Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf have split. This is why it didn’t work

I. THE MANUFACTURER IN THE WINTER

It turns out that this baseball quote, which has been making the rounds for half a century, can also be applied to golf: “There’s nothing more limiting than being a limited partner with George Steinbrenner.”

Not George Costanza’s boss Seinfeld. The real George Steinbrenner, bombastic and effective late owner of the New York Yankees.

This is all familiar territory for Reed Dickens. Reed Dickens owned a bat manufacturing company and before that he worked for a man who once owned a baseball team. (The Texas Rangers, late Nolan Ryan.) For much of the past decade, Dickens was the owner and CEO of LA Golf, a high-end shaft and club manufacturer in Southern California. But for gearheads in the United States and beyond, Dickens is the backdrop to this LA story.

The real star here is Bryson A. DeChambeau, former SMU physics student and current LIV Golf star, for whom LA Golf is his personal club lab, where conversations between DeChambeau and Jeff Meyer, LA Golf’s top engineer, can go on for hours as they talk about optical launch angles in different wind conditions, leaving the golfer’s eyes sparkling with excitement.

When DeChambeau won the Covid-delayed 2020 US Open, he did so with 14 LA Golf shafts. The shafts of the irons were all the same length and about as stiff as a White House flagpole. Gear-oriented golf fans saw this XXL golfer going about his business on the celebrated West Course at Winged Foot and were all amazed by Bryson’s shafts. Understandably, no one was talking about Reed Dickens. It was DeChambeau who rounded 274 and won by a touchdown.

When DeChambeau won the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst, same thing: 14 clubs, 14 LA Golf shafts. That day he owned Course No. 2, and that night he owned the city. At the 2025 Masters, where he played the final round with eventual winner Rory McIlroy, DeChambeau had 14 LA Golf shafts in his large green Crushers GC golf bag. DeChambeau wasted no time in talking about LA Golf.

Last year, DeChambeau not only played LA Golf shafts, but also LA Golf heads. These heads were made exactly to his specifications, with faces having a pronounced and distinctive bump and roll. DeChambeau is almost asking for custom-made clubs for his signature one-plane swing with his extraordinary speed, clubs that match his unique personality. A range of LA Golf drivers were introduced last year, with DeChambeau’s fingerprints on the simple and glossy design, and you can find them easily enough (with a little help from Google). A $600 handsome driver. You won’t find it in the PGA Tour Superstore near you, but they are available at pro shops in Discovery Golf’s upscale properties if you ever come across one. That’s because Discovery founder Michael Meldman owns 11 percent of LA Golf.

LA Golf and Bryson DeChambeau. Sounds like a match made in golf heaven, right?

It turned out that the parties needed a pre-nup.

The restless Bryson DeChambeau is in yet another period of evaluating every aspect of his golf and business life. His future at LIV Golf is unknown. As a result of this review, a collateral damage report has already come in: Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf are parting ways.

In a telephone interview Monday afternoon, Reed Dickens said from his home in Newport Beach, California, that DeChambeau, through a new business advisor from Bryson, had made a pitch to become the majority owner of LA Golf. Dickens, a 48-year-old Louisiana resident and former CEO of the baseball equipment company Marucci Sports, wasn’t happy about that. It turns out that, just like in life, breakups are hard.

“Bryson and I actually have some of the same tendencies, and I have nothing but respect for him,” Dickens said during a 90-minute interview. You couldn’t miss an intensity in Dickens that was reminiscent of DeChambeau. Dickens is a long-swing, 10-handicap golfer at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, and a scratch talker up and down the 405 Freeway in Southern California. “But he has a new consultant, a McKinsey consulting type guy, and this guy tells me Bryson is going to walk unless he gets 51 percent. Bryson has 2 percent of the company. And I don’t think the guy realizes he’s dealing with a redneck. And I say, ‘There’s no way around that.’ They played chicken with me, and now we part gracefully.”

Dickens has seen high-stakes chess before. Horseshoes too. In his 20s, he worked for four years in George W. Bush’s White House as an assistant press secretary and campaign spokesman. More than once he went to Kennebunkport, Maine, with both 43 and 41 on site. The senior Bush was a first baseman at Yale. The youngest owned the Rangers. Dickens is neither a baseball player nor a politician, but has become enmeshed in both in his adult life.

