After his opening round Friday, Bryson DeChambeau painted an illustration of why Augusta National Golf Club is one of his favorite places in the world.
"My favorite moment is when the sun is kind of setting and everybody has kind of gotten off the golf course and you're just hitting golf balls by yourself or a couple other pros are out there hitting golf balls, and you see the sun going down.," he said. "It's like having -- that's what I look forward to a lot coming into next week, other than playing well and giving myself a chance. I really enjoy those moments after the round practicing hard into the night."
What followed was an answer describing how he's in a great frame of mind leading up to the year's first major, and it's showing.
DeChambeau leads after two rounds at the 2025 LIV Golf Miami, playing well on a difficult Trump Doral course where only seven golfers are under par after two rounds. DeChambeau, at 5 under, leads by two over Sergio Garcia. Patrick Reed and Phil Mickelson are among those three shots back at 2 under, and Jon Rahm, who has still yet to finish outside the top 10 in any of his LIV Golf starts, is four behind and T-6. DeChambeau said Saturday's round was possibly the most difficult in LIV Golf history.
"It was right up there. I just think with the water everywhere -- Andalucía, you could kind of get away with it in certain places. Here you can't get away with it," DeChambeau said. "You make a double-cross or something, it's in the water and you're making double. I don't know; it's up there."
DeChambeau has had a good, not great start to the LIV Golf season. He hasn't won since his triumph at Pinehurst No. 2 last summer, and his best finish in 2025 is a T-6 under the lights in Riyadh.
Until last year, when he finished T-6, DeChambeau's best finish at the Masters was T-21, coming in 2016 when he was an amateur. It's a place he has always idolized, and the two-time U.S. Open champion has expressed his appreciation for the year's first major, even after comments in the past where he called Augusta National a par 67.
Twelve LIV Golf players will head down Magnolia Lane next week, seven of those being past champions. Many of them are in contention at Doral, and Sunday offers one final chance for DeChambeau and others to get a final tune-up before the green jacket is on the line.
"You can always get better, and that's kind of the mentality I take into these major championships, these LIV events, how do I just keep getting better, and sometimes I'm not there, I don't have anything and I don't know what's going on for whatever reason, but as I'm getting a little bit older, I'm learning how to stay on track a lot more, be more consistently on track," DeChambeau said.
"So going into next week it's going to be more of the ...
