Is YouTube golf more powerful than we think?

Professional golf tours are piling stock into social influencers.

A week after Hannah Rae of St Andre collaborated with the DP World Tour on an entertaining clip featuring players in Dubai at the start of 2025, Rick Shiels signed a content creation deal with LIV Golf.

This move inspired the Duels events that LIV held this year, which put content creators and players from the LIV roster together in made-for-YouTube, team matches.

YouTube’s biggest golf figure had previously collaborated with LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau and Sergio Garcia, plus countless other videos at world-class golf courses with other top players, but this constitutes a huge new era for Shiels who once worked as an assistant club pro and golf coach at Trafford Golf Centre.

But looking beyond the Manchester man’s trajectory, LIV has joined the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour in harnessing the audience that creators like Shiels have. The eyes that watch them across all social platforms are astronomical.

The PGA Tour held several influencer events now at big tournaments such as the Players Championship and the Tour Championship, where the likes of Peter Finch, Mac Boucher, Luke Kwon, and Paige Spiranac competed. Collectively, these figures have just shy of 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube alone.

The US circuit also has a Creator Council, bringing together organisations like Bob Does Sports, Bryan Bros Golf, Erik Anders Lang, Fore Play/Barstool Sports, and No Laying Up to drive fan engagement.

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Now, a YouTube Golf entity has become a title sponsor of a PGA Tour event. The Good Good Championship will debut in the 2026 FedEx Cup Fall portion of the calendar, after the regular season has finished, at Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa’s Fazio Canyons Course in Austin, Texas.

It is a multi-year agreement and Good Good Golf’s first-ever sponsorship of a pro golf event. Good Good has 1.97 million YouTube subscribers.

Some golf fans might walk past these people in the street, eyelids unbatted. That wouldn’t happen with Rory McIlroy or DeChambeau. But what about young people who consume YouTube religiously? Do they want three million subscribers, a figure Shiels has now surpassed, or three major titles?

Justin Thomas made an eyebrow-raising admission at the Tour Championship in 2024 in Atlanta, the week the creators descended upon East Lake. I asked him about the popularity of YouTube golfers and the effect it has on the sport.

“It’s very cool. It’s obviously very different,” Thomas said. “That’s the day and age we’re in right now. At the end of the day, if it gets more kids, more people interested in golf, that’s what’s most important. I don’t know that field very well, but I know that, yeah, there’s a handful of influencers, people out there that people know them probably way better than they know me.

“And that’s not right or wrong, but that’s just the power of it. I think them being out here and their time is valuable just like ours is, so for them to take the time on a big week like this and come play a course and have the opportunity to create a little bit more buzz, that’s great.

“It also gives kids a different avenue to want to be involved in golf. I think that’s a good thing, regardless if it’s professional or influencer.”

Thomas said that despite being a two-time major-winning star, not to mention holding 15 PGA Tour trophies and the World No.1 spot for five weeks, there would be influencers with a fraction of his golfing talent and an unrelatable résumé who fans would recognise more than him.

He is right. Garrett Clark, Brad Dalke and Sean Walsh of Good Good played in the nine-hole creator event that week. Tyler Toney of Dude Perfect participated as well. That platform has 61.7 million subscribers. 61.7 million. 61,700,000 people subscribe to that YouTube channel.

Dude Perfect once produced a video at Augusta National with Bryson DeChambeau in which they kicked footballs, threw frisbees and whacked tennis balls around the sport’s most iconic holes. The mind still boggles as to how that was sanctioned but like Thomas says, “That’s just the power of it.”

Given the size of these platforms, there will unquestionably be golf fans, likely young ones that consume YouTube content, that recognise Tyler Toney or ‘Fat Perez’ before they recognise Justin Thomas. Like the Kentucky man also said, this is not a good or a bad thing.

It cannot be a bad thing. Just like a recent Golf For All report that said 22 million people engaged with golf in some capacity in 2024, this is what people who watch YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are doing. It is the same sport.

“I think influencers work really hard to put out content, and I could never do it personally. My message was always in the dirt, and for them, it’s pumping out content and putting their face out there and doing their thing. I know it’s a lot of work to do it and it’s tiring and things like that,” said Open champion of Troon Xander Schauffele when I asked him too.

“But if it’s going to bring more eyeballs to golf I think it’s a good thing, but the whole sort of social media influencer thing, I’m going to leave it to everyone else that’s my age or a little younger because they’re just way better at it.”

The top players welcomed the presence of influencers and entertainers and why not? Kwon, the eventual winner of the Creator Classic at East Lake in 2024, was seen practising next to Tommy Fleetwood, and the Bryan Brothers picked the brains of four-time major champion and World No.1 Scottie Scheffler.

I was circulating the ground by the 10th tee, the putting green and the driving range in the hours leading up to the Creator Classic, and there was a distinct buzz. People were continually stopping Fat Perez for pictures, Barstool Sport’s Dan Rapaport who was commentating, and there was feverish enthusiasm for each figure that came to the tee box.

The energy of these influencers is infectious. They’re not bad golfers too, you know, but how good they are is not important. They excel in entertaining whereas Scheffler excels in trophy-winning. They are two completely different worlds that for a few hours on an Atlanta afternoon lived in peaceful harmony.

I’ve no idea what young golf fans want to be when they grow older. I imagine they want to lift the Claret Jug for the most part. Rick Shiels probably wanted to as well. But where Rory, Scottie, JT and Xander have stormed the pro game, Shiels is their equal in front of the camera,

But given the trajectory of YouTube golfers and their vast audiences, if you have a young one who is both a golf and YouTube enthusiast and ask them, do you want to be the next YouTube star or the next Rory McIlroy (professional star), I’d be intrigued to hear the answer.

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Did you watch the Creator Classic PGA Tour event? Do you think the gap is closing between young people aiming to become YouTubers and professional golfers? Fat Perez or Rory McIlroy? What do you make of the Rick Shiels LIV Golf move? Tell us on X!