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There are plenty of professional athletes who have revealed they buy into certain conspiracy theories that don’t stand up to much scrutiny. That list now includes Bryson DeChambeau, who floated a truly head-scratching one concerning America’s ability to land on the Moon.
It would be foolish to paint athletes with a wide brush, but there are nonetheless many people who play a sport for a living who have managed to make sure the “Dumb Jock” stereotype remains alive and well due to their decision to chime in on areas outside of their primary expertise.
That includes a number of notable names who have thrown their support behind various conspiracy theories. Aaron Rodgers has floated a number of alternative takes that are fairly on-brand for a guy who’s done ayahuasca, and Kyrie Irving made waves when he revealed he was a Flat Earther who is also skeptical dinosaurs ever existed.
Now, it appears there’s a new member of the club in the form of Bryson DeChambeau, who dropped a baffling Moon landing stance during a recent interview.
Bryson DeChambeau thinks America landed on the Moon but is somehow skeptical of the footage that was filmed on the surface
On July 20, 1969, the members of Apollo 11 became the first astronauts to land on the Moon before Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the surface of the lunar body.
If you buy the official story, the lunar module was equipped with a camera capable of broadcasting footage of the mission back to Earth, and it’s believed more than 600 million people around the globe tuned in to watch things unfold in real time.
However, that footage has been positioned as a hoax by conspiracy theorists who assert that America faked the Moon landing for propaganda purposes in order to assert its dominance in the “Space Race” with the Soviet Union, arguing the footage was actually captured on Earth and possibly filmed under the watchful eye of Stanley Kubrick.
Experts much smarter than myself have offered explanations to debunk the most popular theories, but that hasn’t stopped people from buying into them. That apparently includes Bryson DeChambeau, the two-time U.S. Open winner who dropped a truly scorching Hot Take during a recent appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast.
Bryson DeChambeau says he doesn’t think the footage of the moon landing is real.
“I don’t think the footage is real. But I think we did go to the moon. I don’t know about the footage. It’s quite wild.”
📹: @katiemillerpod pic.twitter.com/QIeDpuxHk4
— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) May 19, 2026
The man who was pursuing a physics degree at SMU before dropping out to play golf used a question about whether or not Alan Shepard actually hit a six-iron on the moon to go into Big Brain Mode, saying:
“I don’t know. Look, Elon says we’ve definitely gone there, so I tend to go that route, because he’s the man that knows quite a bit about all that. Artemis just went around the Moon, so I do believe if we spent a lot of our resources like they say we did, I think we did.
I don’t think the footage is real, but I think we did go to the Moon. I don’t know about the footage.”
Now, it’s one thing to think we did not, in fact, land on the Moon and that the footage was faked. However, I don’t know how you genuinely believe America was capable of developing the technology to build a spacecraft capable of transporting people to the lunar body but draw the line at the recording equipment that was developed well before that feat.
That wasn’t the only conspiracy he said he believed in, as DeChambeau added he also buys into the existence of “interdimensional beings” (which, to be honest, is much more plausible than his Moon footage stance).
That tracks when you consider he claimed to have spotted some UFOs over Dallas in 2021, but it will be interesting to see if he walks back his Moon comments based on how much attention they’ve managed to garner.