LIV GOLF TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP MEDIA DAY

August 22, 2024

Bryson DeChambeau

David Feherty

Albert Huddleston

Maridoe Golf Club

Media Day Press Conference

JANE MacNEILLE: Thank you so much for joining us today to celebrate LIV Golf Dallas, our team championship. For those of you that have not experienced a LIV Golf event in person, they are a little bit different than normal events. We've got a little video if you guys will turn your attention over here. You can get a vibe for what to expect from the atmosphere.

[Video shown.]

If that didn't give you goosebumps, get you ready for what's going on in Dallas in just a few short weeks, we are all about team, team, team at LIV Golf, and LIV Golf Dallas is our team championship, so it's a little bit different than our season events.

It's a three-day seeded knockout match play event, so even more excitement, even more on the line. We've got a little video to explain how that's going to work because it's different from our normal events, if you can roll that, as well, please.

[Video shown.]

We are joined today by our 2023 LIV Golf team championship captain from Crushers GC, Bryson DeChambeau. Let's give him a big welcome. He is also our 2024 U.S. Open champion, and the Crushers are currently in first place heading into the team championship, so they will get a bye that first week and have a chance to take it home again for back-to-back years.

We are joined by the owner of Maridoe Golf Club, Albert Huddleston. Thank you so much for hosting us today and in just a few short weeks, Albert. We are also joined by David Feherty. With that, I will kick it over to you, David.

DAVID FEHERTY: Thank you, Jane. Albert, let me start with you. First of all, how did this come about to be here at Maridoe?

ALBERT HUDDLESTON: Well, I guess about one year ago, I was reached out to by LIV, and Maridoe has been created to be a place to host championships, also be a sandbox of fellowship, members, guests, and we've been very blessed to have USGA championships, Trans Miss Championship, Southern Amateur Championship, so forth.

So it's been my dream and passion and why Maridoe exists is to periodically have some of the best players anywhere come to Maridoe and show their skills and create a tremendous opportunity to honor golf, to expand golf, and to do something that's not only local, national and international.

When LIV explained what they were wanting to do, it was easy for me to say yes. I'm pleased that we did. I'm excited about where we're going and excited about the upcoming tournament.

DAVID FEHERTY: That's funny; when they asked me, it was easy to say yes, as well.

Bryson, how would you evaluate your year so far?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, first off, I just want to say thank you to Albert for having us out here for the team championship. We had it in Doral last year, and we had a great time, but this is going to prove the best team this year. So thank you for having us.

I've had a good relationship with you for quite a while now, and I'm excited to see what we can do with this place and what we can do moving forward. It's going to be an exciting week here in a couple weeks.

For me personally, this year has been an interesting year. Obviously winning a U.S. Open has been great. I haven't done as well as I would have liked to on LIV. Personally I've had a bunch of top 10s, a bunch of close calls, just haven't gotten the job done, and hopefully I can do that in Chicago. But the game is still trending in a good direction. Been working really hard behind the scenes.

There's a lot of business that does go on behind the scenes as a captain, which is a good thing, and I'm excited for it, but what I can tell you is the game is continuing to trend, and looking forward to not only Chicago but this event and the team championship here at Maridoe.

DAVID FEHERTY: It's almost as if you've had two careers so far. You had that first part of your career where people really couldn't get a handle on who --

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: They still can't.

DAVID FEHERTY: But this year or the last couple of years you've really sort of blossomed at LIV, especially with how you deal with people. What's been the biggest change there?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I would say getting a little bit older. Look, I'm only 30, about to turn 31. I'd say being a little more understanding of others and understanding what the game of golf needs is a huge component for me.

I think YouTube has been a big platform for me. LIV has been a gigantic platform for me to have a great team around me. When I've got Paul, Baan and Charles pushing me forward every single day, and that's my teammates, so Paul Casey, Charles Howell and Anirban Lahiri, those three individuals make up the Crushers, and they have been supportive from day one. They're the ones that took the leap of faith with me and said we're going to help make this successful.

I think that's been the biggest change is having a team around me that is continuing to engage, continuing to push. They know, Bryson, come on, you can do better, you can do better. They're a lot wiser than me; I can tell you that. There's no young guns on my team. But that's what makes it so special and I think why we're so stable, as well.

