Tom Green: Did YouTube kill the golf pro star?
Rick Shiels, golf YouTuber, in action during the Hero Pro Am prior to the start of the British Masters supported by Sky Sports at Walton Heath Golf Club on October 10, 2018 in Tadworth, England. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images).
The first rule of broadcast is one must paint a vivid picture, it is key to capture the mind of the audience quickly. So here’s the scene: it’s 8pm. It is a Wednesday Evening. It’s -3 degrees outside and I am sitting in the McDonalds at Geneva Airport.
Strangely, the ‘pre security’ section of Geneva Airport is far better equipped to entertain than the post, so that is where we shall remain until closer to the flight time. The Maccies order? 1 large Diet Coke. It is January 18th and I am on a diet. I always knew golf journalism would be sexy and so far it was living up to its reputation.
Why do I tell you this? Because at this point I am 13 days away from the deadline of this article which you are so kindly reading. It is at exactly this point, 8pm, Geneva Airport, 312 hours still submission time, when I decided I better get on with it. I better start reaching out to the people who would go onto help mould this piece. Those people being...golf influencers.
Ahhhh, golf influencers. They are a strange bunch. A strange bunch with an ever increasing amount of power to persuade, control and sway the minds of the 66.6 million golfers who take to the links annually. Dead and gone are the days of Golf Monthly and Sky Sports being the only outlet for golf content. These days the 6 inch screens of our iPhones are where the sport lives.
As I sip on my Diet Coke, I’m sending Instagram DMs left, right and centre. Hitting up the finest minds in the golf influencer landscape to see who will talk to me and who will reveal the dark secrets of the influencer life.
*send* *send* *send*
Let’s see if anyone gets back to me.
“I love golf content creators, it’s thanks to them that I was dragged back to the sport in 2018”
But why would I bother reaching out to these people?
After all, golf is about the PGA tour, The Masters, grey-haired white men in chequered trousers and so on. It’s about people who talk the talk when it comes to progressing the sport but actually don’t want the ‘gold old days’ - e.g. the 1960s - to be messed with. Don’t you just love those guys? Legends.
I’m bothering because I love golf content creators, it’s thanks to them that I was dragged backto the sport in 2018; a sport I had loved as a child thanks to Adam Scott and EA Sports’ Tiger Woods 2004 on the PlayStation, but one that, as I got older, I’d moved further and further away from. Let’s blame girls and big nights out for not making the trip to Preston Golf Club more regularly. Very few can juggle all those vices in one go. Unless you are Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston who appears to be able to do whatever the hell he likes. The guy is a machine.
That is why I am writing this piece, because I really would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Rick Shiels (2.44m YouTube Subscribers), Peter Finch (525k YouTube Subscribers) and Erik Anders Lang for relighting my love for the royal and ancient game. That is why I think golf influencers are so important, they are opening up the sport to new faces and it is these faces who will keep the lights on in golf clubs around the UK.
Peter Finch of England tees off from the 18th tee during Regional Qualifying for the 149th Open at The West Lancashire Golf Club on June 27, 2021 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Richard Martin-Roberts/R&A/R&A via Getty Images).
In a pre-pandemic world, the sport was dwindling. Membership numbers were down and there was a real concern over an ageing golfing population. Since the early 2000s young golfers had become a dying breed. Who would have thought unapproachable golf clubs would struggle to garner an audience. Weeeeird.
However, since 2019 there has been a change. The number of rounds booked through BRS between January and September 2020 was 19.6 million, compared to 8.7 million in the whole previous year. This is in no small part due to the incredible work golf content creators do in making golf feel accessible. It also might be something to do a little old guy called COVID-19. But let’s not give it all the credit.
*ping*
We got a bite. A reply back from the every incredible Sophie Walker. Sophie was the English girls golf champion at 15, she has competed in 150 ladies European Tour Events and regularly makes appearances on Sky Sports. On top of all this, in recent years she has taken to social media more and more to create content, doing incredible work with ‘HowDidIDo’ Europe’s largest golfing network and appearing in a variety of Rick Shiels videos, YouTube’s number 1 golf influencer.
We agreed to jump on the phone the next day.
Sophie has an incredible insight into the sport and unlike some professionals fully absorbs herself into the landscape, spending hours listening to golf podcasts.
“I spend a lot of time in the car, I love ‘No Laying Up’, ‘Son of a Butch’, and Rick’s podcast, I love them all”.
Sophie has been at this for years, appearing in videos with golf content creator Mark Crossfield as far back as 2015. It would be fair to say she was one of the first female British golf YouTubers. She consumes golf in a way that is very similar to myself, through Twitter & Instagram, choosing to follow a lot of events on apps, like the Open Golf app, where you can keep tabs on things shot by shot; something I found myself doing as Rory battled his way around the final 18 at St Andrews last year. In that instance, some poor planning had left me miles away from a screen during those fateful hours.
