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<\/p>\nATLANTA \u2014 I saw the future of golf Wednesday afternoon on the East Lake Golf Club putting green. There, 2019 Open champion Shane Lowry and Ryder Cup hero Tommy Fleetwood lined up their last practice putts before the Tour Championship begins on Thursday. Just a few feet away from them, a handful of YouTube creators, podcasters and influencers \u2014 each with their own camera crew \u2014 milled about, reading putts and pacing before their own tee times.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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A few steps away from the putting green, three of the stars of the \u201cGood Good Golf\u201d 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 fence line couldn\u2019t quite figure out whom to watch \u2014 the Good Good guys or the pro \u2026 a guy by the name of Scottie Scheffler.<\/p>\n
If that sounds weird or strange or flat-out wrong to you, well \u2026 you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese creators all kind of speak to their own audiences with their own production crews and their own voices,\u201d Chris Wandell, the PGA Tour\u2019s senior vice president for media, told Yahoo Sports. \u201cThe amount of content that has resulted from this, and each one of these, has been mind-blowing \u2026 content that we could never have scripted just organically happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
For as long as there\u2019s 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 \u201cinfluencers\u201d and \u201ccontent creators\u201d \u2014 purists may cringe at the terms, but they\u2019re the ones that fit \u2014 play some variant of the game in front of literal millions of fans, demythologizing and democratizing a game that\u2019s been defined by its gatekeeping rather than its inclusivity.<\/p>\n
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Wednesday\u2019s 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 \u2014 player interviews, analysis, even tournaments of their own.<\/p>\n
The Tour Championship provided an unconventional, but ideal opportunity \u2014 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 \u2026 why not give them something a bit outside the norm?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of a test \u2014 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?\u201d Wandell said. \u201cWe 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?\u201d And so, here we are.<\/p>\n
Draw a Venn diagram of golf creators, and all you\u2019d have in the center is the word \u201cgolf.\u201d Creators run the gamut from analysts to comedians, precise shotmakers to pranksters. Each style draws in a different subset of fans \u2014 fans who might not otherwise get anywhere near a PGA Tour event.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMy fans like to see my friends and I just bantering, talking nonsense,\u201d said Luke Kwon (379,000 subscribers), winner of the 2024 East Lake Creators Classic. \u201cI think we tend to act like how they act. There\u2019s so much comedy that golf sometimes gets pushed to the side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others seek to set an example and open doors for people traditionally excluded from the golf world. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be from the best area, the best circumstances to find a place in this game,\u201d Roger Steele (232,000 Instagram followers) said. \u201cI think that there\u2019s opportunities for everybody. You meet good people, and good people will do good things for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The twelve creators invited to play on Wednesday 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 livestream on YouTube easily topped 20,000 viewers \u2014 perhaps not massive numbers when compared to a seven-figure PGA Tour broadcast, but better than other golf YouTube streams we could name.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve tried our best to balance size of audience, diversity of audience and golf skill,\u201d Wandell says. \u201cWe 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\u2019re going to have trouble breaking par.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019 work.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s on them, which works on a phone screen but is juuuuust a bit too much for real life.<\/p>\n
And oh, the cameras are everywhere. They\u2019re the reason these 12 are here, after all. Every moment \u2014 every drive, every putt, every chip, every expression \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d Wandell says. \u201cA lot of the new fans may not have cable, or don\u2019t have ESPN+. So let\u2019s give them some snackable video content, develop the love of golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As for the golf itself \u2026 well, let\u2019s just say the spotters and fore-right paddle holders got more of a workout Wednesday than they\u2019re 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\u2019s lush rough. Most finished their rounds over par \u2014 in some cases, well over par.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 better golf games, sure, but otherwise relatable \u2014 handling a challenge that most only get to watch on TV.<\/p>\n
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ATLANTA, GEORGIA – AUGUST 20: Brad Dalke, Garrett Clark, and Sean Walsh of Good Good Golf pose for a photo together, on the 10th tee box, during the 2025 Tour Championship Creator Classic, prior to TOUR Championship, at East Lake Golf Club, on August 20, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Ben Jared\/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
(Ben Jared via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cMy main goal?\u201d said Peter Finch (753,000 subscribers) shortly before teeing off. \u201cTo not be crap.\u201d Haven\u2019t 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.)<\/p>\n
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In a very real way, the creators are the viewer\u2019s avatar, and that\u2019s what makes them compelling viewing \u2014 it\u2019s not hard to imagine ourselves in that spot, and not hard to wonder how we\u2019d do trying to clear the waters of East Lake. (Answer: probably not well.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re getting to play the course inside the ropes, and the full broadcast and all the production, but they\u2019re just as excited to see these guys play the course [Thursday] and all through the weekend,\u201d said Chad Mumm, one of the creators of Netflix\u2019s \u201cFull Swing\u201d and president of Pro Shop, a studio that develops original content like the Creator Classic. \u201cIt\u2019s just so important for cultivating a healthy future for the fan base of the tour. \u2026 The internet seems to be in love with what we\u2019re doing, and the engagement\u2019s been really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 none of those lend themselves to the combination of banter, skill and camera-friendly settings that golf does. This isn\u2019t the golf of Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods, true \u2026 but each one of those legends advanced the game far beyond where they found it, too.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s 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, \u201cHe\u2019s internet famous!\u201d<\/p>\n
A few years ago, that would have been a dismissive insult. Now, though, it sounds a whole lot like admiration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 I saw the future of golf Wednesday afternoon on the East Lake Golf Club putting green.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[1766,49,48,556,50586,50587,50589,50585,3484,622,19210,3747,50588,1974,1973,82,33110,4718],"class_list":["post-84811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-championship","tag-chris-wandell","tag-content-creators","tag-creator-classic","tag-east-lake-golf-club","tag-getty-images","tag-golf","tag-matt-ryan","tag-pga-tour","tag-putting-green","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-shane-lowry","tag-sports","tag-tommy-fleetwood","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}