The future of golf isn't just players; creators (and their cameras) are here too
Wednesday marked the fourth installment of the Creator Classic, a PGA Tour-developed, YouTube-sponsored event pitting 12 of the best-known golf creators against one another in a nine-hole made-for-YouTube event, on the exact same course the pros will play in their season-ending tournament this week.
A few steps away from the putting green, three of the stars of the 'Good Good Golf' YouTube channel (1.93 million subscribers) walked toward the first tee for their 3:54 p.m. tee time. On the nearby 18th, another professional golfer measured out his last putts of the day. A group of kids standing along a fenceline couldn't quite figure out whom to watch — the Good Good guys or the pro … a guy by the name of Scottie Scheffler.
If that sounds weird or strange or flat-out wrong to you, well … you're not the target demographic for this particular brand of golf. But a whole lot of people are, and the PGA Tour is trying its best to reach them.
'These creators all kind of speak to their own audiences with their own production crews and their own voices,' Chris Wandell, the PGA Tour's Senior Vice President for Media, told Yahoo Sports. 'The amount of content that has resulted from this, and each one of these, has been mind-blowing … content that we could never have scripted just organically happens.'
For as long as there's been golf, the relationship between player and fan has been clear: the player plays in front of the fans, the fan watches the pros. But the rise of cheap video capabilities and easy distribution created a third class: fans who play for other fans. Golf 'influencers' and 'content creators' — purists may cringe at the terms, but they're the ones that fit — play some variant of the game in front of literal millions of fans, demythologizing and democratizing a game that's been defined by its gatekeeping rather than its inclusivity.
Wednesday's Creator Classic is the fourth installment of the series that began last year at East Lake, a creation born after the Tour recognized just how much Tour-adjacent work that creators were already doing — player interviews, analysis, even tournaments of their own. East Lake makes for a perfect
The Tour Championship provided an unconventional, but ideal opportunity — with only 30 players in the field, the course was largely clear by Wednesday afternoon. (Scheffler, Lowry and Fleetwood notwithstanding.) Fans were already on the course and ready to watch more golf … why not give them something a bit outside the norm?
'It was kind of a test — would the idea resonate with fans? Would it resonate with sponsors? Would it bring new people to a tournament that might not otherwise come on a Wednesday at 4:00?' Wandell said. 'We ran it as a test with no solid plans to do it again, and the creators had a great time. Sponsors said, How do I get involved with that? A lot of tournaments called us and said, Can we do this at our tournament?' And so, here we are.
Draw a Venn diagram of golf creators, and all you'd have in the center is the word 'golf.' Creators run the gamut from analysts to comedians, precise shotmakers to pranksters. Each style draws in a different subset of fans — fans who might not otherwise get anywhere near a PGA Tour event.
'My fans like to see my friends and I just bantering, talking nonsense,' said Luke Kwon (379,000 subscribers), winner of the 2024 East Lake Creators Classic. 'I think we tend to act like how they act. There's so much comedy that golf sometimes gets pushed to the side.'
Others seek to set an example and open doors for people traditionally excluded from the golf world. 'You don't have to be from the best area, the best circumstances to find a place in this game,' Roger Steele (232,000 Instagram followers) said. 'I think that there's opportunities for everybody. You meet good people, and good people will do good things for you.'
The twelve creators invited to play on Thursday represent a diverse group of interests and demographics. (Well, not age-wise. Most appeared to fit comfortably in the millennial/elder-Gen Z demo. There were no 65-year-old Boomers or precocious Gen Alphas in the mix. Maybe next year.) Some were here for the competition, some for the fashion, some for the laughs. But all brought massive audiences to the table. The live stream on YouTube easily topped 20,000 viewers — perhaps not massive numbers when compared to a seven-figure PGA Tour broadcast, but better than other golf YouTube streams we could name.
'We've tried our best to balance size of audience, diversity of audience and golf skill,' Wandell says. 'We would love to host 25 handicaps, but this golf course is so hard. Most of these guys are scratch, and even putting them on a course like this, they're going to have trouble breaking par.'
The Creator Classic is the live embodiment of an internet truism: where vast viewership numbers gather, money and brands follow. Virtually all of the players in Wednesday's event have their own sponsorship deals, and many have their own merch lines. Akshay Bhatia, who would tee off in the Tour Championship Thursday, mingled with several creators around the putting green. No Laying Up's Soly even managed to wrangle Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan as a caddie. Oh, and there was $100,000 on the line for the winner. Not a bad paycheck for nine holes' work.
It's always strange to see social media influencers in the wild. They locate, and mug for, the camera after virtually every significant moment. Their voices, their movements, their entire demeanor are exaggerated when the camera's on them, which works on a phone screen but is juuuuust a bit too much for real life.
