THE MODERATOR: Let's welcome back to the media center Bryson DeChambeau, captain of Crushers GC. Bryson, you currently sit tied atop the leaderboard with your teammate. Take us through today. A lot of emotions probably out there with the crowd and just kicking off this week.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, first off, what an environment. I mean, this is what all of us players saw LIV Golf being and the potential of it. Whether it's Australia or South Africa -- South Africa showed out today, and it's only Thursday. I'm quite impressed with the environment here and the people and the love that we felt today. It really energizes all of us players and makes us want to give back more. It's awesome.
Congratulations, by the way, to South Africa for showing up and showing out to what we know LIV Golf to be doing for the global game of golf.
Q. Were you a bit overwhelmed with the support or surprised by the South Africans that followed your group? And did you expect them to be so supportive of you, especially joining a South African in your three-ball? They weren't shy to support you at all.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: No, I really appreciate it. I knew Louis was going to get so much love today, and it's what I wanted to be a part of, so I was lucky to get to experience that. When they were chanting on the first hole and hearing that, it was invigorating.
Then the support I received was overwhelming, as well. Really appreciate it. It's tough because I've got to control my emotions because I can get a pretty big high out there from all of the support. So G-Bo was just like, stay calm and keep moving forward, swing your golf club.
But there were times where -- even on 18 when I hit it over to the right, everybody running up, putting their hand around me and then trying to get a selfie. I took one of the guys' phone and actually did a video with him as we were walking up. Hopefully that's on social media or something. But that was a funny moment.
Really fun to interact with the crowd, and they're a wild bunch but they're a good bunch.
Q. Bryson, just on the layout of the course, obviously you've played now 18 holes. What do you make of just the layout, especially with the rain coming in yesterday?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, the golf course is soft right now, so it's very gettable. The greens are difficult to manage just because of how soft they are. Sometimes they move, especially when it gets later in the day. But they're rolling fine, a little bit slower than last week. We expected that. Just different grass, different conditions.
But I can tell you that it's in great shape for how much rain they got, and they've done a great job to keep this place in good condition and ready to play for us today.
So I was quite impressed with all the rain that they got, how good it played.
Q. You felt like you could combat all the rough?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, the rough is -- kikuyu rough is brutal. I got lucky with a couple lies out there today. You're not going to get lucky out there all the time. You may have to pitch out an a few of them. I've got to work on my driver and keep it out of the rough, but I managed myself quite well today and made putts when I needed to.
I even didn't perform my best on some of the holes. On 8, hit it way right with an iron. Just missed a couple shots right today and then missed a driver left on 4. Everything else was solid. Made a lot of good putts, rolled it on my line. But the kikuyu is brutal. It's no joke.
Q. It's very emotionally draining, your profession, your sport. It's day one of four; your finish on 18 was electric. What happens now with the rest of your day? How do you decompress? What are the things you go through to know you can do it all again tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, great question. Personally for me, I'll go sign some autographs. That actually reenergizes me, makes me feel really good about what we're doing here, so that gives me a bit of life to go practice for a good 30 minutes, and hopefully I figure out the driver real quick. I don't have to figure anything out; I've just got to groove it a bit, maybe roll a couple putts and be done. Hopefully keep it 30 minutes or less, go in and eat and go get treated.
Once we get treated -- actually the spa here is unbelievable, so I go into the salt tub and there's like a magnesium tub, just crazy. That helps me relax quite a bit and I get treatment from our team. You can call him a physio; he's not really a physio, but Ryan treats me and makes me feel a lot better, and then I'll go relax. I'll probably go watch Pirates of the Caribbean or something tonight. I was watching that last night, so that was fun.
Q. All the attention is mostly on you. If there's going to be loud people out there or people are going to have something to say, it's going to be focused on you. Did you hear anything weird today, something strange, something you maybe hadn't heard before in other countries?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Some of it I couldn't understand. They were just yelling.
Q. That's called Afrikaans.
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, Afrikaans. I don't know that language. I'm from Texas. I understand a little bit of southern twang, but that's about it.
I learned about "lekker," so I learned that today from Louis. That was cool. It was almost like "vamos" for -- like come on, let's go. I hope that's right. Please don't crucify me on that.
But yeah, lekker, that's great, so hopefully I'll be saying that, hearing that. Do you know anybody that said anything?
Q. Everyone was just fixated about having you here. There was so much excitement. Like Happy Gilmore always talks about going to the happy place. Do you have resets through your round?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: You don't want to be in my head.
Q. Bryson, for South African fans, golf fans, they're passionate about golf but it's not every week, every year, every month that they get to see three major champions playing in the same group. For LIV Golf, why is it so important to go in -- South Africa is not really a new market, but new key markets for LIV Golf?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Well, I think it's important for people to see the caliber of golf at the top, around the world. South Africa deserves it. Every edge of the world deserves it. So it's fun to be able to show up in markets like this and be able to give back to the community and show how much we can do for the community around here and around the globe as well.
So it's our mission. It's our statement. It's our belief that it's our duty to go around -- and responsibility to go around the world and show great golf to the edges of the world. I think South Africa is a perfect place to do it.
