Bryson DeChambeau is all set to lead his team to glory once again. At the Maridoe Golf Club, in Dallas, he’s hoping to make the best use of his advantages for the Team Championship. The biggest of those advantages is that he gets to choose his opponent at Saturday’s semifinals. But that’s not the only edge that the ‘Scientist’ will enjoy going into the team championship. Cue his special past with the course’s owner, Albert Huddleston!

“We hit it off immediately,” divulged Huddleston in an interview ahead of the Team championship in Dallas as per Dallas News, “Because the world plays checkers; some people play chess; Bryson and I, I think, merge into three-dimensional chess.” He was, interestingly enough, recounting his first meeting with the LIV Golf Pro back when he took the entire SMU Athletics team by plane out to Florida for a winter outing.

The Dallas billionaire then recalled how he saw a blue chalk line on the putting green. “Who put an azimuth on the putting green?” he wondered… only to be met with the young DeChambeau’s query. “You know what that is?” asked the Scientist, surprised that someone else knew about what Merriam-Webster defined as the “horizontal direction expressed as the angular distance between the direction of a fixed point and the direction of the object.” “Well, of course, I know what that is,” was Huddleston’s response, and ever since that unique moment that was bridged by golf and physics, their relationship has been a special one.

“We hit it off, and we continued to have a conversation afterward,” said Huddleston before he recollected the young golfer’s feats. Just six months following their meeting, the SMU athlete went ahead to become the fifth athlete to clinch the NCAA individual title and U.S. Amateur in the same calendar year. A “glorious six months,” or so he calls it!

That’s not all. Down the lane, many questioned Bryson DeChambeau’s decisions to cut down his iron shafts to 37.5 inches, but not Huddleston. The billionaire golfing enthusiast saw it as a move of genius and went ahead to sponsor the golfer as he started off his career. “I had him over to the house,” revealed the course owner. “I wanted to make sure that he was able to initiate his journey without the pressure of maybe the wrong people wanting to use him rather than support him.” And the result? A 2-time U.S. Open champ and the defending champion coming into the 2024 LIV Golf Team Championship.

Bryson DeChambeau in hopes of defending title in Dallas

2024 was a fruitful year for Bryson DeChambeau & his team just like 2023. Seven podium finishes, including three wins, do not come easy. And before raking in the 208.50 points, they had already claimed one of the three quarterfinal byes ahead of Chicago. “We wanted to prove a point,” declared DeChambeau back then,  “We wanted to show that we’re back, and we wanted to have some momentum going into next week. We feel like we’ve got ourselves in a good place.”

And this was all possible for the ‘Scientist’ thanks to Albert Huddleston’s help. “It was eye-opening for, I think, a lot of sponsors,” divulged the athlete, “for them to come and sponsor me — and then eventually to give [Huddleston] back the capital that he had given me, It was a great springboard.” Well, he would hope to prove to the billionaire once again as the golfer tees off with his team at the Maridoe Golf Club. Now wouldn’t that be symbolic!