Love It or Not, the 'Your Golf Tour' Hits the Mark It Meant To
If you haven’t been keeping up with the Your Golf Tour, that’s completely understandable. The three YouTube videos composing the first tour stop total a staggering runtime well over 10 hours, and they’re posted across three channels: YGT’s official channel, Bryan Bros Golf, and Grant Horvat. Regardless, at the time of this writing, the videos have also garnered over 10 million total views, and seem to be well-received as an impressive production altogether. With a total prize pool of $3 million for this season, clearly high production cost, and a clear desire to become a respected alternative tour, the YGT is ambitious, but this first tour stop gets them off on the right foot.
YGT vs. Internet Invitational
I have to clarify this first because the comparison keeps getting made, though it seems to be a bit apples and oranges. The Bob Does Sports x Barstool Sports collab that is the Internet Invitational had its debut in 2025, last year, and was for all intents and purposes, the first “big” internet golf tournament. Of course, the Creator Classic started before that in 2024, but we’re talking outside of the PGA’s control. I expect that if you’re reading about the Your Golf Tour, you saw the Internet Invitational, so we’ll skip the recaps and move onto why these two formats shouldn’t necessarily be compared as equals.
One of the main criticisms I’ve seen online about YGT is that the Internet Invitational was “more entertaining”, which is amusing right off the bat. It’s been made clear from the start of conversation about the YGT that the desired long-term outcome is to be a legitimate gateway into professional or professional-adjacent golf for highly talented creators. While there is, of course, some overlap in playing field and some very good golfers played in the Internet Invitational, it’s pretty clear that the priorities are different. Sending invites to Caitlin Clark and Kai Trump should be enough evidence.
So, to wrap everything up quick, with some educated observation: the Your Golf Tour seems to be focused on a great-golf-first agenda while the Internet Invitational is focused on creating a spectacle. Neither format is more “right” or better than the other, but the idea that YGT’s success should be gauged by how it feels compared to the Internet Invitational is a bit unfair. What do we look at then?
What YGT Did Well
As already addressed, the YGT is racking up views and notoriety quickly. There’s a huge sect of internet golf viewership, myself included, that have yearned for something like this. No, it’s not Rory-level performances at Augusta, but it’s kind of the same reason some people prefer college over professional sports. The YGT included players that have enough skill to make you wonder if they can really compete at the professional level, but not so much skill that it felt like I was watching aliens play. I love Jordan Spieth, but professional golf starts to feel out-of-touch when he tosses his club over his back on a shot that lands 6 feet from the pin.
Further, the level of talent makes the prizes that much more compelling. And yes, the Internet Invitational has a large pool as well, but watching Frankie Borelli of Barstool blading a chip OB on 18 while Dave Portnoy chirps him to cement their loss next to Brad Dalke just feels quite a bit more unserious. It’s so clearly visible in the Your Golf Tour’s first videos that the vast majority of these guys are competitors who want this money and are taking it seriously. That’s not to discredit the Internet Invitational or Frankie, for example, but it is an intangible difference that could be felt. One thing that is tangible, though, is the schedule.
Notice I didn’t say format, don’t yell yet. I have qualms with formatting, but the schedule being a 3-stop regular season with a planned finale is already, by nature, keeping me way more hooked than any other golf content has so far. Knowing that the conclusion of stop one isn’t the end until next year and that standings can change is not only compelling strategy, but brave. It’s speculation to an extent, but an educated guess should indicate that this is an expensive venture. I can’t imagine what the actual production cost of these stops are, how complicated the logistics and agreements were to make sure their playing field would be able to commit to the stops, and the consideration in how to make sure the remaining stops stay competitive has to be a nightmare. I don’t want to get ahead because we haven’t seen if this will work out, but the commitment they’ve made to this is commendable at minimum. I will certainly be tuning into the remaining events.
How YGT Changes Golf’s Landscape
The problem with getting too deep into the weeds on this, as of now, is that we’re only through the first YGT event. As stated before, it seems to be going really well, but also as stated before, there’s a lot of money and multiple events left to go that will have to be executed to ensure that this format is worthwhile for investors, viewers, and the golfers involved. But, that being said, if YGT continues this way, it’s going to change things for a lot of players.
