Adrien Dumont de Chassart ready to step into PGA TOUR spotlight

URBANA, Ill. – Adrien Dumont de Chassart is difficult to miss.

With each step through this hallway in the University of Illinois practice facility, the name appears again. A banner overhead celebrates his recognition as an All-American. Three times his name appears on the plaque recognizing the Fighting Illini who won the Big Ten Player of the Year award. He’s listed among the school’s former Big Ten champions (he won the title as a freshman) and recognized for his appearances in the Palmer Cup and World Amateur Team Championship.

De Chassart does not revel in those past accomplishments. While giving a tour of the Illinois practice facility, he sheepishly acknowledges the accolades before quickly moving on.

His attention is elsewhere. Reveling in his past is of little interest. His focus is on the future.

As he enters the lobby, he sees a large television tuned to Golf Channel. The pairings for the Ryder Cup’s opening Foursomes session are being announced.

“Man, I want to be there,” he says.

It’s not an audacious desire for the 23-year-old. Not after all the success he had shortly after turning pro last year.

If Ludvig Åberg is Exhibit A for how to capitalize on the opportunities offered by PGA TOUR University, then Dumont de Chassart is still a compelling case study. Åberg’s rapid rise to the Ryder Cup was one of the most captivating stories of 2023’s second half. But in most other years, it would be Dumont de Chassart’s promising start to his pro career that would attract the golf world’s attention.

After finishing third in the 2023 PGA TOUR University ranking – behind Åberg and NCAA champion Fred Biondi – Dumont de Chassart won in his pro debut on the Korn Ferry Tour. He finished second the following week, clinching his PGA TOUR card in almost unprecedented fashion. They were the first of a record six consecutive top-10s on the Korn Ferry Tour, a run that, like Åberg, put him in the conversation for one of Luke Donald’s Ryder Cup selections.

Dumont de Chassart has shown he’s next in the line of never-satisfied, uber-talented and perfectly coiffed college grads who expect to impact the PGA TOUR immediately. He may be quiet but his sights are always set on the road ahead. The next goal. The next accomplishment. His first PGA TOUR win. His first Ryder Cup.

He will realize another achievement at this week’s Sony Open in Hawaii, where he'll make his first PGA TOUR start as a member.

That Dumont de Chassart is checking that box this early is a testament to his talent, of which insiders have already taken note. Quietly, he was asked by the leaders of the European Ryder Cup team to display his skills in a pair of DP World Tour events, an audition for one of Luke Donald’s six selections.

While he struggled in those two events, he takes solace in knowing he had a chance. He takes comfort in knowing that he now has two years – not two months – to make his case for the 2025 team instead. And the work starts now.

Dumont de Chassart is one of 15 rookies in the field this week at Waialae Country Club, though he’s the only one who was in college a year ago. He’s the first player to earn Korn Ferry Tour status through PGA TOUR U and then translate it into a PGA TOUR card for the following season. He did it in just 11 events, though it helps when you win your first.

Just two weeks after his career at Illinois ended with a loss in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division I team championship, Dumont de Chassart shot 65 in the final round of the BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by TD SYNNEX in June to make it into a playoff with Josh Teater. De Chassart won with par on the first playoff hole.

To those who know him, this was equal parts surprising and inevitable, for the only thing the preternaturally talented Dumont de Chassart lacked at Illinois was a number of wins reflective of his abilities. Indeed, after picking off two tournaments as a freshman, including co-medalist honors at the Big Ten Championship, Dumont de Chassart won just two times over his final four seasons. He was consistently putting himself in contention – he finished his career with 29 top-10s in 52 stroke-play tournaments – but just couldn’t consistently convert those chances into wins.

He voiced his frustration to Illinois head coach Mike Small, who told Dumont de Chassart to stay the course. With more experience, wins would come. When he got over the line at the BMW, the timing couldn’t have been better.

“Coach, I did it. I closed it,” he texted to Small hours after the BMW Charity Pro-Am.

The momentum nearly carried him to another victory in his second start. Dumont de Chassart lost to fellow PGA TOUR U grad Ricky Castillo in a playoff the following week. His six consecutive top-10s tied a Korn Ferry Tour record, most recently set by John Mallinger in 2011.

“It just feels great that my game has been on at the right time,” Dumont de Chassart said.

