Greg Bodine spoke to the Par-3 Podcast about the level of sales he received from Bryson DeChambeau.
Getty Images
If Bryson DeChambeau wasn’t a showman, he might be a salesman.
In many ways, the reigning US Open champion already IS a salesman – a salesman of golf to the non-golfer, the golf-ambivalent, and the golf-addict. Between him YouTube channel and his time inside the ropes, Bryson has shown us his ability to work – and giving – his fields with impressive accuracy. Often, you’re dating before you know you’re being proposed to.
That quality is what makes it so funny, then, to hear the story of how Bryson found his way to the most influential part of his recent resurgence: caddy Greg Bodine. As Bodine tells it, Bryson approached him about bagging him during a career low, and, well, he didn’t exactly talk about the gig.
During a recent appearance in Podcast Par-3Bodine talked through the path that took him from Tony Finau’s bag to Bryson DeChambeau’s — a journey that began with a strangely uninteresting sales pitch.
The real Bryson DeChambeau emerged after the US Open cameras went off
James Colgan
Bodine says the call first came before the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill. After an ugly first season with LIV, Bryson had another transformative season that included losing 18 pounds in 24 days as part of a new restricted diet. The problem, however, was that he had come out the other side of her looking… mostly the same. His finishes at LIV weren’t improving and his golf swing felt far from the player that tortured US Open 2020 in Foot with wings.
“I got into Bryson’s case — he was playing really bad,” Bodine said. “He even said – and I respect him and his agent for this – he said, ‘dude, I’m lost, I have no idea what I’m doing with my game.’ I think he also used the words “rock bottom” and stuff, but, he said, “I’m grinding as hard as I ever have.” You know what kind of player I am, and you know what kind I am a worker.
Bryson was looking for a change and Bodine represented much more than a bib change. Bodine exudes a quiet composure that contrasts with Bryson’s intensity, and the caddy’s laid-back breadth ran counter to the type-A obsessives DeChambeau had long used in the bag. But the search for new atmospheres cut both ways. Bodine and his wife had just experienced the unimaginable pain of a miscarriage, and he wasn’t interested in returning to a caddy life on the PGA Tour that involved long hours and very few trips home.
“LIV was cool, but I couldn’t do the PGA Tour thing anymore,” Bodine said. “I would have had good players ask me to help them on the PGA Tour, but I was like, I can’t do 30 more weeks with everything going on with my family.”
The two players saw very different things in each other, but they shared a common spirit. Eventually, Bodine decided to test the waters.
“He took a chance on me too. I had never caddied for him before, and he had seen me in groups that I was paired with, and so we were both in a really interesting place in our lives,” Bodine said. “I didn’t know if I would to go out there for a week or two and hate every second of it, or I didn’t know if I was going to caddy for Bryson when he was 45.”
They lasted through those first few weeks, and then again over the next year. And then DeChambeau’s game started coming online, and the golfer-caddie group bonded into something much more than that.
When DeChambeau won the US Open in June, Bodine was among the first people to thank at his presser after the round. He thanked her even when the cameras were off, sending the US Open trophy to be with Bodine at home in Seattle for a few weeks. It was a small gesture from DeChambeau, sure, but an important one for the caddy who proved so helpful in the turnaround. Thankfully, the feelings are mutual.
“Obviously, looking back 14-15 months ago, it’s gone really well,” Bodine said. “He started playing really well, he got this device that changed his life. He has won a number of LIV events, and obviously the US Open went very well. I am grateful that the door opened and I walked through it.”
You can hear his full interview with Par-3 Podcast here.
