Davis Bryant was born into golf but that does not mean his road to the DP World Tour Play-Offs has been a straight one.
The son of parents who worked in golf, he attended Colorado State University but it was a maiden professional win in his home state at the Colorado Open that truly opened doors for him.
With a winner's checque in his bank account, he could head to Sweden for the First Stage of DP World Qualifying School in 2024 and eight weeks later, after a closing 62 at INFINITUM, he was on Tour.
Another trip to the six-round marathon followed but now, after two runner-up finishes in 2026, he finished the regular season 23rd on the Race to Dubai Rankings Delivered by DP World.
As part of a series focusing on the 2025 Q School graduates who have made it all the way to the 2026 Play-Offs, the DP World Tour caught up with him ahead of the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship.
How did you first get into golf?
Both my parents have been in the golf industry really for the last 20 years. Dad for about 30 years being a PGA head professional, director of golf, general manager at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club in Denver. So my sister Emma and I had access to be able to play the course and get involved with the First Tee program, which is a youth development program providing golf and life skills to kids ages six to 18 years old. My mom works for that organisation and the Colorado Open Golf Foundation and that foundation runs the professional Colorado State Opens. So from the age of six we lived at the golf course, basically, and so that certainly provided access to be able to play but they never forced it on us, never forced us to go play, go practise, we just had the opportunity really. So that's how we got into it. I played baseball growing up, played basketball growing up, my sister played volleyball and golf, so we were busy with a bunch of other things. We both decided to focus on golf and she played in college, I obviously played in college, and now we're both doing kind of something different. But that's how we got into it.
What would you say is your earliest golfing memory and who were your golfing heroes growing up?
I would say I made my first hole-in-one on our par-three course at Green Valley Ranch. It was on number eight, I think I was seven. I hit a crappy eight iron and it kind of hit this hill to the right, bounced straight left, rolled into the hole. And it was just my dad and I and it was like the coolest thing ever. That's probably my first real memory of having a little bit of success on the golf course. As for heroes, I really grew up watching Rory because I was just old enough to remember and I was just a little bit too young to remember Tiger. But I remember watching a lot of Rory highlights growing up. I got to meet him at the Irish Open last year, introduce myself. He's probably the one that I remember the most at a young age and then Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, obviously growing up in the States, following the PGA Tour religiously every week. A dream foursome would probably be my dad, my sister, my mom and me, just the family. We don't get to do that very often. So when we do get to do that, it's special. I'm only home probably 20 weeks a year so if I had to pick a strong foursome, it would probably be them.
You went to college, a very common route in the States that more and more Europeans are now actually taking. What do you think you learned from that and how does that prepare you for professional golf?
I always talk about my team-mates on the team, the other eight to ten players that you're playing with but you're also kind of playing against every day. Like, those are your resources to get better and I think the college program in the States is so beneficial to be able to use your coaches, the facilities, the financia l benefit of play wherever you really want to play, whatever equipment you want, you get to have, you're almost a professional golfer before you're not a professional golfer. And I think the system is just a great way to play a sport at a high level but also prepare you for professional golf because you're playing against really good competition. You're playing in 12 tournaments a year for free, you're getting to feel what it's like to play at a high level without the expense on your shoulders and that's really the only thing that's different between professional golf and college golf is now you're paying for everything and before you're not. It's now your job. In college it is your job in a sense, you're getting paid money and getting an education but there's different pressure. And so like that's the main difference I feel like. Yes, the courses are more difficult and yes, the competition's harder, but I would say those are the key differences between the college and professional development.
You joined the paid ranks in 2024 and you had an incredible purple patch of form on the US mini tours How does it feel when everything so consistently clicks together? And does it make it more frustrating when that isn't happening?