DAVID FEHERTY: It was really important for you to have pretty much everyone in the western hemisphere touch that U.S. Open trophy.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: That's right. Absolutely. Obviously this was a pretty special moment, winning at Pinehurst, having a connection to SMU and to Dallas and to Payne Stewart and what this community means to me. Albert right out of college was nice enough to help me afford travel and be able to go places and play across the world in Abu Dhabi, Australia, and so he was instrumental in that, and it's kind of coming full circle as to him hosting the team championship. It just makes for a pretty special story of how this is all coming together and a full-fledged story.

Thank you for everything you've done and helping me in my career and now also with LIV and what we're doing with LIV and what we're able to accomplish. I can't wait to see what we all do.

But again, having this trophy, and if you guys want to touch it, you guys are more than welcome to. Whenever we're done with this, come up and touch it and take a picture. It's going to be a lot of fun. But there's also a team championship trophy right here that if you guys want to see what that's about, that's a pretty special one, as well. It's a unique looking trophy. It's actually three-pieced; you can pull it apart. It's pretty cool. You can do some fun stuff with it.

I certainly have had some fun with these bad boys, and again, Pinehurst will always have a special place in my heart, and I'm looking forward to more to come.

DAVID FEHERTY: Albert, when did you first meet or when did you first become aware of this guy?

ALBERT HUDDLESTON: Well, he was at SMU, and I grew up in a golf family. My father was a great player. He won the club championship every year he could afford to be a member that year. So I grew up around that golf is a very special place. It's a character-defining sport. I've always supported golf.

I always try to help SMU, local, Payne Stewart, memories of Payne and others.

But it was interesting, SMU, I wanted to take them to the Floridian in Florida, and so I called up and said, I want to take the entire team by plane to the Floridian where I belong and have an outing, a winter outing.

So we were there, and I was on the putting green, and I look down and I see this blue chalk line, it's an azimuth, and I'm sitting there going, who put an azimuth on the putting green? This young fella goes, you know what that is? I said, well, of course I know what that is. It was Bryson, of course.

So all of a sudden, we hit it off immediately because the world plays checkers; some people play chess; Bryson and I, I think, merge into three-dimensional chess. Bryson is very genuine, and we hit it off, and we continued to have a conversation afterwards, and then he went on to have a glorious six months with winning the NCAA championship, the U.S. Amateur, and I had him over to the house because I wanted to make sure that he was able to initiate his journey without the pressure of maybe the wrong people wanting to use him rather than support him.

So my wife Mary and I did so, and it's nice of Bryson to bring that up. It was a very small thing, but I do think when you're there at the beginning in someone's journey, those are the most memorable moments. It's easy to stand on top of the mountain with somebody who's successful and put your arm around them. The people I remember are the ones who put their -- your under-the-bus tire and a hand comes down and pulls you out.

Bryson has been very genuine, he's been very gracious, and we couldn't be more excited for his success, and I have a lot of the LIV players who I know, also, through a variety of events and times. So it's just a real privilege to be associated with LIV.

This is an inanimate object, Maridoe. It comes to life because of people, the people like yourselves sitting in this audience, the Brysons, all the people involved with this. This is exciting for me. This is why we have Maridoe. We want to thank all of y'all for being interested. Thank you.

DAVID FEHERTY: I'm going to go home and Google azimuth. It's not the first mathematical term he's hit me with and I have no clue what it was. We're almost three seasons into LIV now, Bryson, and as you say, it was a leap of faith for all of us to take that jump. What do you think we've accomplished in these nearly three years?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I think that we have -- personally, in my opinion, we have changed the vision of the game of golf. I think there is so much opportunity now moving forward than there previously was. Golf in my opinion was in a place of -- I feel like it was a bit stagnant. I feel like there was times where we could have done more. There was more to be done, and things weren't necessarily done in the way that some of the players thought they could have been done.

What I mean by that is LIV came around and we all saw this opportunity of team golf and being partial owners of teams and creating business value and creating value across the world, not only just from a business perspective but an opportunity to grow the game globally. That was a big decision for me to be a part of something like that where we could reach different parts of the world, whether it's Singapore, Hong Kong, hopefully India at some point. Anirban is a big component of our team, and he wants to do something special there.