Sophie Walker of England plays her second shot on the par 5, 18th hole during the first round of the 2017 Dubai Ladies Classic on the Majlis Course at The Emirates Golf Club, on December 6, 2017 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images).
There was one thing which stuck out from my conversation with Sophie and it was the idea of representation in golf. Sophie’s first time witnessing female golfers was when she turned up to tournaments to play, already in her teens. She had fallen in love with the sport via her dad’s passion and his role as handicap secretary at the local course. But this was a time before LPGA coverage on TV and it really highlights the huge role social media has in representation.
The idea of, ‘if you see it you can be it’ could not be more apt than here. Social media has opened up golf to people who previously would never have considered it a place for them. Sophie could not speak more highly of golfers like Charley Hull, English Professional Golfer and previous Rookie of the Year, for her work in bringing people to the sport, especially via her instagram. Charley has 278k followers online and has done amazing work in making golf appear approachable and modern. Without Sophie and Charley working away, posting videos online and showing girls around the world there is a path for them into the sport, there would be thousands of amazing future LPGA stars who would never pick up a club.
It is moments like this when you start to fully grasp the power that golf influencers have. They can be an incredible force for good and there is much more to them than simple club reviews and course vlogs.
This power is now being understood by the major players in the sport. Only in the last few weeks have Callaway golf announced their collaboration with YouTube stars, ‘GoodGood’, a partnership which five years ago would have been unimaginable. No longer do brands view players as their only source of marketing. Equally, look at the work Bryson DeChambeau is doing online, having recently launched his own YouTube channel which gives his fans a behind the scenes look at his life. I genuinely believe these are the sort of moves which will keep golf brands alive, if they fail to keep up with the prevailing trends there is a chance they will not survive the next few years. Look at what Cobra | Puma golf are doing, that’s a brand which has fully embraced the golf influencer.
*ping*
We have another one, this time a message from the superbly talented Jasmine AKA JazzyGolfer. She is up for chatting, I am over the moon.
Jazzy has had roaring success over the previous few years, since giving up her job in finance to chase the dream of being a full time golf content creator, she has bounced from success to success. Currently boasting circa 61K followers on Instagram and holding down the prestigious job of CNN ‘Living Golf’ host.
Jazzy Golfer of England plays a shot during the pro-am prior to the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Golf Club on September 07, 2022 in Virginia Water, England. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images).
Her passion for the sport is obvious from the moment we start talking. Her CV is even more impressive than I had previously thought, having recently founded The Women’s Golf Community and signing deals with Footjoy and Mastercard. She exudes confidence when talking about the sport she loves, relaying stories of meeting Tiger Woods, playing at the BMW Pro-Am and touring St Andrew’s at 3am with the green keepers before the Sunday of the 150th Open.
However, she hates the idea of being labelled an, ‘influencer’ and all the connotations which that word comes loaded with. But she does admit, in its truest sense being an ‘influencer’ is what she does. She wants to influence other women to get into the sport she now calls home.
Again, like Sophie, Jazzy talks on the importance of social media when it comes to representation. The importance of being able to see someone who look like you doing something you want to achieve. That is incredibly powerful. Jasmine goes onto retell a story about a group of young girls coming over to her at an event, all wearing her signature leggings, and the feeling she got that maybe she was making a difference and having an effect on a sport that can so often be antiquated.
However, not everyone is fan of what she does, Jazzy goes onto say, ‘For a certain number of people in golf - feminist is a bad word’.
A certain demographic, hates changes and especially hates the idea that golf is becoming something they no longer recognise. Jazzy said a phrase which really stuck out to me:
‘To the privileged, equality feels like oppression.’
Maybe this explains why some people online, I would imagine mostly on Twitter, do not like what it is she stands for. I think it is fair to say that golf courses across the UK are not known for being a hotbed of liberal ideas but the work being done by content creators like JazzyGolfer and Sophie Walker are going some way to redress the balance.
I will be honest, when I first set out to write this article, I thought I would end up with a piece that was a love letter to the golf influencers who got me back into the sport. An open letter to the Rick, Peter and Erik’s of the world. An ode to 45 minute course vlogs of blokes getting together for a laugh.
In some ways that is what this piece is, but in other ways it is not. Through conversations I have had over the previous weeks I have come to understand that social media in golf is doing something far more important than that - it is giving a voice to people who previously would not have one. It is helping to bring the game we love to a whole new audience and, whether you like it or not, it might just be what keeps this game going for another 100 years.
So long live the golf influencer, your work is far more important than you know.