“Bryson needs someone to serve him 24 hours a day, he needs someone to build his own clubs for him, and that’s not scalable for us,” Dickens said. In other words: you cannot have a small, almost artisanal production company where a single customer demands and receives a lot of attention. Dickens said his goal for LA Golf is to make high-quality equipment for golfers who want clubs that perform better on mishits because of their bulging face designs. In the meantime, he wants to simplify the axle assembly process. The LA Golf website consists of one page, a moody black and white golf photo with one box for you to enter your email address. Callaway, this isn’t it.

Dickens said LA Golf had a “headcount” of 75 employees, but he recently laid off 25 employees as the company transitions from a premium wholesaler with high-end retail accounts to a direct-to-the-golfer company that makes exclusive products exclusively in the United States. He described his years at DeChambeau as one long R&D project, with DeChambeau making enormous design contributions. “He challenges everything you do, and he makes you test all your assumptions,” Dickens said.

Dickens was asked if Nike Golf’s experience with Tiger Woods had been educational for him.

“I think the instructive thing about Tiger and Nike is this: the hardest and most expensive thing you can do in selling consumer products is unaided brand awareness, to use a political term,” Dickens said. Nike, he said, already enjoyed great brand recognition without Tiger Woods and had slightly more brand recognition with Tiger Woods. What Nike Golf didn’t have, Dickens said, was a product line that everyday golfers wanted to buy in bulk. One problem for Nike, he said, was that the public never really believed that the clubs Woods played were essentially the same clubs that regular golfers could buy.

Over the past fifty years or more, LA Golf has faced several problems. “We have partnered with the golfer who is more active than any golfer on social media and I am very grateful for that,” said Dickens. “Tiger gave Nike some magical moments, like that ball sitting on the edge of the hole before it fell in.” Sunday at the 2005 Masters, par-3 16th hole, Woods’ second shot, the Nike swoosh of his ball visible to all until it wasn’t. Woods won his fourth Masters that year. “But I don’t think any of this has contributed to Nike’s return on their investment,” Dickens said.

In 2016, Nike had stopped golf production. That same year, DeChambeau turned pro. Within a few years, he helped LA Golf reach the highest level in golf. The ubiquity of LA Golf was nothing like TaylorMade or Titleist, but DeChambeau did help make the LA Golf name known to countless gearhead golfers, there’s no doubt about it. You always have to start with a base, with your voters. Every student of politics knows that, and so does every marketing manager.

Dickens believes the company has an innovative product line (noting that Sergio Garcia is playing LA Golf Clubs this year). But what LA Golf will do now is move on without Tiger Woods, without perhaps the most influential golfer in the world. He knows it won’t be easier.

Meanwhile at DeChambeau 4.3 million Instagram followersBryson, among others, will be curious about Bryson’s next move, with spring less than a month away and Bryson DeChambeau broadly enjoying the title, tongue-in-cheek or not, as the most interesting man in golf.

Yo, Bryson: What gives, dude?

***

II. SPRING FOR BRYSON

Your gear fill correspondent sent a text to DeChambeau’s old agent, Mr. Brett Falkoff, senior vice president of GSE Worldwide, at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning, 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 the future of his equipment? (Not that he needs this GOLF.com megaphone, considering the millions who follow him on Instagram, the X, the YouTube, the TikTok.) Seventy minutes later, a response came from Falkoff:

“Bryson is no longer an ambassador for LA Golf. He remains a customer and still has the shafts in his bag.”

As we hear more, Part II of this report will be expanded and updated.

Until then, the first round of the 2026 Masters (on this fourth and last Tuesday of February) is just 45 days away. Bryson is in the field and he has fourteen clubs at his disposal. DeChambeau in Augusta will be interesting because DeChambeau is interesting just about everywhere. What clubs and shafts will he use? Always a question with Bryson, although this is probably a good time to share this observation from Reed Dickens: “Bryson could win with a rental set.”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com