What’s hosting Bryson like? Inside DeChambeau’s Maine golf adventure

This week, Rory McIlroy was asked a version of a question that’s been bouncing around the golf world for months?

What’s Bryson DeChambeau going to do next?

The question was specifically about the possibility of DeChambeau playing the DP World Tour in 2027.

“Honestly, look, I’m certainly not in his shoes, nor would I ever want to be,” McIlroy said. “But it doesn’t seem like he’s got many options. You know, if he wants to play competitive golf, it doesn’t seem like he’s got many options.”

That first line was a shot at his rival. That second line was tough but true; DeChambeau’s hopes of helping launch LIV 2.0 seem kaput, and he’s still suspended from the PGA Tour. But McIlroy’s third line was an acknowledgement that if, in fact, DeChambeau’s career aspirations are not bound by the traditional limits of professional golf tours — he has plenty of options indeed. Which is why, as LIV’s bankruptcy rolled on and DeChambeau’s ex-coworkers released statements about their futures, DeChambeau remained quiet, before turning up somewhere nobody expected:

Western Maine.

(You can listen to a version of this story on the Drop Zone podcast below or here.)

“SUGARLOAF IS ONE OF THOSE HIDDEN-AWAY PLACES,” says Oscar Park, the course’s head professional. It’s 34 miles from the Canadian border. It’s 50 miles to the end of the Appalachian Trail. It’s two-and-a-half hours to Portland; Bangor is slightly closer, but offers fewer flights.

“It’s remote,” Park says. “But also close enough to the real world that if you need a taste, you can get back to it real quick.”

Sugarloaf doesn’t often get celebrity guests. Lucas Glover has family in Maine; he’s been there. So has Cooper Flagg, the First Hooper of Vacationland. But for five months of the year, it’s one of the best courses in the state (before it transforms to ski resort for the winter) and, Park says, they want the world to know.

In the modern world of golf-course marketing, that means recruiting help from wherever you can get it; Park said his team felt like the course’s location, layout and conditioning made it worthy of extra attention. His assistant pros cast a wide net throughout the new-age content-creator world, and as a longshot dropped a line to DeChambeau’s team, too, on the off chance he might be interested.

Sugarloaf didn’t get into specifics about exactly what it cost them to land DeChambeau, one of the biggest fish in the YouTube golf sea. Park said it “wasn’t cost prohibitive.” Sugarloaf had something he was looking for, after all — a new golf experience in a beautiful place, and a willingness to host him. And, Park added, the types of companies DeChambeau is looking for have bigger marketing budgets than Sugarloaf’s.

Most touring pros don’t tick off bucket-list courses outside the bounds of their home courses, Tour stops and occasional nearby outings. But DeChambeau isn’t most touring pros. He ramped up his YouTube presence during his years on LIV Golf, making waves with a celebrity-based “Break 50” series. Recently, though, he seems to be zeroing in on one-off experiences, from playing golf in the redwoods of Northern California to a course in Banff, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies.

It’s cool to see such a high-profile competitor lean into the sorts of trips everyday golfers dream of. It’s also rare, which makes it notable, particularly in the context of DeChambeau’s competitive future. But this is a guy who is openly searching for meaning, in different corners of the golf world and beyond. He opened up in a recent “Figuring Out” podcast interview, offering a glimpse into the questions he asked himself following his 2024 U.S. Open win:

“I’ll never forget we had a nice party, we were all having fun and I go to bed. It’s tough to sleep, by the way — your endorphins and your adrenaline are still going. But you sleep for the five, six hours and you wake up and you look over and you’re like, ‘I won the U.S. Open’ and then right after, you say, ‘what do I do next?’ I’m in bed alone. I don’t have my family with me. I don’t have anybody around. And it’s a real moment of frailty. And it’s not easy because your entire life you’re told that’s what the goal is. The goal is to get to this trophy. And then you realize when you hit it, you go, ‘I gave up most of my life for this. I gave up 20 years of my life to do this and I did it. Well, now what do I do?’ And I don’t have anybody next to me. I don’t have somebody loving on me and giving me a kiss and a kid coming up on the bed and holding my hand and all that. Is that really what I want to do for my life? Is that what the legacy I want to leave too? And so it really transforms you and makes you realize what life is about. So, it’s a great thing. It’s also a humbling thing and it makes you feel lonely at first, but if you can get past that loneliness, you realize what life is truly about.”