And oh, the cameras are everywhere. They're the reason these 12 are here, after all. Every moment — every drive, every putt, every chip, every expression — is potential fodder for content, so those cameras have to be rolling. Producers will be hard at work starting Wednesday evening, chopping and carving hours of footage into easily digestible social media content.
'We're trying to build all types of fans, and we want to create products and data and content for fans, no matter how much they want to consume,' Wandell says. 'A lot of the new fans may not have cable, or don't have ESPN Plus. So let's give them some snackable video content, develop the love of golf.'
As for the golf itself … well, let's just say the spotters and fore-right paddle holders got more of a workout Wednesday than they're likely to get the rest of the week. Several players dunked their tee shots on the wicked 15th, and most got a chance to visit East Lake's lush rough. Most finished their eight holes over par — in some cases, well over par.
But we have all weekend to watch exceptional players at East Lake; this was about watching men and women not all that different from us — better golf games, sure, but otherwise relatable — handling a challenge that most only get to watch on TV.
'My main goal?' said Peter Finch (753,000 subscribers) shortly before teeing off. 'To not be crap.' Haven't we all felt that way, every single round? (For the record, Finch would go on to finish at +6, two strokes out of last place.)
In a very real way, the creators are the viewer's avatar, and that's what makes them compelling viewing — it's not hard to imagine ourselves in that spot, and not hard to wonder how we'd do trying to clear the waters of East Lake. (Answer: probably not well.)
'They're getting to play the course inside the ropes, and the full broadcast and all the production, but they're just as excited to see these guys play the course [Thursday] and all through the weekend,' said Chad Mumm, one of the creators of Netflix's 'Full Swing' and president of Pro Shop, a studio that develops original content like the Creator Classic. 'It's just so important for cultivating a healthy future for the fan base of the tour … The internet seems to be in love with what we're doing, and the engagement's been really good.'
The Creator Classic ended up being one of the most dramatic finishes of the year on Tour, with four players competing on a single sudden-death playoff hole, in an absolute frog-strangler of a downpour, for $100,000. In the end, Good Good's Brad Dalke took home the title, soaked to the bone as he bro-hugged his way off the course.
Golf is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the creator economy; no other sport combines the diversity of locales with the relatively low cost of entry. One tennis court looks pretty much like another, and racing is far too expensive for a casual creator, to cite two other individual-friendly sports. Baseball, basketball, football — none of those lend themselves to the combination of banter, skill and camera-friendly settings that golf does. This isn't the golf of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, true … but each one of those legends advanced the game far beyond where they found it, too.
There's room for both creators and players in the game of golf, both metaphorically and literally. As several of the creators left the driving range, working their way through both a thicket of cameras and pros like Justin Thomas, one security guard nudged another and pointed at one of the creators, crowing loudly, 'He's internet famous!'
A few years ago, that would have been a dismissive insult. Now, though, it sounds a whole lot like admiration.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Insider
a few seconds ago
- Business Insider
Duolingo's top social media manager says she had more professional success when she didn't separate life and work
The face behind Duolingo's blockbuster marketing campaigns said virality comes with a human cost. Zaria Parvez, who announced her departure from her role as senior global social media manager to pursue another social media role, said her best work came when she put work-life balance aside. "There was a lot of, 'I'm not gonna check Slack after 5. I'm going to actually work a 40-hour week,'" she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday. "But I will say, when I didn't separate my life from my work, I succeeded far more in my role. That's a hard truth." The language learning app is famous for its creative and guilt-inducing app notifications and social media posts. Marketing experts say the approach works, especially with Gen Z, because the app's green owl mascot appears authentic and consistent. Whether it's on TV, in YouTube ads, or on TikTok, where Duolingo has over 16.7 million followers, the company is among the first to tap into viral, often country-specific trends. The 26-year-old marketing manager, who has been at the company for five years, also said she dealt with anxiety because she ran such a successful social media account. "Last year when I went on medical leave. I was really confused and exhausted," Parvez said. "It got to the point where the anxiety of running such a big account and having to be always on was so on my shoulders." She added: "I would get three hours of sleep at night. I would be incessantly trying to figure out, how do I be creative in all the best ways? How do I do this on my own?" She said that her family paid attention to her career, too. Last year, for a marketing stunt, Duolingo faked the death of its green owl mascot. It blew up