Brad Dalke is the best talking point to back up what may happen. If you didn’t see his professional outing at the BMW International Open recently, we wrote about it here, but he got in a little bit of hot water commenting “I don’t have to grind through tours” to a reporter there regarding his appreciation for the opportunities afforded outside of Q-School and mini-tour grinds, in essence. While his phrasing may have gotten him in the media negatively, is what he said wrong, shameful, or untrue? No, and it doesn’t discredit his level of play or hard work. I mean, he finished middle-of-the-pack there T-31. So why does any of it matter?
See, Brad got a sponsor exemption invite to play that tournament, and he has a few more coming up soon. It’s increasingly clear that there is professional-level golf talent in the world that gets some tough breaks, runs out of money in Q-School, or for whatever other reason, can’t get through all of the red tape needed to obtain pro status. Pro tours, starting with the DP World Tour with Brad’s invite are clearly starting to see that, and of course, see that there’s a profitable draw to bring those guys on too. But, it’s not just about more content creators getting sponsor exemptions.
My guess is that the goal of the Your Golf Tour isn’t intended to just be a feeder-league for existing tours, though. A lot of these players are not, and will not be good enough to reach the PGA or DP World Tour, but playing in a $3 million dollar season on a different platform is a pretty good consolation prize. The beautiful thing about YGT is that it can act not just as another funnel attached to the same bucket, but become a different bucket entirely to showcase world-class talent and give aspiring, talented young golfers another option. I know there’s a big conversation on whether or not the game should grow, which I wrote about here , but I’ll unapologetically state that if you don’t want to see more golf or opportunities for young golfers, you’re likely on the wrong side. I’m excited to see who comes through YGT in the future.
Questions Left by Your Golf Tour
An opinionated blog post wouldn’t be complete without addressing some of my concerns. One of my biggest concerns about the YouTube golf tour that I’m not seeing talked about enough is just how big of an investment this is. The financial backing, costs, and targets of course aren’t talked about out in the open, but again, this has to be wildly expensive even beyond the prize pool. There are, no doubt, metrics that absolutely need to be hit to make sure this thing continues, but we can’t possibly know them. The viewership is good, but it hasn’t blown the Internet Invitational out of the water for example, which had 1/3rd the prize pool and was a one-time event so far. This may become a bigger topic of conversation in the future.
Further, the format has been a topic of conversation. To the Your Golf Tour’s credit, they have to entertain a short-form audience in 5-hour long videos, so watching straight up 18 hole group matches probably doesn’t help retention. That being said, the focus on 9-hole milestones paired with formats like alt shot and scrambles some of the community commenting that if this is supposed to be the uber-competitive showcase it intends to be, it would be beneficial to see more individual play shine through, which I agree with for the most part. Not to mention, the formats are unique and interesting, but I had to rewatch a few times to grasp what they were doing. Maybe I’ll adjust, but it’s a lot going on.
At the end of the day, it’s the first go-around. Just about any speculation or complaint is pretty minor and would be expected, for the most part. It’s not like they’ve got a hundred years of tournament and production experience and the endless money to put on “the perfect tournament”, which is frankly unobtainable anyway. There will always be opinions on how they could do things differently, but the same goes for literally any other mass-viewed-event.
Closing Thoughts
The Your Golf Tour was and is ambitious, and there are a lot of things you can make an argument for, good or bad. But, I think that a lot of commentary is “bean-soupish” in Gen Z terms. To put politely, nothing is going to fully satisfy anyone; if you don’t like bean soup, no recipe is going to fix that for you. This tournament wanted to be viewed as a serious and competitive format with talent so that it can bloom into a respected organization hosting talented golfers, and the first event did a good job of it. Like I said before, as long as this stays profitable enough to be worth continuing for the powers that be, it has the potential to be another expansion of the high-level game, and that is certainly a positive.