The Your Golf Tour Phantom Draft
Your Golf Tour is less than a week away, with the first episode of the inaugural edition set to drop on Monday, June 29. We’ve known the roster for a few weeks now, but we now also know the order of the draft after the release of the YGT Captains Match, which saw captains Horvat, Bryan (x2) and Dalke go head-to-head over nine holes at Pursell Farms to determine the draft order. Following some very high-quality golf in that video, the order will be as follows:
Pick 1: Wesley Bryan
Pick 2: George Bryan
Pick 3: Brad Dalke
Pick 4: Grant Horvat
There were bits and pieces of discussion about which captain wants who on their team, but by and large we’re still in the dark. The captains also remained somewhat tight-lipped about the actual format of the draft – presumably it will be either just a straight draft or a snake format (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1). The latter seems more likely – given it’s a three-round draft, that would mean Wesley will still get the first pick in Rounds 1 and 3, while ensuring Grant isn’t too handicapped by picking last.
So without further ado, below is our Your Golf Tour phantom draft, in which we blindly attempt to predict the draft order without even knowing for certain who will be picking when. If we get more than two correct, consider this a raging success.
Round One
Pick #1 (Wesley Bryan) – Ryan Ruffels
Throughout the Captains Match, Ryan Ruffels and Sean Walsh were unsurprisingly the two names which continually popped up in discussions for who would be first picked. Grant made it clear he wanted Ruffels, while Dalke was equally effusive in his desire to take Walsh, but given they finished bottom two that pair may well get neither of them. Wesley wasn’t quite as eager to outwardly reveal his plans, but Ruffels is going to be a hard man to ignore. The 28-year-old Aussie has been doing it all this year, both in the YouTube space on the PGA Tour, the latter of which he returned to after winning the creator event The Q at Myrtle Beach earn a spot at the PGA Tour’s Myrtle Beach Classic – at which he made the cut and even led during the second round. Ruffels is right up there with a couple of the captains as the most accomplished player on this tour. Interestingly, during the Captains Match Wes made clear his want for Sam Heung Min on his team, and George suggested it would be no surprise if his brother picked the Kiwi first just to be quirky, so this phantom draft could be derailed before we even hit pick #2. Given how good the top couple are, I’m backing Wes to play the percentages and take the guy who is probably the best player on the board.
Pick #2 (George Bryan) – Sean Walsh
If Wes does end up taking Ruffels (or Sam…), George will be hard-pressed to ignore one of Good Good’s finest. Despite his at times self-deprecating nature, Sean Walsh is an exceptional golfer and right up there with the best chances of winning Your Golf Tour. In fact, according to Handicap Tracker he’s behind only Ruffels of the 12 non-captains on this tour. It’s hard to imagine him slipping past the first two, though it was mentioned on the Captains Match that George is a ‘big Tooms guy’, so the Kiwi could also be an outside chance to go here.
Pick #3 (Brad Dalke) – Luke Toomey
If either Ruffels or Walsh is still available here, Dalke will take them in a heartbeat, but if the Bryan Bros take those two standouts then I’m going with Tooms as the next pick. The Kiwi crew – consisting of Tooms, Luke Kwon, Sam Heung-Min and Taco – are all very very good, and very very evenly matched, so it will be interesting to see how the drafting of the four of them plays out. I’ve gone with Tooms first for a couple of reasons. The first of these is that he’s just a fantastic golfer with a beautiful swing and a decent amount of professional experience, and the second is that he's a little more level-headed than a couple of his fellow Kiwis. Whether that plays into his favour is anyone’s guess – maybe the captains will want the light-hearted weirdness that someone like Sam would bring to the table – but it seems more likely than not to me that Tooms’ composure paired with his ability will see him drafted fairly early.
Pick #4 (Grant Horvat) – Luke Kwon
Arguably the most prominent member of the Kiwi crew, Luke Kwon has been a recognisable face in the YouTube golf space for many years now and made himself even more recognisable when he missed his tee time at last year’s Internet Invitational – something he’s no doubt sick of hearing about. But he showed everyone what he can do once he did finally get on the course, and was again very good under the niche of YouTube tournament conditions at the Q at Myrtle Beach, when he went toe-to-toe with eventual winner and our number one pick, Ryan Ruffels. Kwon’s laissez-faire attitude to golf, whether it’s entirely real, completely contrived or somewhere in between, means he won’t exactly be delivering inspirational monologues to whichever team he’s selected, but expect his golf to do plenty of talking.
Round Two
Pick #5 (Grant Horvat*) – Peter Finch
Things get a little trickier in Round Two given we can’t be certain of the selection order, but regardless our fifth selection is the one and only Peter Finch, increasingly staking his claim as Britain’s favourite YouTube golfer with each passing event to which Rick Shiels isn’t invited. Finch seems like an out-and-out champion of a guy and will be a popular team member, but importantly he’s also very good at golf. He’s a little down the list according to the Handicap Tracker rankings, but it’s worth remembering they only include rounds available on YouTube and don’t account for course difficulty; for reference, Finch’s recent rounds include numerous US Open courses like Shinnecock and Kiawah Island. He recently competed in both US and British Open qualifying and has begun his own quest to reach the top 1,000 in the world, so that gives you an idea of the level of golf he’s capable of.
