Bryson DeChambeau wins LIV Golf South Africa 2026 with back-to-back titles, stunning wedge play, and a dramatic final shot vs Jon Rahm. Record crowds prove Adelaide’s success is repeatable—plus analysis of the improved broadcast.
Bryson DeChambeau is one of the world’s best players - and he’s noticeably improving.
After his playoff win in Singapore over Richard T. Lee, I wrote about how Bryson was experimenting with new wedges, and that could be a signal that his game is about to evolve once again.
To summarize the piece, when Bryson sets his mind to something, he doesn’t just improve at it, he becomes one of the best in the world. He talked ahead of the Singapore event about how he’d received nearly a dozen different wedge models that he was doing some testing on, because he’s starting to realize that he needs to excel at more than driving the ball.
We saw these struggles throughout the 2025 season, notably at The Masters. His distance control really held him back in some of the biggest moments, but the rest of his game was so strong he was still frequently in the mix. Even leading the Masters at one point in the final round. It seems he’s really starting to focus on becoming a more well-rounded player, while emphasizing that this wont come at the expense of any of his distance.
11 days after he starts talking about working on his wedge game, he’s added two titles to his tally.
And this time, at The Club at Steyn City, in front of tens of thousands of fans, he did it in electric fashion. Without undermining the level of play required to find himself in the playoff in Singapore, when it looked like he may be lucky to head back to the tee for a second playoff hole, he was effectively handed the win as Richard T. Lee three putted from 20 feet to lose.
That wasn’t the case in South Africa. He found himself in the rough, 285 yards out from the green, with a bunker he just failed to get up and down from in front. His opponent, Jon Rahm, in the center of the fairway.
Then, he did what he often does, what he does better than anybody in the world. Pulled his 3-wood out of the bag and took the fullest of full lashes at it. It pitched just over the bunker on the front of the green and chased up to about 12 feet. Two putts for birdie would be enough for him to claim his second win in as many weeks.
He’s playing as good of golf as I’ve ever seen him play. Regularly pushing north of 190 ball speed off the tee, rolling in 10+ footers as often as anybody, and starting to hit some really great wedge shots.
He’ll have a couple of weeks to dial things in before the first major championship of the season, The Masters, where he’ll enter as not only one of the betting favorites, but one of the fan favorites.
Adelaide is no fluke.
Despite battling Mother Nature for the entirety of the event, the crowd at The Club at Steyn City was nothing short of impressive. Over 100,000 fans throughout the four rounds illustrates exactly what LIV Golf has been trying to prove since 2022: the Adelaide event is not a fluke.
It’s not just something they’ve fallen in to, it’s not just a one-off thing, it’s something that is repeatable in markets throughout the world. South Africa supported this event from the moment it was announced until the moment it concluded.
They’ve already formally announced their return in April of 2027, but Gatyon McKenzie, the South African Minister of Sport, would like to see it returning far beyond that.
“First one is that LIV Golf is never leaving this continent again, which means we're going to be here 2027, 2028, 2029, 20forever. We're going to be here. And LIV Golf has found -- I don't care what Adelaide is saying; they said, minister, you must sell one ticket less than us, so I want to see how they're going to chase me with 250.”
And they aren’t just planning on repeating what we saw this week, they’re planning on expanding. McKenzie added regarding the possibilities for next year:
“You'd better make sure we're going to sell 250,000 tickets next year.”
Sure, there’s some amount of exaggeration or humor in his tone when saying that, but the scenes this week undoubtedly make the case for an expansion of infrastructure throughout the venue. If that results in a 50% increase in capacity, or even a 25% increase, LIV Golf South Africa will be the most impactful golf event in African history for years to come.
Most importantly it’s shown that the scenes in Adelaide are repeatable, there are markets throughout the world that are starved for star-power laden golf tournaments and LIV Golf is able to deliver them. There might not be 13 that are as ripe and would be as successful in their first year, but that’s not a requirement for success. This week, and the product as a whole, will help drive the growth of the game throughout the world. That growth will develop markets that are as supportive and as motivated to host these events as Adelaide and South Africa have been.
That’s the formula, that’s the secret sauce. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the process has already started and The Club at Steyn City was proof of that.
The broadcast improved throughout the event - but needed to be perfect.
The first round broadcast, to put it simply, was not good. It was (hopefully) the low point of a season that has seen numerous features that have become staples of the LIV Golf product be non-functional.
I covered this at length in an opinion piece written after this week’s first round:
This was the biggest week of the season thus far for LIV, not only from a golf standpoint, but from a business standpoint. The broadcast, the primary method of showcasing the product to the world, needed to be firing on all cylinders for this week. After one round not only was it not doing that, but it was as bad as I’ve seen all season.
Fortunately, things were better after that. The leaderboard had returned, the storytelling improved, the technology worked, and by Sunday, the product was much improved.
Are there still things that I (and many others) would like to see improved? Certainly. I’d love to see more names on the individual leaderboard, I’d love to see more of the team leaderboard, and I’d love for them to show more golf shots on the commercial free stream when the linear broadcasts are going to commercial.
All of those are things that would be instant quality of life improvements to what is already a good product. But none of that is what had me worried after the first round. It wasn’t really a question of “what features are working?” but more of a question of “why aren’t these features working?”. There’s a fair argument to be made that this was the biggest week for the league since the LIV debuted in London of 2022, and internally it should have been treated as such. Everything should have been fully functional to showcase this pivotal week to the world and it wasn’t.
I’m cautiously optimistic because they did get things patched up quickly, but still wondering if some of the offseason changes to the broadcast and technology teams at the company have altered the culture in a way that will continue allowing these things to happen. Because if there’s any week that it shouldn’t have happened, it was this one.
LIV Golf South Africa 2026 is off to a massive start with record crowds embracing the historic African debut at Steyn City. In this opinion piece, we explore why Round 2 represents a pivotal moment for the league's global growth and future success. Honest take on what's working, and what needs to level up.
Bryson DeChambeau’s wild LIV Golf Singapore win, a brutal playoff ending, and a key wedge change that could signal a more complete—and more dangerous—Bryson in 2026.