and received lots of organic engagement from Duolingo users, celebrities like MrBeast and Dua Lipa, and brands such as Hilton, Chipotle, and Netflix. Parvez said that one campaign brought in 1.7 billion social media impressions. "People thought Duolingo the company had died," Parvez said. "My mom's like, did you lose your job?" Not all of Duolingo's messaging has gotten the same stamp of approval from the internet. Parvez shared a 2021 instance during the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial when Duolingo commented on a TikTok post, and it was not received well by Twitter users. Earlier this month, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn said the company had dialed back on "edgy posts" after his post on mandatory internal AI usage received harsh social media backlash. The Duolingo CEO said that "stopping edgy posts" helped turn social media sentiment positive. But he said the move may also have hurt the company's daily active user count, one of its most important metrics, in the quarter that ended in June. Duolingo's stock is up 61% in the last year.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Rengifo has tiebreaking RBI single in the 8th to back Kikuchi in the Angels' 2-1 win over the Reds
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Yusei Kikuchi threw seven strong innings, Luis Rengifo hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the eighth and the Los Angeles Angels beat the Cincinnati Reds 2-1 on Wednesday night. Bryce Teodosio doubled off reliever Graham Ashcraft (7-5) to open the eighth and took third on a wild pitch. Oswald Peraza grounded out, with Teodosio holding, and Rengifo fisted an RBI single over third baseman Ke'Bryan Hayes' head for the lead. Reid Detmers (4-3) struck out two in a scoreless eighth for the victory. With Angels closer Kenley Jansen unavailable because of a left rib-cage injury, Luis Garcia retired the side in order in the ninth for his first save. Both starters excelled in no-decisions, Reds right-hander Nick Martinez allowing one run and two hits in six innings, and the left-handed Kikuchi allowing one run and seven hits in seven innings, escaping a first-and-third, no-out jam in the second and a two-on, no-out jam in the sixth. The Reds took a 1-0 lead in the third when Hayes doubled and scored on Noelvi Marte's two-out RBI single. The Angels countered in the fourth on Yoán Moncada's homer to left-center, his ninth of the season. Angels shortstop Zach Neto was pulled to start the sixth because of left-wrist soreness after getting hit by a Martinez changeup in the third. Key moment A lack of communication between Teodosio, the Angels center fielder, and right fielder Jo Adell allowed Marte's lazy fly ball to drop in the gap in the sixth, putting two on with no outs. But Kikuchi got Elly De La Cruz to fly to left and Andujar and Hayes to ground out to preserve a 1-1 tie. Key stat Kikuchi finished the sixth inning once in his previous nine starts and averaged 101 pitches through an average of five innings in his previous four starts. But he was much more efficient Wednesday, needing 88 pitches to complete seven innings. Up next The Reds and Angels are off Thursday. Reds right-hander Zack Littell (9-8, 3.52 ERA) was set to start Friday night at Arizona. Angels left-hander Tyler Anderson was slated to start Friday at home against the Chicago Cubs. ___ AP MLB:
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Yankees rookie Cam Schlittler takes a perfect game into the seventh inning
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Cam Schlittler was throwing a perfect game through six innings Wednesday night, the longest bid by a New York Yankees rookie in nearly 60 years. The 24-year-old right-hander retired the first 18 Rays he faced before Chandler Simpson led off the seventh with a single to right. Schlittler finished with 6 2/3 scoreless, one-hit innings in just his seventh major league start. He struck out eight, all swinging, and walked two. Even after losing the bid, Schlittler stayed composed. 'I wasn't really thinking about it too much, but even when he got the hit, I didn't really care that much,' Schlittler said. 'The biggest thing is that we won, and I put the team in a position to win. And I got past that five-inning mark that I have been struggling to get through my last six starts.' The Yankees did win, though Schlittler didn't factor in the decision. The Rays rallied for two runs in the ninth to tie the game before Giancarlo Stanton and Austin Wells answered with back-to-back home runs in the 10th to lift New York to a 6-4 victory at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Schlittler's outing was the longest perfect-game bid by a Yankees rookie since Fritz Peterson went 6 1/3 innings against the White Sox on July 4, 1966. For six innings, he was nearly untouchable. He never reached a three-ball count, allowed only three balls out of the infield and generated 19 swings-and-misses. 'What a performance,' Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. 'Dominant. Probably the best breaking ball he's had all year to go with the fastball. He was just filling up the strike zone.' Boone said Schlittler had a chance at a perfect game because of his efficiency — he threw 95 pitches — but noted the rookie tired in the seventh. The effort wasn't lost on his teammates. 'Amazing,' Aaron Judge said. 'To hold a perfecto that long against a scrappy team that puts the ball in play, that's tough to do.' Through seven starts, Schlittler has a 3.22 ERA with 38 strikeouts and has allowed three runs or fewer each time. ___ AP MLB:
