Following a few not-so-fortuitous final rounds, Bryson DeChambeau fought tooth and nail to avoid another at LIV Golf Korea. And that he did. DeChambeau fired a final round of 6-under 66 and reached 19 under for the tournament to fend off Crushers GC teammate, Charles Howell III, for a narrow two-stroke victory.
The two-time major champion entered the final round with a commanding four-stroke lead, but Howell quickly made things interesting by shooting up the leaderboard with a third round 63. The win represents DeChambeau’s third on LIV Golf and first on the circuit since the Fall 2023.
It also comes on the doorstep of the PGA Championship, where DeChambeau finished runner-up a season ago at Valhalla Golf Club. When DeChambeau arrives in Charlotte, North Carolina, in two weeks’ time for the second major championship of the season, he will be among the favorites: he has four straight top-five finishes in tow (including the Masters) and three top-five finishes in his last four starts at the PGA Championship.
“My goal is to win every tournament that I show up to,” DeChambeau said. “Scottie [Scheffler] is on a great run. Joaquin Niemann is on a great run. Jon Rahm has been playing well. There’s a lot of star-studded talent out there right now that’s going to be in the PGA Championship. We’re going to be battling it out.
“Glad to have pushed through in this victory and won this event, but there’s a lot more work to be done this year,” he continued. “There’s three more majors, and my eyes are focused on that with all the other LIV events, doing my absolute best in every single event I show up to.”
It was not Howell, but rather Richard Bland who was DeChambeau’s closest pursuer at the onset of the day. The Englishman clawed into DeChambeau’s margin with a pair of early birdies but quickly fell off around the turn as squares began to pile up on his scorecard.
Howell emerged in his place as the American played his first seven holes in 4 under. DeChambeau turned in even par as he saw his advantage sink to one stroke, but only then did the two start throwing haymakers back-and-forth.
“I was personally pretty nervous on the front nine for whatever reason,” DeChambeau admitted. “That putt I made on 8 was great, two-putt on 9. After the 9th hole, I don’t know what hit me, I just said, you know what, just play like a kid again, and I started doing that on the back nine and striped a 3-wood on 11, gave me a lot of confidence.
He added, “Hit a good shot in there on 11, just didn’t make the putt. 12, great hole. 13, great hole. 14, didn’t make birdie. That’s okay. 15, played a great hole. 16, didn’t make birdie, but I knew something was coming. I didn’t know when it was going to happen. Finally on 17, just the bubble burst, and I felt really good.
DeChambeau made four birdies in a six-hole stretch, but it was not enough to maintain his lead as Howell caught fire with five straight birdies on Nos. 11-15 to put his name alongside DeChambeau’s atop the leaderboard. Only then did Howell take his only misstep of the afternoon — a dropped shot on No. 16 saw him backtrack by one.
That was the only opening DeChambeau needed. On the very next, he slammed the door shut with a long-distance birdie connection to take a two-stroke lead into the par-5 finisher. Birdies were matched on the last giving DeChambeau his victory and his Crushers GC the team title as well.