YouTube golf is coming to the PGA Tour.
In a first-of-its-kind event, golf influencers will take center stage on the eve of the Tour Championship. Dubbed “space camp” for YouTube golfers, the Creator Classic will kick off at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, marking a significant shift in the PGA Tour’s acceptance of golf internet personalities and recognition of their influence on the game.
Sixteen creators of various ages, backgrounds and specialties will tee it up on the back nine at the newly restored East Lake for a live, televised stroke play competition. The competitors, which include members of the popular YouTube groups Dude Perfect, Good Good and Bob Does Sports, will be playing straight up — no handicaps will be in effect — on the same stage as the top 30 players left standing in the FedEx Cup. (The prerequisite for the chosen creators was simple. They had to be solid, experienced players.) Once the four foursomes reach the ninth hole of the mini-tournament, a playoff between the four lowest-scoring players will decide the champion.
Golf on YouTube has been booming for the better part of the last four years, but the Creator Classic is the first organized effort to involve these personalities with a PGA Tour event in a major way. Several of these influencers have participated in PGA Tour pro-ams or invited PGA Tour players to appear as guests on their own channels, but an event like the Creator Classic — where the PGA Tour formally adopts the YouTube audience — has never been done before. So why are they doing this now, and what can we expect?
How did the Creator Classic come together?
Chad Mumm, the executive producer of Netflix’s “Full Swing”, sat down with PGA Tour executives at March’s Players Championship to plan out his first move. Mumm had just launched his new media venture, Pro Shop, and had officially secured a partnership with the PGA Tour and the PGA of America. There were seemingly endless directions to turn, but how could his new company make the biggest splash?
One month earlier at the WM Phoenix Open, Mumm saw something that set a lightbulb off in his brain. Good Good, the hugely popular YouTube golf group, drew big numbers and energetic on-site crowds when they hosted a live tournament for golf influencers and celebrities in Scottsdale. The Good Good Desert Open took place at night, under the lights, the Wednesday evening before one of the PGA Tour’s most raucous events at a local 14-hole par-3 course. The event wasn’t even directly affiliated with the WMPO, but it streamed on Peacock and garnered 800,000 live viewers — a number that rivals some PGA Tour TV broadcasts.
At those meetings in Ponte Vedra Beach, Mumm raised the Desert Open’s success to PGA Tour executives — including SVP of Media Business Development, Chris Wandell.
“We were captivated by the explosion of YouTube golf,” Mumm said. “There was this new audience that had become obsessed with not only playing golf, but watching golf in a sort of nontraditional fashion.”
Creators competing inside-the-ropes during tournament week for the first time …
🏌️♂️ Tyler Toney (@DudePerfect)
🏌️♂️ Garrett Clark (@GM__Golf)
🏌️♂️ Brad Dalke (@GoodGood_Golf)
🏌️♂️ Sean Walsh (@GoodGood_Golf)
🏌️♀️ Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac)
🏌️♂️ Fat Perez (@FatPerez33)
🏌️♂️ Roger… pic.twitter.com/sXIxHVulwF— TOUR Championship (@TOURChamp) August 26, 2024
To prove the validity of the concept, Mumm and Wandell needed to go big. They could organize something in the middle of the busy summer season or in the calmer fall months. But why not just throw themselves into the fire? Mumm and Wandell proposed letting creators compete on a real stage, debuting the newly renovated back nine at East Lake, and bringing in the YouTube audience during one of the PGA Tour’s biggest weeks. The next step was getting everyone on board. But Mumm said he was “blown away” by how quickly the PGA Tour got behind the concept, despite it being an experimental plan.
“We have to do some sort of test to prove that it’s viable,” Wandell said. “Will this bring in any sort of a different incremental audience that has people engaging with our tournament in a new way? We could potentially prove that we should do this at more PGA Tour events in the future.”
The creators were apparently equally as shocked when approached about the event. Wesley Bryan, who is a PGA Tour winner but considers himself a full-time YouTuber, said he was pleasantly surprised when he heard about the strong list of influencer commitments and the idea coming together in such a short time. Wesley and his brother George run the Bryan Bros Golf channel, and they are both competing in the Classic.
“Behind the scenes with the tour, we’ve been trying to figure out how to properly merge the audiences, and it’s been a process that’s probably been the last two years at least,” Bryan said. “Finally, I feel like we’re getting to a spot where they’re willing to make a lot of these decisions and honestly, I’m pretty excited about what the next couple of years could look like.”
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The Creator Classic is serving as a test run for future endeavors from the PGA Tour and Pro Shop that won’t stop at live events. There’s a recognition now — among both parties — that the up-and-coming generation of sports fans isn’t going to be engaged in traditional ways. Now it’s just a matter of whether the PGA Tour’s involvement will affect that audience’s excitement about this type of golf content — will they be as passionate about tuning into the Creator Classic as they are when their favorite internet personality drops a vlog?
“We need to take advantage of this audience who isn’t normally watching broadcast television and who isn’t learning golf at a country club,” Wandell said. “It’s a different type of audience that we need to reach in the future.”
What will the broadcast look like?
YouTube golf videos already utilize high-tech cameras and complex editing, but the collaboration with the PGA Tour will be something different. There will be no editing — the event is live. With TV cameras set up throughout the course already for the PGA Tour broadcast, the event will be produced by both Pro Shop Studios and PGA Tour Entertainment. On-screen graphics will be employed, as well as ShotLink scoring data and Trackman shot tracing. The YouTubers are getting the full PGA Tour treatment.
The event is also equipped with a well-known cast of talent supporting the product. First, Riggs, Trent and Frankie of Barstool’s Fore Play will hit ceremonial opening tee shots. Then you’ll hear from a group of on-course and in-studio commentators such as Mark Immelman, Barstool’s Dan Rapaport and Hally Leadbetter. Joel Dahmen — a current PGA Tour player — has been added to the roster. Dahmen reached out to Mumm directly to express his interest in covering the event.
Hey @PGATOUR just please clear the fans on the left side of my first tee shot🙏🏼
— Garrett Clark (@gm__golf) August 26, 2024
Who is playing?
• Tyler Toney (Dude Perfect)
• Garrett Clark (Good Good/GM Golf)
• Brad Dalke (Good Good)
• Sean Walsh (Good Good)
• Fat Perez (Bob Does Sports)
• Paige Spiranac
• Roger Steele
• Wesley Bryan
• Micah Morris
• George Bryan
• Peter Finch
• Luke Kwon
• Mac Boucher
• Aimee Cho
• Gabby Golfgirl
• Mason Nutt (BustaJack Golf)
How to watch
Time: 4 p.m. ET, Wednesday
Streaming: PGA Tour YouTube channel, Peacock, ESPN+ and PGA Tour FAST platforms
(Top photos of Wesley Bryan, left and Fat Perez: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images, courtesy of Bob Does Sports)