We've all dealt with something that doesn't go smoothly and a lot of times we can't figure out what's going wrong. So when it is going right and you feel like you can't screw anything up, it's almost like just get on the wave and ride it for as long as you can. I think back to how key those weeks were when I won like three tournaments in six weeks or whatever it was. I think I learned really what worked for me, my process, how I best prepare for tournaments. And for some reason it finally clicked how I'm thinking on the course, not trying to do anything special and then I was just like, I need to do that every week and I just started doing it every week. And then it transformed into the Fall and it transformed to Q School Stage One in Sweden and then Stage Two at Desert Springs and getting through in a play-off and then six rounds at Final Stage and the 62 in the final round. I think some of those small moments in small events were big moments at the end of the year. I wish there was like a specific thing that I did or a specific thing that just I changed or just clicked because if I had that secret, it would be great when things weren't going well. But I think it was just a culmination of playing professional golf for six months and then it happened to click at the right time. And sometimes it takes people five years for it to click, eight years to click. I'm just fortunate that it clicked pretty quickly and not that it's going to click again great next year or this week. You just try and ride it as long as you can and that's kind of how I approached it.
One of those mini tour wins was the Colorado Open, your home open. If you play a Ryder Cup, win Majors, whatever you may do, will that always be special, having one on home soil? Will that always be right up there? And how did that feel?
When I looked behind the green and I saw the staff members of the course, the starters, the people I would work with some summers when I wasn't playing professional golf a few years ago, my dad's staff members, the volunteers that I've known since I was six, seven years old and then to be in a position to tap in and win the tournament. I then also had the financial means to pursue golf at a higher level. It was like amazing. I remember it so clearly. There was an Instagram live video of the play-off and the end of the tournament with me tapping in, hugging all my friends and just saying hello to everyone. It's probably like a four or five minute video and I watch it sometimes just to remind myself of the feeling and how important it was to my career. I played at home the other day and the starter was announcing my group and the people I was playing with and he said: the 2024 Colorado Open champion Davis Bryant and Matt, my dad, and then the two others who were staff members. That's pretty cool to think about. Winning the Colorado Open was a special day and one that I'll remember forever.
Have you always had a desire to be an international player?
I remember giving my interview after the Colorado Open and I was asked does this open up some opportunities for you to pursue golf at maybe an international stage? And immediately I said yes because a week before, my two friends I ended up going to Sweden with were like, are you in? And we'll never know if I don't win the tournament or if I don't win the amount of money I won, would I have made the choice? But after that I thought, I have to do this. I have to give myself a chance to play at a higher level, whether it works out or not, it'd be a great experience, a week in Sweden or a week wherever would be great. My friends unfortunately didn't get through and I did. So it was simply just a way to give myself a chance to play. I played at an International Series event that summer in Morocco and I don't think I felt better about playing international golf afterwards but I didn't feel any worse. It was like, OK, this is a cool opportunity, I've enjoyed it, maybe this is something I do down the road. And it was about three weeks later that I won the tournament at home. And then at that point, I'm like, well, I have to do this. No other choice.
After you won your card, at the start of your 2026 season you went to Mauritius, South Africa, Qatar, Kenya, India, the UAE, China and then Turkey, all in the space of four or five months. For someone who six months earlier wasn't really thinking about international golf, that must have been an absolute whirlwind. Did you enjoy it? Do you think you've really taken to it now and is it something you'd like to keep doing?
I enjoyed it, yes. Did I know what I was doing? No. Was I kind of going through the motions? Yeah. I was just like, I've got a spot in these tournaments, or most of the tournaments... just go play, try and play well, figure it out as you go. And outside of like the golf preparation and really handling that, everything else was like, a crash course. I had no clue what I was doing. Did I miss home? Absolutely. I think there were some days I was like, why am I doing this? Do I really want to be in China? Do I really want to be here or there? But I kept reminding myself, you chose to give yourself this opportunity, you chose to pursue golf at the next level and you can compete, you can play. I had a couple of decent weeks last year and that made myself feel better about it but it was a disappointment after the end of the year. It was like: do I do this again? Do I do HotelPlanner Tour? Do I try doing Korn Ferry Q School again? Then I kept asking myself: do I want to play internationally again? Do I not? Do I want to play mini tours again in the States? Was this just kind of a free year to see how I liked it? And then getting through Q School again, it was like: you're in the same opportunity but you know what to expect. I know I can compete, I know I can play and that's exactly how this year's played out. You can't ask for anything else.
This year, you've had two runner-up finishes, just four missed cuts. Do you think the only difference there is that experience and familiarity? Or is it maybe something more technical clicked or is it also mental thing?
