{"id":90312,"date":"2026-02-26T08:40:29","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T11:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/bryson-dechambeau-and-la-golf-have-split-heres-why-it-didnt-work-out\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T08:40:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T11:40:32","slug":"bryson-dechambeau-and-la-golf-have-split-heres-why-it-didnt-work-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubirataonline.com.br\/en\/bryson-dechambeau-and-la-golf-have-split-heres-why-it-didnt-work-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf have split. Here’s why it didn\u2019t work out"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I. THE MANUFACTURER IN WINTER<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turns out this baseball quote, which has been going around the pastime for half-century now, can be applied to golf, too: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more limited than being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not George Costanza\u2019s boss in\u00a0Seinfeld.\u00a0<\/em>The real-life George Steinbrenner, bombastic and effective late owner of the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n

For Reed Dickens, this is all familiar territory. Reed Dickens ran a bat manufacturing business and before that he worked for a man who was once a baseball team owner. (The Texas Rangers, late Nolan Ryan years.) For most of the past decade Dickens has been the owner and CEO of LA Golf<\/a>, a high-end shaft-and-club manufacturer in Southern California. But to gearheads across the United States and beyond, Dickens is background scenery in this L.A. story.<\/p>\n

The real star here is Bryson A. DeChambeau<\/a>, former SMU physics student and current LIV Golf star, for whom LA Golf is his personal club-making lab, where conversations between DeChambeau and Jeff Meyer, LA Golf\u2019s top engineer, can go on for hours as they talk about optimal launch angles in different wind conditions, the golfer\u2019s eyes flaring with excitement.<\/p>\n

When DeChambeau won the Covid-delayed 2020 U.S. Open<\/a>, he did it with 14 LA Golf shafts. The shafts in the irons were all the same length and about as stiff as a White House flagpole. Golf\u2019s core gear-centric fans, watching this XXL golfer have his way with the celebrated West Course at Winged Foot<\/a>, were all agog about Bryson\u2019s shafts. Nobody was talking about Reed Dickens, understandably. It was DeChambeau who went around in 274, winning by a touchdown.<\/p>\n

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When DeChambeau won the 2024 U.S. Open at Pinehurst, the same: 14 clubs, 14 LA Golf shafts. He owned the No. 2 course that day, and that night he owned the town. At the 2025 Masters, where he played the final round with the eventual winner, Rory McIlroy, DeChambeau had 14 LA Golf shafts in his plus-size green Crushers G.C. golf bag. DeChambeau talked about LA Golf at the drop of a hat.<\/p>\n

Then, last year, DeChambeau played not just LA Golf shafts but LA Golf heads, too. These heads were made to his exact specifications, with faces that had a pronounced and distinctive bulge and roll. DeChambeau all but demands bespoke clubs for his distinctive one-plane swing with its extraordinary speed, clubs that match his one-of-one personality. A line of LA Golf drivers, with DeChambeau\u2019s fingerprints on its simple and shiny design, were introduced last year, and you can find them easily enough (with some help from Google). A handsome $600 driver. You won\u2019t find it in your neighborhood PGA Tour Superstore, but they are available at pro shops at Discovery Golf\u2019s swank properties, should you ever find yourself at one. That\u2019s because the founder of Discovery, Michael Meldman, is an 11 percent owner of LA Golf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LA Golf and Bryson DeChambeau. Sounds like a match made in golfing heaven, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Turns out, the parties needed a pre-nup.<\/p>\n

The restless Bryson DeChambeau is in yet another period in which he\u2019s evaluating every aspect of his golf and business life. His future with LIV Golf is an unknown<\/a>. Already, as a result of this review, a report of collateral damage is in: Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf are parting company. <\/p>\n

In a phone interview Monday afternoon, Reed Dickens, speaking from his home in Newport Beach, Calif., said that DeChambeau made a pitch, through a new-to-the-team Bryson business advisor, to become LA Golf\u2019s majority owner. Dickens, a 48-year-old native Louisianan and a former CEO of the baseball equipment company Marucci Sports, was not down with that. Turns out, in golf as in life, breaking up is hard to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cBryson and I actually have some of the same tendencies, and I have nothing but respect for him,\u201d Dickens said during a 90-minute interview. You could not miss an intensiveness in Dickens that brought to mind DeChambeau. Dickens is a long-hitting 10-handicap golfer at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, and a scratch talker up and down Southern California\u2019s 405 Freeway. \u201cBut he has this new consultant, a McKinsey-consulting type guy, and this guy says to me that Bryson is gonna walk unless he gets 51 percent. Bryson\u2019s got 2 percent of the company. And I think the guy doesn\u2019t realize that he\u2019s dealing with a redneck. And I say, \u2018There\u2019s no path for that.\u2019 They played chicken with me, and now we\u2019re going to graciously part ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bryson DeChambeau\u2019s next move will be momentous \u2014\u00a0no matter where he lands<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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\n Alan Bastable <\/a><\/p>\n

