One of the most famous golfers in the world made an appearance at a historic public golf course in Sonoma County this week.
Bryson DeChambeau, a two-time major winner who now plays on the LIV Golf Tour, teed up at Northwood Golf Club in Guerneville over the past few days. General Manager Gaylord Schaap said DeChambeau was playing the course as part of filming a video for his YouTube channel, which has nearly three million subscribers.
The boys ran into @brysondech at Northwood our home away from home & hit balls next to the boys! He could not have been nicer to not only the boys but also to EVERYONE that came up to him! Was already a big fan, this only solidifies it. Get that course record Bryson!!! 🌲 ⛳️ pic.twitter.com/pPMl4KnuMx
— Joe Shasky (@ButcherBoy415) July 1, 2026
“He said he really liked it,” Schaap said of DeChambeau’s thoughts on the course. “He’s been very cordial to all our customers, signed a lot of autographs, taken a lot of pictures. And kids, we have a lot of junior golfers that all play out here. They’re all saying, ‘You’re kidding me, is that Bryson DeChambeau?’”
A Modesto native, DeChambeau turned pro in 2016 and was ranked high as No. 4 in the world in 2021. He’s won the U.S. Open twice, in 2020 and 2024, and has recorded eight top-10 finishes in major championships and nine wins overall in his career on the PGA Tour. DeChambeau left the PGA Tour in 2022 to be one of the premier names for LIV Golf, where he’s played ever since.
DeChambeau has also grown a substantial following on social media, specifically on YouTube, where he’s amassed 2.76 million followers since launching his channel in 2020. His most popular videos are his Break 50 series, in which he and a celebrity try to shoot lower than 50 from the front tees at courses all over the world.
More recently, he’s also been trying to break course records at public courses, but the video he shot at Northwood is apparently of a different variety, Schaap said.
“This is a shift away from that to something maybe a little more about showing his ability to understand golf architecture, what’s going on out there,” Schaap said. “He’s trying to get away from some of that Break 50 stuff that he’s been doing, at least from what he told me. This is going to be the first of a new series of finding these unique locations and playing the courses and explaining what’s unique about the course and its design, that sort of thing.”
Pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau at Northwood Golf Club in Guerneville. (COURTESY OF TREVOR SCHAAP)
Northwood, a picturesque nine-hole public course tucked among the redwoods near Guerneville, has become a popular destination for golf influencers in recent years due to its uniqueness, beauty and history. The course was built by legendary architect Alister MacKenzie, who designed 50 other courses around the world including Augusta National, Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne.
Erik Anders Lang highlighted Northwood in a video for Skratch Golf four years ago that has garnered over a million views and put it on the map for the broader golf world. Since then, the course has seen a steady stream of social media golfers but none with as much of a following as DeChambeau. The increased attention over the last few years has also led to a major upswing in business for the course.
“I grew up here and been working here since I was a little kid, since I could reach the peddles on the golf cart, and I remember some winters out here where we’d be lucky to get 10 golfers on a Thursday or Friday,” said Trevor Schaap, the course superintendent and Gaylord’s son. “And now, as long as the weather is good, we’re almost fully booked. That Skratch Golf video was definitely the start of putting us on the map of the internet.”
“It’s been a marvelous ride here,” added Gaylord Schaap. “We got the course in 1970 and there wasn’t much here. It was pretty beat up and didn’t have a good reputation, so we sort of polished the stone, so to speak, and now we have something that people desire to play.”
Gaylord Schaap said that part of the reason DeChambeau made the trip to Northern California to play Northwood was to prepare for The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale in two weeks.
“I guess he thought this would be kind of a good way to hit his mid and short irons with different shots out here on these MacKenzie greens, which are similar to the kinds of greens they have out at Birkdale,” Schaap said.
Bryson DeChambeau plays at Northwood Golf Club in Guerneville on Thursday, July 2, 2026. COURTESY PHOTO
Trevor got a more personal experience with DeChambeau. The younger Schaap showed him around the course on Wednesday, teaching him the layout and telling him about the history as DeChambeau’s team scouted out vantage points for filming. DeChambeau shot 2-under par 34 for his filmed round on Thursday, but setting a low score wasn’t the entire objective.
“He was a pretty down-to-earth guy, very easy to get along with,” Trevor said. “He was mainly interested in the Alister MacKenzie history and architecture style of this course. The way that MacKenzie shapes his bunkers, the way he sloped his greens — he was really into all of that, kind of nerding out on it.”
Trevor said DeChambeau enjoyed the first round so much on Thursday that he went out again for a second round, when he tried to drive the greens on some of the par 4 holes on the course. DeChambeau is one of the longest-driving professional players in the world.
DeChambeau was off to Canada next to film another video, the Schaaps said, and with the Open just two weeks away, they don’t anticipate the Northwood video showing up on YouTube before that.
Business at Northwood is already booming, but now the Schaaps are expecting to get even busier once DeChambeau showcases the course to his massive following.
“I definitely anticipate a spike in phone calls for tee times as soon as this video comes out,” Trevor Schaap said.