He didn’t get into specifics on what life is, in fact, about, but based on his actions we can surmise that at least part of what life is about is jetting off to Augusta on a whim — Augusta, Maine, that is — to catch the fall foliage. What was it like from the Sugarloaf side, getting word that DeChambeau was interested?

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“They were fantastic. I mean, they were very professional,” Park said. “They didn’t waste a lot of time. They didn’t have a ton of lists — no satin sheets and caviar for lunch or anything like that. I mean very much regular bunch of guys, you know, in the video, you know, Bryson’s eating a burger, you know, he basically pulled an all-nighter in getting there in itself…”

I have to admit this was my favorite bit of the video and it came at the very beginning. I do not have the faintest idea what it’s like to fly private from Las Vegas to Augusta, Maine. I’m not sure anyone has ever done that before Bryson did a few weeks ago. But I am intimately familiar with the feeling of driving the roads of Northern New England at night, hoping to find something open — and settling for whatever you can get. I found Bryson’s gas-station stop more delightful than even his David Attenborough impression that would follow.

I was curious, given everything going on in DeChambeau’s background, whether he’d made reference to his own competitive future. Parks said not really; he seemed immersed in his first-ever New England fall golf experience and was already wondering about coming back.

It’s safe to say Sugarloaf would be happy to have him. Within a couple days the video had racked up more than 2 million views; a week later it’s over 3 million. That’s a lot of potential customers salivating over Carrabassett Valley views and fall foliage at a course they’d probably never heard of.

“I feel like he did us a great justice, the golf course and the experience here,” Parks said of the final video. “I feel his words were impactful and spot on to what it feels like to play here, it being a special type of place, so I was delighted to see the finished product.”

Parks said he got a kick out of just how ready DeChambeau was to geek out about his new surrounds; he got up close and personal with tree bark and leaves. Parks described him as a “good, clean and wholesome guy,” who doesn’t curse and was very present in his surroundings.

It was an employee-and-member-guest day, which worked out as an extra perk for Sugarloaf’s VIPs, who got unexpected access to the two-time major champ.

“Every single person who waited around for an autograph, he signed for them,” Parks said. “It was certainly an experience that no one’s going to forget anytime soon.”

The most DeChambeau detail of all, which will sound familiar to anyone who’s covered his competitive career, was that, after his round, he couldn’t leave until he resolved a sticky swing thought.

“He finished playing, he came in and talked and he was like, ‘I need to go hit balls. I need to go practice,’” Parks said. “And he signed some autographs, he went out for 45 minutes to an hour, hit more golf balls till dark. And then he came in and he signed the rest of the autographs that we had or things that we had set aside for him.”

For Sugarloaf, the takeaway was pretty clear. They hope Bryson’s visit stirs up fresh interest in a golf course they’re proud of. Ditto for Sunday River, where DeChambeau stopped next and filmed his attempt at breaking its course record. The Big Golfer could mean big business.

As for DeChambeau himself? His future is murkier than ever. On Sunday, he released a statement about the end of this chapter of LIV. He thanked fans and the people behind the tournaments, semi-apologized for saying some things along the way that “didn’t help” and said he still believes in team golf. He added that be believed golf can “reach more people, in more places, in a new way. I still believe that, he said.

Then he left us in mystery. He’s playing an event in South Africa in December. After that, he said, “I’ll go about whatever is next the right way.”

It could be a year or more before DeChambeau is welcomed back to the PGA Tour. Reporting from the Telegraph suggests he could play on the DP World Tour in the meantime, if he so chooses. But DeChambeau himself has suggested there’s a third door. He could just play on YouTube, whatever comes next after a Maine trip, and then play the majors, at least as a gap year, while he continues to figure stuff out.

“There’s 30,000 golf courses [in the world],” Parks said. “I think he’s gonna be at it for a long time before he runs out of content, for sure.”

You can watch the entire Sugarloaf video here.