It’s a game that he’s crafted since he was young, although not by a monomaniacal dedication to golf alone. Dumont de Chassart’s childhood home in Villers-la-Ville, Belgium, a suburb 40 minutes south of Brussels, features several of his old sports trophies, mostly from other sports. He was a top-15 junior tennis player in Belgium before he stopped competing at 13.

“I was probably better at tennis,” he said.

But golf had a stronger pull on him. And when Dumont de Chassart’s tennis swing began to hinder his golf swing, he put down the racquet.

That upbringing has stayed with him, for better and for worse. He displays deft touch around the greens, nipping chips with the spin of a lethal drop shot.

“He has some of the best hands of anybody I’ve ever seen,” said Justin Bardgett, Illinois’ assistant coach during Dumont de Chassart’s time there. (Bardgett is now director of player relations for PGA TOUR Pathways.)

As a tennis player, Dumont de Chassart said, he was “never out of a point.” The golfing equivalent is his propensity to wiggle his way out of trouble. Like switching between topspin and backspin, Dumont de Chassart hit draws and fades interchangeably on the golf course growing up. He was “100% a feel player.” Whatever the shot called for, he was going to hit. And he enjoyed pulling off heroics in the trees, dropping balls there just to test himself.

Alas, that tennis background got him in trouble, too. His miss was a nasty hook that came from all the forehands he drilled as a kid.

His upbringing magnified those characteristics as well. Dumont de Chassart’s father, Arnaud, didn’t let him use a driver until he was below a 30 handicap. So, instead of chasing speed as a youngster, Dumont de Chassart refined his short game. He played well enough to earn the driver by age 11, but the unfamiliarity with the club persisted into college. It was a relatively simple choice to attend Illinois. Small had previously recruited Dumont de Chassart’s fellow countrymen Thomas Detry and Thomas Pieters, who spoke highly of the program.

Dumont de Chassart won the Big Ten Championship as a freshman despite “not hitting the ball well” with the driver, Small said. It caught up to him in his sophomore season, when he managed just one top-20 in six starts and averaged two strokes higher than any other season.

“It was incredible to see where he would make pars from,” Bardgett said.

Determined to straighten it out before his junior year, Dumont de Chassart committed to a fade off the tee. The switch eradicated the left miss that got him in trouble when he attempted to hit draws. He perfected a pull cut – Sahith Theegala and Wyndham Clark play a similar shot shape – and it held up. He finished outside the top 20 just three times over his final three seasons at Illinois.

Dumont de Chassart’s ability to diagnose and fix issues on his own is among the reasons his college coaches think he acclimated quickly to the Korn Ferry Tour and will thrive on the PGA TOUR. Bardgett recalled walking up to Dumont de Chassart following a poor first round of a collegiate tournament. They made some small talk, but after a minute, Dumont de Chassart cut the conversation off.

“I’m working on something, coach,” he said.

It took Bardgett aback, though not because it was rude. It was just blunt. Dumont de Chassart was focused, not worried about the previous round or confused about what went wrong. There’s intention in everything he does; he knows what needs to fixed and set out to do it.

“All the players I've had at that age, most kids, when they struggle or are having some problems, you know, they run for help, which makes sense,” Small said. “That's what they've been taught. But Adrien, he’s always trying to figure things out himself first.”

And to great effect. He was the third golfer in conference history to win Big Ten Golfer of the Year three times and the first to win in three consecutive years since Luke Donald in 2001. Dumont de Chassart was a finalist for the Jack Nicklaus and Fred Haskins awards and a Ben Hogan Award semifinalist. As a senior he broke the Illinois scoring record with a 69.54 average.

Whether he can continue to evaluate and self-correct will be pivotal for his rookie season. His swing coach, Jerome Theunis, is still based in Belgium. Meanwhile, Dumont de Chassart moved to Jacksonville, Florida, this winter with his girlfriend, Katie Underwood, daughter of University of Illinois men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood. The couple had been staying with Katie's parents since Dumont de Chassart graduated.

Assuming good health, Dumont de Chassart will make more than two dozen starts as a full PGA TOUR member. There will assuredly be ups and downs, but those around him are confident he will adjust.

“He’s the most mature 23-year-old I’ve ever been around,” Bardgett said. “I think he’s going to be extremely successful for a long time.”