What we can do with building academies, creating driving ranges, education centers, there's just so much we can do when we bring people together and players together to help grow this great game globally.

DAVID FEHERTY: Just watching the sizzle reel there that all of you saw before, half of it was guys breaking clubs, which is not the usual sizzle reel when somebody is trying to promote an event. But we have the full range of emotions at LIV. It's a show, I think, that's more headed towards entertainment.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, there's so much passion, I can tell you. One of the biggest things for me in coming over was seeing everyone and how much they actually cared every single shot because it wasn't just about them. When you're on -- if I'm playing in a tournament, another tour, and it's Saturday or Sunday and I'm not playing well, you're really playing for yourself, which is fantastic, it's a great thing.

But man, when you're out here with LIV and you're playing on Sunday and your fourth score counts and matters because out here four scores count on Sunday, and you're 35th on the leaderboard and you're not going to win but your team is up there next to the lead, and you have a five-footer for par, that five-footer now means the world to that team. If you don't make that, you feel like you've let your team down.

There's so much pressure involved all the way across the tournament line. That's what I think is so special. There have been times where Baan and I -- at Mayakoba this year, we in the last three holes said, all right, we're both going to birdie every single hole coming in. It was this look in each other's guys, and it was like, we're going to birdie every single hole coming in. We played well. The same thing with Hong Kong, Paul and I. He was competing for an individual title. I was competing for an individual title.

But we were still competing for a team championship there. We were playing in the same group. We finished on 16, and he was one shot ahead. If I birdied the hole, I tied for the lead, and Paul hit it in the back bunker. He actually holes out, and normally I'd be like, son of a gun. I was jumping in the air for him because he actually made a birdie to get into a playoff with Cam and Abraham Ancer. I missed my birdie putt, and ultimately it didn't matter if I made it, but still. We were fighting to the end to be the individual champion, but we still wanted the team to win. That was to win for the team, as well. So he holed out and I made par for us to win the team championship aspect of it.

That's what I think is so special and different about LIV is that you're not just competing for yourself but you're competing for a team. With some teams, it's their country. You've got the Rippers and Australia. You've got the Stingers and South Africa. It means so much more.

DAVID FEHERTY: It's tribal.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It is. I think that's what's so beautiful about it is you're representing not only yourself but sometimes a country, as well, or a region. So I think it's beautiful.

DAVID FEHERTY: How important is it for LIV players to win major championships?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I don't know. How important do you think it is? I would say it's a huge priority for individuals. The game of golf is in an interesting place right now. It's going to get figured out. I know that. I have zero doubt that it will get figured out. It's going to take some time.

But I know that every single person on LIV does want to play in major championships, wants to compete at the highest level all the time with everyone as much as possible out there in those majors. It is something we strive for, and it's important for all of us, and I can't talk enough about how important it is for us to be included in some capacity in these majors. It's very important.

DAVID FEHERTY: Do me a favor and describe for all of us in the room, because I was here so long ago, I have very little memory of what the golf course looks like. I know it's changed. What sort of a golf course is Maridoe?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: So I think Albert can describe his golf course that he designed best for himself, but from my perspective, I view it as a fantastic links style movable golf course here in Dallas that is unique to its own. I've never seen a golf course that looks the way that Maridoe does.

There are other golf courses around here that are links style, but this one tops it for sure. We were talking just a minute ago, he was likening it to a couple golf courses up in Chicago and whatnot. There is that feeling up there as well as it is here, when it's rolling and moving -- you talk about Winged Foot, there's some rolling, moving greens, sloping greens, and that's what you'll find out here. There's a lot of movement.

I think that's what's so cool about this golf course. I liken it to you're never going to play the golf course the same way every single day. It's a unique golf course every day you come out here. That's what makes this golf course such a tough test of golf is that you can hit a really great shot and the wind change and it comes up short and it rolls into a completely different area. Much like Pinehurst, you have to control your golf ball so well.

What he's built is a championship-style test of golf where you've got to be incredibly precise to play this golf course well.

It was known for quite a while to be the toughest golf course in Dallas for a long -- it still probably is the toughest golf course in Dallas I would say. I know that a lot of Tour players come out here and play because they want to get better, and that's what this golf course provides. It's an awesome test of golf, and you've got to be on your game.

