'Does sting a little bit': Bryson DeChambeau regrets not getting Ryder Cup call

For a few months there, Bryson DeChambeau stood at the very center of the golf universe. A major winner and a self-created behemoth, he seemed like he might be the herald of a golf revolution. And then he lost significant time to injury, jumped to LIV Golf, filed suit against the PGA Tour, and that was pretty much it for his time in the spotlight.

But DeChambeau has continued to play on the LIV tour, and play well; he won his second LIV tournament on Sunday in Chicago. He was a dark horse candidate for a Ryder Cup slot, but in the end, he didn't even get a phone call from team captain Zach Johnson. After his win, he opened up a bit on the hurt from the silence.

"It would have been nice to at least just have a call," DeChambeau said at his champions' media conference. "There's numerous people that I think Zach should have called out here, and we didn't get that."

Johnson wasn't universally anti-LIV; he named Brooks Koepka to the team after Koepka narrowly missed out on qualifying automatically. "Brooks is obviously going to kill it for Team USA next week," Dechambeau said, "but yeah, it definitely does sting a little bit."

Thanks to the June agreement between the PGA Tour and LIV's Saudi backers, tensions may have cooled a bit between the golf establishment and the players who broke away to join LIV. But the scars likely still remain, particularly for the players who actively filed an antitrust suit against the PGA Tour. DeChambeau would eventually withdraw from that suit just days before the agreement was announced, but Koepka never joined it in the first place.

DeChambeau won two of the three most recent LIV tournaments. In early August, he claimed the LIV Greenbrier tournament with closing rounds of 61 and 58. He missed the cut at the Masters, but tied for fourth at the PGA Championship and tied for 20th at the U.S. Open.

Most of Johnson's captain's selections were obvious ones, though the choice of Justin Thomas over Keegan Bradley brought a bit of controversy and heartbreak to the proceedings. Outside of Koepka, DeChambeau had the strongest case of any LIV player for inclusion.

"I have no idea what it was or how it was like or who made that decision [not to contact LIV players]," DeChambeau said, "but it would have been nice for them to consider us more because we're pretty damn good out here."

The Ryder Cup tees off later this week in Rome. LIV Golf has two events remaining on its 2023 schedule, in Jeddah and Miami.