Brooks Koepka really doesn’t like Bryson DeChambeau (Video)

Brooks Koepka finished runner-up to Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship on Sunday. But it’s an exchange he had two days earlier that’s now sparking controversy.

Golf is a solitary game. A player is only in control of his own shots and his own scores. The pros who play on the PGA Tour don’t have to be friends, but they don’t have to be enemies, either. After all, there is little to be gained for holding such fierce emotions.

Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau definitely fall in the category of pure rivals, though. There’s is a different rivalry than the one between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, which was all about accolades on the course and trying to beat each other. Their feud goes beyond the golf course, into the strictly personal.

A clip from the PGA Championship last week perfectly casts light on the sheer dislike they have for each other. On Friday, Koepka had just finished shooting 71 and was just a shot off the lead after 36 holes when he prepared to give an interview to the Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis.

The interview begins innocently enough, with Koepka mentioning how he was satisfied with his ball-striking but was struggling on the greens in the strong winds that whip around Kiawah Island. Around 20 seconds into the interview, as Koepka is elaborating on the toughness of the course, a familiar Puma driver cap walks into the picture behind him.

DeChambeau doesn’t acknowledge Koepka. He doesn’t even seem to notice him. He tells his companion, “It was such a good shot. Hit a good drive and a good shot on the last hole, too.” Pretty innocent stuff.

But something about the encounter infuriated Koepka. He immediately rolled his eyes and gives out an exasperated sigh. “I lost my train of thought, hearing that bullshit,” he tells Lewis before unleashing some more profanities. The interview had to be restarted.

https://twitter.com/AmateurStatus/status/1397003021515644928

Koepka and DeChambeau don’t like each other. In 2019, Koepka called out DeChambeau for taking too long in between shots. Last summer, he made a post on social media that seemed to imply DeChambeau, who gained nearly 40 pounds of muscle in an attempt to overpower golf courses, was using steroids, a claim DeChambeau’s trainer denied.

Both DeChambeau and Koepka will likely be on Team USA at the Ryder Cup in September. Odds are, they won’t spend a lot of time socializing at the team hotel.