Bryson DeChambeau’s tricky contract situation is Greg Norman’s creation

Three and a half years before Brooks Koepka cut ties with LIV Golf, he was well aware of what was happening in an office park on the outskirts of London.

Greg Norman was on stage at RD Studios, walking through a pre-recorded speech. He looked left and right across the room – which was full of anxious fans of the new league – mainly because that’s where the teleprompters were. He was walking well but would stop when he missed a word, leading to the fifth part of the speech, where he said the most important sentence:

We bring free agency to golf, and this has always been the cause of what we set out to do.

In a way, he was right. Norman and the Saudi PIF have carved out a new corner of the golf market and most tour professionals are taking them seriously (and with their money). Norman loved those two words: free agency. They were a big part of his campaign. But now, nearly four years later, he’s watching from the sidelines, unable to make an impact in the league as those two names suddenly work.

Koepka’s news shook the golf world for several reasons. It sat around 5 pm on Dec. 23, just as the world gathered in the hearth. It was also the first time that a key character canceled his initial 4-year contract, ending it one season early. Days later, Bryson DeChambeau reminded the world that he still has one year left on his deal, and that Koepka’s decision changes things.

DeChambeau shared his thoughts with the @FlushingIt social media account, and as unusual as that may sound to traditionalists, the actual ideas he shared privately during 2025. He believes in club golf and wants to reach an agreement with LIV, but a lot needs to change.

DeChambeau noted that he doesn’t have as much say in LIV as he would like, but he can worry about that later. What he says is where he sells his services, as Norman argued years ago. Sitting across the table from DeChambeau is a golf league with a million dollar owner and nothing to match the salary. That combination is one, as DeChambeau himself is one. And considering PIF has created an absurd market with mega-million-dollar “free agent” signings in 2022 and 2023, it may be underappreciated but it wouldn’t be unusual for DeChambeau’s money request to start with a B.

The value of each player, from a sales and marketing point of view, is at the center of all LIV discussions, as is the threat of giving that value away elsewhere. What makes DeChambeau different is that he has a third avenue theory, which he elaborates on Flushing It: there’s always YouTube. He loves creating content so much that you can only see him appearing on Streamer Golfer if he wants to. (Don’t forget that he spent much of the Covid lockdown streaming himself playing Fortnite or speed training on Twitch.) DeChambeau is training for every major tournament through the 2029 US Open. Can a place like Amazon – which does not agree to pay big money for sports content – give him a deal for creators in the middle weeks?

Norman would enjoy listening to DeChambeau work on that concept. It was back in 1994 that Norman petitioned the PGA Tour to allow him to enter a series of unsanctioned international tournaments, along with Nick Price and two other men’s teams. That concept of a two-person, roaming game has grown in popularity over the years of streaming golf content, especially and not surprisingly with LIV players who take theirs very seriously. That concept is what Norman believed in. He liked the idea of ​​golfers texting each other, unlike NBA players, to consider joining forces. He reveled in the offseason talk, fueling the belief that a “big name” could jump from the PGA Tour at any time, even if that rarely worked out. He had to love it when Koepka’s former coach Claude Harmon took a break to win in 2023, comparing his pitcher who just won the PGA Championship to Justin Verlander who signed a 2-year, $90 million deal with the New York Mets. What’s important now is that it seems to work both ways.

Last weekend we saw Rory McIlroy admit that, if it were up to him, LIV golfers would be accepted on the PGA Tour. They have paid the consequences, he said. Then he joined Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter and said the same thing, not-so-much in reference to Koepka possibly returning to the PGA Tour, and outside mentioning DeChambeau’s name.