DAVID FEHERTY: Finally what, would it mean to you for the Crushers to win the team championship this year?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: It would mean everything. This is why we as the Crushers play out here, not only to win individual LIV titles and win majors when we're able to play in them, but also to win a team championship. We set our sights on it last year.

I duly remember all four of us coming together last year, and this was before the LIV event in Saudi, and we said, our goal this year is to win the team championship no matter what. We got burned by the Stingers the first year in 2022, and then last year we said, we know we're the best out here. We have the most consistent record. We know how to get the job done. We thrive under pressure. We have to win this this year.

We set that goal upon ourselves, and it was a full-pressed mission to win the team championship last year.

When we got to Miami, it was solely focused on -- there was no funny business. It was, we are going to win this tournament. Sure enough, we went out and beat the Cleeks in the first round and then we went and played the last day, all four scores counting, and Baan showed up. He shot, I think, 6-under, something like that, something along those lines. I shot 4-under or something along those lines. Charles and Paul were super consistent like they always are, and we won. When I made that putt, I can't tell you the chills that I got in my body. Just setting a goal and accomplishing it the year we talked about it, it was just fantastic. My whole team coming around and jumping up on that 18th green and supporting us was some feeling that I will not forget ever. It was an amazing feeling.

Yeah, LIV has a short history, but again, history is where you make it. We personally feel like we were a part of that, and come 30, 40 years down the line, people are going to look back on that and go, wow, that was a moment. That was a moment to not forget. I think that's what people do forget is that it does take time for things to develop and cement themselves in history, and we feel like we were a massive part of it, so to do it again and do it here in Maridoe would be quite special and in my hometown.

DAVID FEHERTY: Bryson, Albert, thank you very much. Jane?

JANE MacNEILLE: Thank you very much. We will open it up to questions.

Q. How do you block out the noise and stay true to your identity outside of golf?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, personally for me, I'm just living my life. I'm not trying to be anybody different.

When I was on the PGA Tour, there was a lot of projections made, and I tried to, I would say always -- not combat, but say no, that's not me. Finally at some point I just got to the place where I was like, I've just got to live my life and be me. I can't try to force anybody to think of me differently. I'm just going to go do my best on the golf course, give people the opportunity to see who I am, whether it be through YouTube or on the golf course or in major championships and play the game, because this game has given me so much. New perspective, obviously it takes time to have that happen, but this game has given me so much that it's time for me to give back to others, to showcase the entertainment of golf, to inspire a younger generation, to entertain, to educate, to inspire. Those are three things that I really want to do in the game of golf.

Just being myself was a big component of that. Really digging down deep and going, you know what, I can't try and be anybody else but myself. That was the main focus that I've moved forward with as time has gone on and developed that over the course of time.

Q. "Grow the game" is really a buzz word people like to throw around. Do you feel like in your videos with Trump and Daly, do you feel like you're doing your individual part to grow the game?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I feel like there's multiple ways to grow the game. People say that "grow the game" is a buzz word, which is really true, but actions do speak louder than words, and I feel like with LIV and what we've done, where we've gone across the world, as well as what I'm able to do on my YouTube platform, has shown a different light to how the game of golf is consumed, how we're able to provide entertainment, how we're able to showcase unique personalities and different people, much like David Feherty over here.

But in all seriousness, I feel like I have tried to give a different avenue towards consuming the game of golf, which is great. If that helps bring people over to want to go hit golf balls on the driving range, that's what I care about. If it helps inspire a young kid to go up and swing a golf club, that's what I'm here for. That's what I care about deeply in the game of golf and how I got inspired was by -- I'll give just a quick little story. I don't want to take too much time on this topic.

What I can say is when I was 11 years old, I did a clinic in front of a bunch of golfers at the SaveMart Shootout Charity Classic that we had each and every year. My dad was the general manager at this golf club. It was called River Bend; it's now called Dragonfly. But he essentially threw me up in front of a bunch of professional golfers, the likes of Jason Gore, Nick Watney, Sign Boy, Peter Jacobsen, Annika Sorenstam, Nancy Lopez. You name it, they were there. It was this big charity event for Children's Hospital of the Central Valley.