Like Charles was saying earlier, the Presidents Cup was here and that was electric. It's time for us to continue to show out what golf can do for South Africa because the Presidents Cup was great but this could be a continued thing that lives on forever.
Q. In terms of your team effort, leading after round 1, important to continue that performance and consistency following last week in Singapore?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, I mean, it's huge. It's great to see Chucky up on the top of the leaderboard. It was fun, G-Bo and I looked over at some point and saw Chucky leading, we're like, let's go, finally, come on. We haven't had the best of starts as the Crushers this year. But it was fun to see him up at the top and kind of gave me some life, as well.
Hopefully last week provided some life for the team to say, hey, come on, let's kick it into gear, we're one of the best teams out here if not the best. It's time to show up. Chucky did that today, and there's three more rounds of golf, so there's a lot that can happen.
But for today, I think that was brilliant of Chucky and hopefully it resonates throughout the rest of the team.
Q. I think South African sports fans across all codes are only as generous as the sportsmen on the opposite side tends to be, so I'd like to commend you on how generous you've been this week and how you continue to be such a great ambassador for the game. The reason you heard "lekker" so much is because of that. If you hear words like "bliksem" tomorrow, it's because you've changed your tune.
We spoke the other day about your preparation cycle going into Augusta and you told me about how you are looking to dial in your wedges and I was lucky to stand behind the flag on 8 when you stuffed it to a foot. How do you feel about the short game today and how do you feel about going into the game tomorrow with the wedges?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Yeah, today was an improvement. Last week was an improvement with the wedges and sometimes it's just trying anything and everything to find that 1 percent. Like Anthony Kim talks about, getting 1 percent better every day.
After Hong Kong I said, I have to throw all my wedges away and let's try it again. Let's start from scratch. So I started from scratch. I went to short wedges with a steel shaft and a lot of bounce, no bounce, different groove textures in the face, and ultimately just -- it went quick because the testing process should not be a long process. It should be one or two golf balls, that didn't work or that did work, and you move on to the next one, and then you start to wean it down to the last few and all of a sudden you're like this one is out-shining everything. That's what I've done with the driver.
Long story short, to say I felt something a lot better in Singapore and then I've just worked on it and it's gotten a little bit better, and hopefully that continues to permeate for the next three rounds. That's my goal is just to get a little bit better, and I feel like I've gotten better, and it was fun to hit that last shot, hold the finish, like wow, that looks like a normal flighted wedge, not something that's shooting 20 yards over the green. I feel like I can control the speed really well just like I do on my putts, but for whatever reason the interaction between the face has always mystified me. I feel like I've gotten a little more control this week.
Q. When we go to Adelaide, the fans are following Ripper and Bryson. When we go to South Africa the fans are following Southern Guards and Bryson. That goes everywhere LIV goes. Bryson in 2015 at SMU, if someone told you that you would be the most popular golfer in the world, would you have believed them?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Absolutely not, no. There's no question I thought I could have been one of the best in the game at the time. I could have gotten there. But seeing this much support, this much love, this much care, this much curiosity and this much love is just beyond my wildest dreams. I can't thank the game of golf and everybody in the game for supporting me through thick and thin, even when I was at my worst. There were still people that supported me and people quite frankly did not like me at all.
In 2022 I just made a decision that look, just be your authentic self, and whoever likes you for it is going to like you for it. Don't try to be anybody else than yourself. I think that's a good message to youngsters out there and to anybody watching is the more that you are yourself, you will find your place in the world. You will find where you're supposed to be in the world.
Maybe it's not being the most famous person or maybe it's doing some other job, but they're all important, and the more you can be true to yourself, the better I think you'll be in life as a human.
That really resonated with me back in 2022. I was talking to Chris Pratt about do I be somebody else, I don't know what to do anymore. He goes, Bryson, there's two choices, you can act and play a part or you can be yourself. I chose to be myself, and I chose to show up every day being myself. I didn't talk about it. I didn't describe it. I just went out and was myself, and I did it on YouTube, I did it on the golf course, and yeah, I'm still passionate. Yeah, I still want to break clubs. Yeah, I want to throw clubs. I want to say bad words. I want to do those things.
As you mature and grow up a little bit, those things reduce and you start to be more of your authentic self, realizing that golf isn't necessarily the biggest thing in the world but that you have a responsibility to entertain, play the best golf and showcase what golf can do for the world.
Q. Bryson, you looked very comfortable today, great score, of course reflecting how comfortable you looked on the course. I wonder what aspect of your game do you think was track heading into the next three days based on the layout and what you've seen?
BRYSON DeCHAMBEAU: Funny enough, I think the greens, because they're a little soft, they can wobble on the greens, so really getting down on the greens and seeing how it's going to move is important. When you're thinking about Augusta, sometimes that happens out there. Being able to read it with a good due diligence on that and focus on that.
I think my wedges, as well, it's worked on my wedges and my strike, how precise you have to be on the strike out here in this grass. Then I also think a little bit of wind, the softness of the wind, how it's playing is important, and then a lot of half shots. There's a lot of half shots at the Masters, so getting ready for that.
It's a really good test out here for us, people that are playing in the Masters.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports