Bryson DeChambeau Enters The Open Winless in Cuts Made at 2026 Majors, Faces Fresh Criticism From Brandel Chamblee

An 0-for-3 Start to a Major Season

Bryson DeChambeau has missed the cut at all three majors he's played in 2026: the Masters, the PGA Championship, and the U.S. Open at Shinnecock, according to the NY Post. He tees it up this week at Royal Birkdale trying to avoid something that hasn't happened to him before: missing every major cut in a single calendar year.

It's a brutal fall for a guy who won the U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2024, beating Rory McIlroy with a bunker shot on the 72nd hole that's already a piece of golf folklore. In 2025 he was still playing like a top-five player in the world, going T5 at the Masters, T2 at the PGA Championship, then missing the cut at Oakmont before bouncing back with a T10 at Royal Portrush, per Fox News.

This year has been different. Four missed cuts in his last five major starts, according to Compleat Golfer. For a two-time U.S. Open champion, this qualifies as a significant slump.

Chamblee's Shot Heard Around Golf Twitter

Golf Channel's Brandel Chamblee didn't hold back on the network's "Live From" show ahead of the Open. "Probably one of the biggest surprises of the year is Bryson DeChambeau," Chamblee said, according to multiple outlets including Golf Monthly and Sports Illustrated. "It's almost like he went from chasing Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy to chasing Grant Horvat. It's like he wants to outdo every YouTuber in the game of golf instead of outplay everybody in the game of golf."

Grant Horvat, for context, is one of the biggest names in golf content on YouTube and has filmed multiple crossover videos with DeChambeau. He's a legitimately good amateur player. He is not competing on the PGA Tour or LIV Golf against Scheffler and McIlroy for majors.

Chamblee's line went viral fast, picked up by NUCLR GOLF on social media and repeated across golf media within a day, per Compleat Golfer's own writeup.

Nick Faldo piled on too, telling Sky Sports that DeChambeau "has zero clue of strategy" on a links course. "He said it last year, I think on TV, 'I'm going to go out there and attack the links.' Well, I've never attacked a links, you thread it, don't you?" Faldo said, according to the NY Post and Fox News. Faldo's point is specific: DeChambeau's bomb-and-gouge approach that works at power-friendly U.S. courses doesn't translate to Birkdale's tight, wind-exposed fairways.

The Case Chamblee's Take Isn't Fully Fair

Sports Illustrated pushed back on Chamblee directly, calling the "chasing Grant Horvat" line "savage" but "not exactly fair. Or even correct." SI's argument: making a cut at a major is genuinely hard, DeChambeau is being held to a higher bar because of his past success, and there's no actual evidence tying his YouTube schedule to his scores.

DeChambeau's YouTube channel has become a real business, and by the NY Post's account his "brand is booming" even as his major results tank. But correlation isn't causation. Plenty of golfers have had multi-major cold streaks without a content business to blame, and DeChambeau still won twice on LIV Golf this year with three third-place finishes, according to the Post. That doesn't suggest a guy who's lost interest in competitive golf.

DeChambeau hasn't addressed the criticism directly. The NY Post reported he "consistently declined interview requests" at the U.S. Open in June and hadn't been quoted about his form heading into Birkdale as of this week. The strategy-versus-content debate is being fought entirely by TV analysts and columnists, not by DeChambeau himself.

What's Actually at Stake This Week

DeChambeau is set to tee off alongside defending Open champion Scottie Scheffler and Tyrrell Hatton in an early Thursday grouping at Royal Birkdale, per Sports Illustrated. A fourth straight missed cut would make 2026 the first year in his career he fails to survive the weekend at every major.

He already has a track record on this exact tournament to lean on: DeChambeau finished 10th at last year's Open at Royal Portrush despite opening with a 78, according to the NY Post. Whether that links experience translates at Birkdale, or whether Faldo's criticism about his strategy holds up under tournament pressure, will be answered on the course, not on a Golf Channel set. The scorecard settles this one.