Bryson DeChambeau plays to the gallery whether or not they think he is villain or victim | Andy Bull

Whip, crack, whoosh, Bryson DeChambeau’s opening shot flies into the distance, pitches, skips, and tumbles into the rough left of the fairway. By the time DeChambeau has reached the ball a big crowd has gathered around it, they’re standing on tiptoes, perched on mounds, tilting sideways to peer around the people in front, who are pressed right up against the ropes and even spilling underneath them and on to the playing area where the marshals, hands out, are trying to usher them back.“Careful Bryson!” someone shouts out as he wades into the rough and, it never takes much, everyone breaks out laughing. Looking around, you notice how many people are watching all this through their phones. I start counting: one, five, 10, 20, 50 – people don’t just want to see DeChambeau play golf, they want to be able to show everyone they know that they’ve done it. Did you even go to the Open if you didn’t get to see him?There are 156 great players in this Open, DeChambeau was out playing with one of them on Saturday, Sam Burns, world No 18, five-time PGA Tour winner, US Open runner-up, and, as of Saturday, owner of a one-eighth share in the record for the lowest round scored at a men’s major championship. But Rory McIlroy is the only one of them who receives anything like the same sort of attention that DeChambeau does. The man’s YouTube channel has more subscribers than most PGA Tour events have TV viewers.The film he made with Donald Trump last year pulled in a bigger audience than Sunday at the Masters. DeChambeau is the chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. The way he handled being given that two-stroke penalty on Saturday certainly had a streak of DJT to it. Admit nothing, deny everything. And if he’s not exactly got to the point where he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without losing his audience, it’s pretty damn clear that the large part of them couldn’t give a damn about him trampling all over the rough here at Royal Birkdale and ‘inadvertently’ improving his lie.If anything the idea that he was the victim seemed to make them warm to him more. DeChambeau even got a standing ovation when he walked on to the tee box for that opening shot.Bryson DeChambeau jokes with fans as he walks in the rough on the 18th hole. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty ImagesThere was a shout of “watch where you’re standing, lad” as DeChambeau walloped his tee shot on to the bank at the back of the 3rd green, and a series of ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ as he trod through the grass to try to find the best line to the pin, as if they were watching him pick his way across a tightrope. Someone bellowed: “Don’t go cheating Bryson!” as he walked up the 5th, then ducked away again when his friend hurriedly said “He’s looking over!” On the 18th someone shouted “Up the R&A!”. On the other hand you soon ran out of fingers counting all the supportive things shouted out at him. “C’mon Bryson!” and “Let’s go Bryson!” and “You can do it Bryson!”By the time he reached the 9th DeChambeau was playing along with them, he spread his legs as wide as they would go while he stood over his ball, as if he was scared of improving his lie for a second time. For a man who is so bad at handling people that a lot of his fellow pros readily admit they don’t care for him, he is pretty good at working a gallery. He made everyone wait at the 9th tee while the fans all around pleaded with him to get his driver out, before he finally ripped off the head cover like he was popping a champagne cork.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDeChambeau sent that one 350 yards all the way up to the front edge of the green. “What a bullet!” someone whispered as it whizzed overhead, and DeChambeau walked off down the fairway, arms raised, flicking two thumbs up at the crowd shouting behind him. He ended up missing a birdie putt from three feet, and then tossed his ball to a little kid in the crowd who had called out for it.He went on this way, playing a bunker shot while crouching on his knees, rattling an approach shot into a TV camera, making impossible putts, missing implausible ones. Infuriating some, enrapturing others, entertaining all. He walked up to the 18th green with his cap off, pumping his fist at the crowd, then cupping his hand to his ear to hear their cheers. He finished one under for his round, two bogeys and three birdies, and six over for the championship but still one shot off where he had been the previous evening before being penalised.Everyone has a opinion on DeChambeau. Mine, if you want to throw it on to the bonfire, is that he deserved the penalty and was fortunate that the R&A accepted that it was unintentional. Yours may very well be that he was the victim of overzealous officiating. The point isn’t whether any of us is actually right about this, only that he’s got the golfing world’s attention again. Maybe he’ll win the Open, maybe he won’t, either way, come Sunday he’ll still be one golfer everyone is talking about.