After last season, I realised that my putting wasn't where it needed to be. And I knew the courses, I knew the travel, I was more comfortable, I knew what to expect, I had some more friends. I just knew my surroundings more. I was in year two of a job, that was kind of what it felt like this year. And I walked up onto every driving range and every first tee box like I belong. I've done this. I've already been through it. I felt more calm, I felt more at ease, I felt more prepared. And definitely I think holing some more putts, getting more consistent on the greens. But I think mentally I was just more prepared to play professional golf and that's how I felt all year. It's like: dude, you're playing well, don't change it. You're really enjoying it, you're having a good time. You're having dinner with your friends, you're just, you're enjoying what you're doing. And I've just had a really, really good time doing what I love to do. And certainly if the success on the golf course wasn't what it had been, that probably doesn't feel as good. But when you're in an environment with people you enjoy to be around, and I've gotten to know some of the caddies, I've started to play darts, I've been to some football games. There's been some things that I like just didn't want to do last year and I didn't want to go out of my comfort zone. I kind of was maybe a bit more reserved. But this year I walk in the locker room and everyone says hello to me and I know everyone's name and like it's just that comfort feeling. So I think all of those things play a part into more success in your job and that's what's happened.
You're now here in the Play-Offs with the only the top 70 available players, was that a realistic goal for you at the start of the season and how proud are you to be sat here right now among all these very established players who have been out on this tour for years?
It's a very cool feeling to be able to be here and to be in for next week. My goal at a minimum was to make this tournament. I thought that would be a win. I was like: you can play well enough to keep your card. you have that game, you can do that, no problem. Not that it's going to be easy, but minimum top 70, play a Play-Off tournament, let's make that a goal. And then as the season went on, it was like: OK, how can we finish inside the top 25? How can we maybe try and get back to the PGA Tour. And I think I'm maybe one of only a couple of players inside the top 25 that hasn't won a tournament and in a really cool position. So I'm very fortunate and very excited. I think it means more for me to want to get to the PGA Tour because I want to travel a little bit easier. I want to have some family come to some tournaments. The times I have played on the PGA Tour, I had some pretty good success and I've enjoyed it. It would be a different feeling than knowing some people out here, not knowing very many people over there but I'd be lying to you if I told you I didn't want to go play at home, who wouldn't? So I'm going to treat the next two weeks like any other week and I know I need to play well but I'm going to really have fun. If you would have told me a year ago I'd be in this position, no doubt in my mind I would have taken it. I would have paid a lot of money to be able to have the opportunity. So I can't expect too much... but I have a great opportunity right now, the next eight rounds of golf I play in tournaments to change my life, change my career. And I might not get that again. So put all your eggs in that basket and work your ass off and do everything that you can control to put yourself in the best position to perform well and try and do it. And don't put any more pressure on yourself. So That's how I'm going to approach the next two weeks. I'm pretty laid back, pretty chill. I don't try and overthink things too much. If I finish 28th, if I finish 20th, if I finish 55th, I know that I prepared as best as I can. I'm not quitting on any shots. Just going to go try and execute as well as I can.
Should you fall short of one of those PGA Tour cards, what would the ambitions be for next year over here? Would it be a win? Would it still be the PGA Tour cards? Is it just climbing the ladder? What are the ultimate aspirations?
If I'm playing over here next year, I'd love to win a tournament. Year three, knowing the courses and being even more familiar with everything, maybe being more aggressive here or there, having the mental ability to not be worried about some situations, Knowing I'm in all the tournaments, that's huge, knowing that I can play wherever I want, whatever courses I want, countries I don't want to go to, that sort of thing. How many do I want to play in a row? How much do I not want to play? But to win in professional golf doesn't happen very often, just statistically you're not going to win very many times. So to do that next year would be awesome. But when I set on this plan three years ago to play pro golf, it was to play on the PGA Tour and I've always wanted to do that. I've enjoyed doing that the three times I've done it and eventually that's where I'd like to get to, whether it takes two weeks, whether it takes two more years, or never. I just know that I've got a great team around me, great people in my corner that are so supportive and believe in me. And I believe a lot in myself. So that's all you can do with professional sports in general. So, that's the plan.