Pick #6 (Brad Dalke*) – Taco
The penultimate member of the Kiwi crew to be taken in our phantom draft is Tae-Wook Koh, or Taco as he is more commonly known. He could very easily go higher than a couple of his fellow Kiwis listed above but they’re all so similar it’s hard to predict. Taco is an excellent golfer and arguably the funniest member of that group, but it will be interesting to see how both he and the other three behave when they are invariably split up and competing in an event with reasonably high stakes. Keep an eye out for Taco imitating the swings of his fellow YGT participants, a niche talent but one that he’s shown remarkable aptitude for.
Pick #7 (George Bryan*) – Sam Heung Min
If the picks do theoretically follow our phantom draft exactly to this point, this selection will give George a nice little moral conundrum. It’s been made abundantly clear that Wes wants Sam on his team, meaning if the draft does follow the snake format, George could have the ability to snatch him one pick before his brother. Would he dare do that to his brother, his business partner, his best friend? You’d hope so! This is YGT – it’s serious business! And besides, he wouldn’t just be doing it to spite Wesley – Sam is a very good player and could easily go even higher than this in the draft.
Pick #8 (Wesley Bryan*) – Micah Morris
Wesley has made no secret of his desire to have not just Sam, but also as many of the Kiwi boys as possible, so if the draft does pan out this way then he will be one disappointed man come pick #8. But he’ll still have plenty of quality to choose from, and of the remaining names, Micah Morris is one of the more interesting ones. He’s really talented and has some major weapons on the course, and his ability to bomb it will come in handy in the scramble format which is expected in Round One of each event. Morris also openly discusses his occasional mental fragility – probably not ideal when there’s millions of dollars at stake, but while he showed some signs of that at the recent Q at Myrtle Beach, he also beat George one-on-one at that event. Even more recently, he was tied with Wesley and Grant for the best score at Shinnecock when all the creators played it prior to the US Open, so he could potentially be a steal this late in the draft.
Round Three
Pick #9 (Wesley Bryan) – Garrett Clark
It’s testament to the quality of this field that Garrett is in our bottom half of selections. One of the pioneers of YouTube golf is listed as a +3.2 on Handicap Tracker, though a lot of his recent rounds have been mickey mouse type videos – breaking 65 from every tee the most notable among them. He hasn’t been involved in recent creator events like the Q at Myrtle Beach so we haven’t seen him go toe-to-toe with a lot of these guys lately, but he’s certainly more than capable of competing with most of them. Of all the captains, however, Wesley seems the most likely to pick someone based on personality, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see him bypass Garrett for someone like Roger Steele.
Pick #10 (George Bryan) – Chance Taylor
And then there were three. There is still plenty of talent in the remaining trio, but I’m going with Chance Taylor at pick #10. The self-proclaimed redneck is a little more of an unknown than most of the others purely because he hasn’t been around the creator space for as long and hasn’t been involved in nearly as many full-round videos as they have – the bulk of his followers are on social media rather than YouTube. We got some good insight into his game at the Q at Myrtle Beach, but he didn’t seem to play at his best there. Taylor has heaps of natural talent and an entertaining way of playing, and he also comes across as a pretty cruisy dude – something George will no doubt welcome, particularly if he already has Sam on his team.
Pick #11 (Brad Dalke) – Josh Kelley
Josh Kelley, or HoleIn1TrickShots as he’s known to friends and family, has risen to prominence for fun, short-form videos, doing things that won’t necessarily come in all that handy on YGT, like chipping golf balls into his swimming pool. Fortunately he is generally quite good at avoiding the water when he’s playing actual golf, and his ability to pull off difficult shots could come in handy in the team events. Given the quality of the YGT field though, it seems likely that he’ll be picked closer to the bottom than the top.
Pick #12 (Grant Horvat) – Roger Steele
Roger Steele is an X-factor on this tour, but he’s up against some extremely good and very well-credentialled golfers in the draft, which might see him slip towards the bottom. Steele is more of a celebrity than a YouTuber – he’s only got a few thousand subscribers – but he is extremely good at golf as he showed at the Internet Invitational. Given his limited online presence, exactly how good he is isn’t quite as well known as the others so who knows, maybe he’ll go higher. While he’s got limited experience in front of the YouTube cameras, Steele doesn’t exactly seem the type to be overawed by the spotlight. He can also absolutely bomb it which will be a valuable skill in scramble, but at a guess his all-round game isn’t quite at the level of most of the above names.
And there it is – our official Phantom Draft for the inaugural Your Golf Tour. It was done with a huge dose of uncertainty, so we’ll be watching with baited breath next Monday to find out whether we got even one single selection correct.
