galvanize Team USA heading into Bethpage, their larger advantage might lie in DeChambeau and what he has found since his last Ryder Cup endeavor.

“Well, the simple fact is that Bryson DeChambeau is one of the best golfers on planet Earth,” Bradley told Golf Channel’s Damon Hack on Wednesday. “We can pair him up with a lot of guys. He has been very open with — he’ll play with anybody. He’s just rabid to get out there and represent his country at Bethpage Black. He’s a really great weapon that we’re going to have. Bryson has been absoltely incredible through this whole process. Whether he is on LIV or whatever tour he is on, it doesn’t matter on that first tee at Bethpage Black. It matters that we have 12 strong U.S. players that are willing to come together and win the Ryder Cup.”

At the Open Championship, DeChambeau promised to bring a “tsunami” of crowd energy to Bethpage Black as the U.S. looks to rebound from its loss in Rome to take back the Cup.

Should Sept. 28 end with the U.S. squad dousing themselves in champagne on Long Island, having an all-in DeChambeau, who is now fully comfortable being Bryson DeChambeau and has a mountain of crowd support behind him, will be a big reason why.