The stepping stone to Bryson DeChambeau’s major success was laid in 2018 when he partnered with LA Golf. Two years later, he won the first of his two U.S. Opens. All 14 shafts were from LA Golf. Ditto for his 2024 U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst No. 2. But that partnership has come to an end thanks to a high-stakes business dispute where DeChambeau put forward an interesting demand.

“Bryson and I actually have some of the same tendencies, and I have nothing but respect for him,” Reed Dickens, the CEO of LA Golf told Golf.com. “But he has this new consultant, a McKinsey-consulting-type guy, and this guy says to me that Bryson is going to walk unless he gets 51% [stake in LA Golf]. Bryson’s got 2% of the company. And I think the guy doesn’t realize that he’s dealing with a redneck. And I say, ‘There’s no path for that.’ They played chicken with me, and now we’re going to graciously part ways.”

Essentially, DeChambeau wanted to be a majority owner of the brand. Dickens didn’t agree to the proposal. As he hinted, the thinly veiled threat came under the guise of a business proposal from DeChambeau’s new business consultant. But there was another issue too.

“Bryson needs someone serving him 24 hours a day; he needs somebody to build him his own clubs, and that’s not scalable for us,” Dickens continued.

LA Golf, upon launching, took an interesting approach. Instead of signing players as brand ambassadors, Dickens offered them equity and a chance to work closely with their team to create custom gear. DeChambeau, forever the tinkerer of golf equipment, jumped at the opportunity.

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But their parting is more surprising not just because of their history but because of how deeply DeChambeau was involved in the manufacturing business. For almost eight years, LA Golf was DeChambeau’s personal laboratory. He and the company’s top engineer, Jeff Mayer, could talk all day about clubs, and it showed tremendously in the golfer’s success.

In 2020, DeChambeau won the U.S. Open using fourteen LA Golf shafts. These iron shafts were all the same length and extremely stiff. The winning streak continued when he secured another U.S. Open title in 2024 with the same shafts. By the 2025 Masters, he was still singing the praises of his custom gear. And this time DeChambeau played not just LA Golf shafts but LA Golf heads, too.

These heads were custom-made to his exact specifications, with faces that had a pronounced and distinctive bulge and roll. LA Golf and DeChambeau also introduced a line of drivers, with the golfer’s fingerprints on their simple and shiny design. These retail for $600 per driver.

It’s hard to find these anywhere except Discovery Golf because the founder of Discovery, Michael Meldman, is an 11% owner of LA Golf. Nevertheless, DeChambeau was working closely with the team to build custom irons and putters. In January 2025, the two-time major champ confirmed a full bag of LA Golf clubs is in the offing.

That project had to be shelved now. Despite the sour conclusion, Dickens remains highly complimentary of DeChambeau’s genius and contribution to the brand.

“I have nothing but respect for him. He challenges everything you do, and he makes you test your every assumption,” Dickens said, recalling their years together as one long and intensive R&D project.

With this news, one might wonder what’s next for DeChambeau. His longtime agent, Brett Falkoff, senior vice president of GSE Worldwide, confirmed the split.

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

Dickens remains confident about DeChambeau’s talent, stating, “Bryson could win with a rental set.”

As for LA Golf, the brand will now work on its “post-Bryson” identity by pivoting to a leaner and direct-to-consumer model. Dickens recently reduced the company’s headcount from 75 to 50 employees as it shifted from wholesale to selling exclusive products manufactured in the U.S. The brand will continue its presence in the field, as Sergio Garcia has put a full set of LA Golf irons into play for the 2026 season.

Despite this sour end, Dickens has spent significant time explaining why the DeChambeau split is different from how Tiger Woods and Nike ended their 27-year-long partnership, at least performance-wise.

DeChambeau’s involvement with LA Golf was edgier than Woods’s with Nike

Tiger Woods and Nike shared one of the most iconic partnerships in sports history, which lasted 27 years from 1996 to 2023. In between, Woods provided Nike with several iconic marketing moments. Remember the 2005 Masters chip-in on the 16th hole, where the Nike ‘Swoosh’ hung on the lip of the cup for two full seconds before dropping. Woods won his fourth Masters that year.

Despite that, Dickens argues, “I don’t think any of that helped with Nike’s return on their investment.”

According to Dickens, Nike already enjoyed vast name recognition without Tiger Woods and had slightly more with him. Because the public never really believed an ordinary golfer could buy the products that Woods was playing with in the first place. So they couldn’t market Woods’s name in the way they previously thought. Eventually, the pair parted ways amicably in early 2024, eight years after Nike had already exited the golf hardware business in 2016.

In contrast, LA Golf was built from the ground up with DeChambeau’s actual involvement in product engineering. Unlike Nike, where the public never truly believed they could buy the exact clubs Woods used, DeChambeau’s ‘fingerprints’ were physically on the design of the LA Golf products available to consumers.

As Dickens noted, “We partnered with the golfer who is more active than any golfer on social media, and I’m very grateful for that.”