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Dickens has seen high-stakes chess before. Horseshoes, too. In his 20s, he worked in the George W. Bush White House for four years as an assistant press secretary and campaign spokesman. More than once he went to Kennebunkport, Maine, with 43 and 41 both on the scene. The senior Bush was a first baseman at Yale. The younger was an owner of the Rangers. Dickens is not a baseball guy or political but has found himself enmeshed in both in his adult life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBryson needs someone serving him 24 hours a day, he needs somebody to build him his own clubs, and that\u2019s not scalable for us,\u201d Dickens said. In other words, you can\u2019t have a small, almost artisanal manufacturing business where a single customer demands and gets vast amounts of attention. Dickens said his goal for LA Golf is to make high-end equipment for golfers who want clubs that perform better off mishits, because of their bulge-and-roll face designs. All the while he wants to simplify the shaft-fitting process. The LA Golf website comprises a single page, a moody black-and-white golf photo with single box to enter your email address. Callaway this is not.<\/p>\n

Dickens said that LA Golf had a \u201chead count\u201d of 75 employees but that he has more recently terminated 25 staffers as the company shifts from trying to be a premium wholesaler with high-end retail accounts to a direct-to-the-golfer company making exclusive products exclusively in the United States. He described his years with DeChambeau as one long R&D project, with DeChambeau making vast design contributions. \u201cHe challenges everything you do, and he makes you test your every assumption,\u201d Dickens said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dickens was asked if Nike Golf\u2019s experience with Tiger Woods<\/a> had been instructive for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what\u2019s instructive about Tiger and Nike is this: The most difficult and expensive thing to do in consumer product sales is unaided name recognition, to use a phrase of politics,\u201d Dickens said. Nike, he said, already enjoyed vast name recognition without Tiger Woods and had slightly more with Tiger Woods. What Nike Golf didn\u2019t have, Dickens said, was a line of products that ordinary golfers wanted to buy in large quantities. An issue for Nike, he said, was that the public never really believed that the clubs Woods played were essentially the same clubs that ordinary golfers could buy.<\/p>\n

For the last half-decade or more, LA Golf faced different issues. \u201cWe partnered with the golfer who is more active than any golfer on social media and I\u2019m very grateful for that,\u201d Dickens said. \u201cTiger gave Nike some magical moments, like that ball sitting on the edge of the hole before falling in.\u201d Sunday at the 2005 Masters, par-3 16th hole, Woods\u2019s second shot, his ball\u2019s Nike swoosh available for all to see until it wasn\u2019t. Woods won his fourth Masters that year. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think any of that helped with Nike\u2019s return on their investment,\u201d Dickens said.<\/p>\n

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\n \"bryson <\/a>\n <\/div>

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Several months ago, Bryson DeChambeau predicted his future<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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\n Sean Zak <\/a><\/p>\n

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By 2016, Nike was out of the golf-manufacturing business. That same year, DeChambeau turned pro. Within a few years, he was helping LA Golf get into the golf business at its highest level. For ubiquitousness, LA Golf was nothing like TaylorMade or Titleist, but DeChambeau helped get the LA Golf name known to innumerable gearhead golfers, no question about that. You always have to start with a base, with your constituents. Every student of politics knows that, and every marketing executive does, too.<\/p>\n

Dickens believes the company has an innovative product line (and he notes that Sergio Garcia is playing LA Golf clubs this year). But what LA Golf will do now is go forward without its Tiger Woods, without arguably the most influential golfer in the world. He knows it won\u2019t be easier.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, DeChambeau\u2019s 4.3 million Instagram followers<\/a>, among others, will be itching to know about Bryson\u2019s next move, what with spring not even a month away and Bryson DeChambeau broadly enjoying the title, with a wink or not, as the Most Interesting Man in Golf.<\/p>\n

Yo, Bryson: What gives, dude?<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

II. SPRINGTIME FOR BRYSON<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your fill-in gear correspondent sent a text Tuesday morning at 9:15 to DeChambeau\u2019s longtime agent, Mr. Brett Falkoff, senior vice president of GSE Worldwide, noting that Reed Dickens had outlined the state of affairs between LA Golf and the golfer. Would Bryson like to discuss their years together and his equipment future? (Not that he needs this\u00a0GOLF.com megaphone, what with the millions who follow him on the Instagram, the X, the YouTube, the TikTok.) Seventy minutes later, a response from Falkoff landed:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBryson is no longer an ambassador for LA Golf. He remains a customer and still has the shafts in his bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we hear something more, Part II of this report will be expanded and updated.<\/p>\n

Until then, the first round of the 2026 Masters (on this fourth and last Tuesday in February) is just 45 days away. Bryson\u2019s in the field and he\u2019ll have 14 clubs at his disposal. DeChambeau in Augusta will be interesting because DeChambeau most anywhere is interesting. What clubs, and what shafts, will he use? Always a question with Bryson, though this is likely a good time to share this observation from Reed Dickens: \u201cBryson could win with a rental set.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at\u00a0Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n