I went up and hit three tee shots in front of them. Didn't know how to speak, stuttered the whole way through it with Sign Boy and they were making fun of me, Peter Jacobsen and Sign Boy, and I hit three drives and hit them perfect, and every single one of those professionals came up and said, congratulations, that's unbelievable what you just did, I'm going to see you out here one day, and that inspired me to play this game professionally.

It's now my vision to give back in that capacity in different ways, whether it's with LIV, YouTube, doesn't matter. That's what I want to do.

Q. I want to ask you about your UnderPar Life venture. We saw a couple weeks ago Callaway is not real pleased with the performance of TopGolf. 10 to 15 years from now with your venture and UnderPar Life, how do you see it competing with a legacy brand like that, and how do you see your company manifesting --

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: I'll say this. There's going to be numerous opportunities with building driving ranges and building new unique opportunities for junior golfers, inner city people to anyone that wants to play golf. There's going to be new opportunities to go about it.

I feel like TopGolf has done a great job of introducing people. I think there's a three-step process to getting people addicted to the game of golf, like we all are here, I would assume.

For me, it's getting people introduced to, it's how do they get better and why do they want to get better, how do you get them to just hit a golf ball for fun, to getting lessons, to getting better, going out on the golf course and learning what golf is actually about, getting a golf ball into a hole.

Then three is playing the game for their life. That three-step process is a big deal, and having ventures like that and other ventures, as well, whether it's LIV or it's numerous driving ranges that I will be building and academies that I will be building and education centers that I'll be building, all of that will feed into that three-step process that I view as so important to the health of the game of golf.

Q. When you were at the height of your weight gain a few years ago --

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: You can say I was fat. It's okay.

Q. Nobody on this side of the room is going to call you fat. When you were doing that and out on the range swinging as fast as you can, as hard as you can, was anybody in golf, anybody you respect, did they come along and say, Bryson, what are you doing; this is nuts?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Sure, there was plenty of people.

Q. Did it have any effect on you?

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: 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. 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.

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. 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.

Q. I just want to follow up on that. You gained a lot of distance pretty quickly after putting on the weight and getting bigger and stronger and what have you. I'm curious what you thought of a guy like Rory actually admitted during that time that he tried to chase distance, even him, who hits it pretty far, at that time. I'm wondering how you reacted to things like that. You did get guys to sort of wake up to, I wonder if I have to try to keep up with him.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, definitely. 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. 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.

Consequently, the equipment, I will be blunt about that, is not fully there for guys that have speed. It definitely doesn't -- that's, again, why I'm doing some of the stuff that I'm doing behind the scenes is going to be building equipment for those individuals as well as everybody else.

I think from a Rory perspective, there's a bunch of respect that I viewed as respect, somebody trying to gain the distances that I gained as quickly as they did. It's not easy, and I put 100 percent effort into it.

There's other people -- Jake Knapp has a crazy amount of speed. I sometimes wish I had his speed just naturally. I had to force my speed and my body, my lever lengths and everything. Obviously I broke my hand. I just don't have that natural fast speed. I had to work for it and get faster through brute force, so that took a toll on my body. But it is great what -- it's a level of respect I feel like that they were trying to get more speed from what I was doing. It's fantastic. I think it's awesome.

JANE MacNEILLE: Bryson, there was one other thing. We've got two trophies up here. We also have a custom ring that you won last year, which is unique to golf, so if you can showcase that to everybody, this is also what the team champs get to take home.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: So you guys can see it in just a little bit, but it's got the Crushers logo on the face of it. It's pretty sweet. LIV Golf on the side, it says DeChambeau and the Crushers with a bunch of diamonds. This is from Ben Baller. They make some incredible jewelry pieces. I don't know how many diamonds are on here, like 200 or something like that. It's crazy what they did. It was awesome. We have an engraving inside that says BAD Cap. That's kind of my thing. My name is B-A-D, Bryson Aldrich DeChambeau, so BAD Captain. I don't think I'm that bad of a captain, but you know.

JANE MacNEILLE: This year the ring is going to have a secret compartment where you open it and there's a hidden ball marker inside. Very cool.

BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No way. More incentive.