Austin Smotherman lifted a trophy out of its box and put it on the counter in his kitchen – the 2018 Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide.

But it wasn’t his.

It was just another fun moment living with the tenth-ranked player in the FedExCup.

Smotherman first met Bryson DeChambeau growing up playing junior golf together in Northern California, and for the better part of the next decade they became great friends.

DeChambeau, the 2016 DAP Championship winner who has won four times on the PGA TOUR in the last eight months, crashed on Smotherman and his wife Jessie’s couch while getting his feet wet in professional golf.

As DeChambeau climbed into golf’s upper echelon, he moved on from couch-surfing and bought his own home in December. Since Smotherman and his wife were in-between places at the time, DeChambeau returned the favor and opened his home to the Smothermans.

Smotherman, who started the year with a T9 at The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay, and his wife are ready to move into a new home, but they won’t be leaving without a handful of memories.

Like those mail deliveries.

“We got to watch all his trophies being sent to our place,” recalls Smotherman with a big smile. “I sent him a selfie with the Memorial trophy which was just … sitting in my kitchen. I wish my name was etched on it, but not yet.”

The first time the pair played golf together was when they were 14, and even then, DeChambeau was already earning a reputation as a guy who was going to do things his own way.

Smotherman says there was a junior tournament, before they could get their driver’s licenses, where DeChambeau was tinkering with the moveable weights on his putter. He was trying to get everything dialed-in before an event.

“I was thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’” Smotherman says. “He was taking his putter apart and putting it back together.

“If (DeChambeau’s theories) sound confusing to us, they were just as confusing at some point to him too. He worked as hard as he could to understand it and figure it out. It’s unbelievable.”

DeChambeau’s unique approach to golf carried over from junior golf in California to his college days at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas – he encouraged Smotherman to attend SMU, too – where the pair met Harry Higgs.

Higgs, last year’s Order of Merit winner on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica, is two years older but says DeChambeau showed up and “immediately” became someone he was trying to beat.

“If you beat Bryson, (you) would probably come close to winning the tournament,” says Higgs.

Laughing, Higgs says the team always had to wait on DeChambeau, who was notorious for making the bus leave late after practice (and once they got on the bus, Smotherman says they would needle a new guy on the team by calling out to DeChambeau to explain his theory on black holes, for example, and let him go on and on while the new guy listened -- or tried to at least -- as everyone else snuck their headphones in) but in time, it made the team better.

“We eventually all caught on,” says Higgs. “Because he’s beating us and we want to beat him and have individual success like he is too, so maybe we should stay as long as he does.”

Higgs was constantly impressed with DeChambeau’s iron play. He could hit every shot. He was precise. And just because he had a unique way of theorizing his methodology, it didn’t matter. It worked.

He says the team got DeChambeau to use a normal-length lob wedge for “about a week” while he was a freshman, which was about the extent of DeChambeau wavering from using single-length irons.

Higgs says DeChambeau never tried to preach the gospel of his clubs on anyone, but the team all tried them.

“I couldn’t hit them in the air,” says Higgs with a smile. “I had no idea what he was talking about. But the results … When he hits it where he’s looking every single time, you’re kind of like, ‘Well, he might be right.’”

Higgs says Smotherman has told him how valuable it was to see how much time their college teammate put into getting better, both on and off the golf course. And now he’s knocking on the door of being etched in golf lore forever.

“In my humble opinion, within 12 to 18 months, he’ll be No. 1 in the world,” predicts Higgs, with no waver in confidence. “There’s no secret. He’s insanely talented, he works really hard, and he believes in what he does.”

Although Higgs acknowledges it’s different to look up to someone who is that much younger, he says both he and Smotherman took their cues from DeChambeau and are trying to adapt his work habits – within reason, of course.

“You can’t really dispute anything that he’s done; he just does it in such a different way (that) it’s hard for me personally and others to understand why he does it that way,” says Higgs. “But look at his record the last 12 to 24 months … it speaks for itself.”