Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf have parted ways. Here’s why it didn’t work

I. THE MANUFACTURER IN WINTER

It turns out that this baseball saying, which has passed into entertainment for half a century now, can also apply to golf: “There is nothing more limited than being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner.”

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

For Reed Dickens, this is all familiar territory. Reed Dickens ran a bat manufacturing business and before that he worked for a man who once owned a baseball team. (Texas Rangers, Nolan Ryan’s later years.) For most of the past decade Dickens has been the owner and CEO of LA Golfa high-end manufacturer of shafts and clubs in Southern California. But for gears across the United States and beyond, Dickens is a background image in this LA story.

The real star here is Bryson A. DeChambeauformer SMU physics student and current LIV Golf star, for whom LA Golf is his personal club-making laboratory, 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 various wind conditions, the golfer’s eyes lighting up with excitement.

When DeChambeau won the 2020 US Open delayed by Covidhe did it with the 14 shaft LA Golf. The shafts in the bars were all the same length and as stiff as a White House flagpole. Top golf fans focused on golf equipment, watching this XXL golfer have his way with the famous West Course in Foot with wingswere all worried about Bryson’s shafts. Nobody was talking about Reed Dickens, of course. It was DeChambeau who rolled to 274, winning by one stroke.

When DeChambeau won the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst, same thing: 14 clubs, 14 shafts LA Golf. He owned course no. 2 that day, and that night he possessed 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 plus-size Crushers GC golf bag. DeChambeau spoke to LA Golf at the drop of a hat.

Then, last year, DeChambeau played not only LA Golf shafts but also LA Golf heads. These heads were made to his exact specifications, with faces having a pronounced and distinctive bulge and twist. DeChambeau only seeks custom clubs for his unique one-plane swing with his incredible speed, clubs that match his unique personality. A line of LA Golf drivers, with DeChambeau’s fingerprints on his sleek, sleek design, were introduced last year, and you can find them pretty easily (with a little help from Google). A handsome driver $600. You won’t find it at your neighborhood PGA Tour Superstore, but they are available at the pro shops at Discovery Golf’s swank properties, if you ever find yourself in 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 turns out that the parties needed a prenup.

Restless Bryson DeChambeau is in another period in which he is evaluating every aspect of his golf and business life. His future with LIV Golf is an unknown. Now, as a result of this review, a report of collateral damage is in: Bryson DeChambeau and LA Golf are parting ways with the company.

In a telephone interview Monday afternoon, Reed Dickens, speaking from his home in Newport Beach, Calif., said DeChambeau made a move, through a new business adviser to the Bryson team, to become the majority owner of LA Golf. Dickens, a 48-year-old Louisiana native and former CEO of baseball equipment company Marucci Sports, wasn’t happy about that. It turns out that in golf as in life, separation is hard to come by.

“Bryson and I actually have some of the same tendencies and I have nothing but respect for him,” Dickens said during the 90-minute interview. There could not be an intensity in Dickens that brought DeChambeau to mind. Dickens is a 10-handicap golfer at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles and a guffaw up and down Southern California’s 405 Freeway. “But he’s got this new consultant, a McKinsey guy, and this guy tells me that Bryson’s going to walk if he doesn’t get 51 percent. Bryson has 2 percent of the company. And I don’t think the guy understands that he’s dealing with a redneck. And I’m like, ‘There’s no way around it. They played chicken with me and now we’re going to part ways.'”

Dickens has seen high-stakes chess before. So is the horseshoe. 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 stage. The senior Bush was a first baseman at Yale. The young man was the owner of Rangers. Dickens is not a baseball or political guy, but he found himself involved in both in his adult life.

“Bryson needs someone to serve him 24 hours a day, he needs someone to build his clubs, and that’s not scalable for us,” Dickens said. In other words, you can’t have a small, almost artisanal manufacturing business where a single customer demands and receives a lot of attention. Dickens said his goal for LA Golf is to create high-end equipment for players who want clubs that perform better in rough play because of their bump and spin face designs. All the while he wants to simplify the shaft assembly process. The LA Golf website includes a single page, a humorous black and white golf photo with a single box to enter your email address. Callaway this is not.

Dickens said LA Golf had a “headcount” of 75 employees, but that he has recently laid off 25 employees as the company transitions from trying to be 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 with DeChambeau as a long R&D project, with DeChambeau making major contributions to the design. “He challenges everything you do and makes you test your every assumption,” Dickens said.

Dickens was asked if Nike Golf had experience with Tiger Woods had been a teacher for him.

“I think what’s instructive about Tiger and Nike is this: The hardest and most expensive thing to do in consumer product sales is unaided name recognition, to use a political phrase,” Dickens said. Nike, he said, already enjoyed widespread name recognition without Tiger Woods and had little more with Tiger Woods. What Nike Golf didn’t have, Dickens said, was a product line that the average golfer wanted to buy in bulk. One issue for Nike, he said, was that the public never believed that the clubs Woods played were essentially the same clubs ordinary players could buy.

For the past half decade or more, LA Golf has faced various problems. “We partnered with the golfer who is more active than any golfer on social media and I’m very grateful for that,” Dickens said. “Tiger gave Nike some magical moments, like that ball sitting on the edge of the hole before it went in.” Sunday at the 2005 Masters, the par-3 16th hole, Woods’ second shot, the swoosh of his Nike ball available to all until it wasn’t. Woods won his fourth Masters that year. “But I don’t think any of that helped Nike get a return on their investment,” Dickens said.

In 2016, Nike was out of the golf manufacturing business. That same year, DeChambeau turned pro. Within a few years, he was helping LA Golf break into the golf business at the highest level. For ubiquity, LA Golf was nothing like TaylorMade or Titleist, but DeChambeau helped make the LA Golf name known to countless golfers, no doubt about it. You always have to start with a base, with your constituents. Every student of politics knows this, and every marketing executive knows it too.

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 move forward without its Tiger Woods, without arguably the most influential player in the world. He knows it won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, DeChambeau’s 4.3 million followers on Instagramamong other things, we’ll be sorry to hear about Bryson’s next move, with spring not even a month away and Bryson DeChambeau widely enjoying the title, one eye or not, of the Most Interesting Man in Golf.

Yo, Bryson: What do you give, friend?

***

II. SPRING TIME FOR BRYSON

Your supplemental correspondent sent a message Tuesday morning at 9:15 to DeChambeau’s senior agent, Mr. Brett Falkoff, senior vice president of GSE Worldwide, noting that Reed Dickens had described 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, what with millions following him on Instagram, X, YouTube, 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.”

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

Until then, the first round of the 2026 Masters (the fourth and last Tuesday of February) is just 45 days away. Bryson is on the court and he will have 14 clubs at his disposal. DeChambeau at Augusta will be interesting because DeChambeau anywhere is interesting. What sticks and shafts will he use? Always a question with Bryson, though this is probably a good time to share this observation from Reed Dickens: “Bryson can win with a rental band.”

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