Your Golf Tour: What Works, and How It Could Be Even Better
It’s safe to say that Your Golf Tour has so far been a raging success. The numbers from the first event were just about comparable with last year’s Internet Invitational, and a little over 2 months since publication the Pursell Farms tournament has pulled in more than 15 million views across the three videos.
As was probably intended, the tour has done an excellent job of creating a hybrid product somewhere between the typical YouTube Golf videos we know and love, and professional golf. The players themselves seem torn about which of those two things they’re playing in: on the one hand they’re playing against people they know and like, on camera, in a relatively fun environment; on the other, they’re competing for pretty big money and have teammates relying on them. Peter Finch and Roger Steele on the final day of the latest event at Rams Hill were a perfect example. The internal struggle caused by the blend of high-stakes and frivolity is plain to see, and one of the things that makes it so entertaining.
But we are just two tournaments into what will likely be a concept that continues to grow from here, and as its founders would no doubt admit themselves, it’s not perfect. Grant and the Bryan Bros have welcomed feedback with open arms and shown a willingness to make changes on the fly, primarily around the structure and format of the three episodes.
So it’s getting there, but there are a few things could still use a bit of tweaking. Here are four of them and how they could be fixed, beginning with the much talked about make-up of the teams.
1. Team Parity
Problem: The teams aren’t even.
Nothing can be done about this one this season, and who knows – maybe Team Grant and Team George will pull a rabbit out of the hat and fight their way back up the money list over the final couple of tournaments this year and render this problem null and void. But at the moment, Team Wes and Team Brad look a tier above.
Aside from the fact that we all invariably want a close contest, the same teams being in the final each time also means the same faces on episode three each event – not an issue if they’re your favourite team, but not ideal if you’re after some Taco time.
Solution: Change the selection process.
While a Captain’s Match to determine who picked where was a good piece of added content and drummed up a bit of momentum for the tour, it’s based on the premise that all four captains are equals on the course, which they are not. Brad and Wesley have fairly significant pro experience, and while George can compete with them reasonably consistently, Grant isn’t quite on their level – as good as he is.
Lo and behold, Grant finished last in the Captain’s Match and got the worst bevy of picks as a result. The issue was somewhat offset by the snake draft (Grant got the first pick in the second round), but still – Grant was always going to struggle dealing with picks 4, 5 and 12 against Wesley with picks 1, 8 and 9.
So how could they change it? A couple of options. One would simply be to randomise it – not as fun but more likely to result in more closely matched teams. But probably the fairest would be to seed the captains – maybe the rest of the YGT players could do this, or the fans for some engagement – from 1 to 4. The 4th seed gets pick 1 and so on – meaning the lowest ranked captain gets first bite at the cherry.
2. Same players getting benched
Problem: The same players keep getting benched for Round 2.
Team Grant is the only side that didn’t bench the same guy for Round 2 in both the first and second event. Wes sat Roger both times, Brad sat Garrett both times, George sat Josh both times. Grant was the outlier, benching himself in the second event so Kwon and Sam could play together, but it seems likely that the same guys are going to be missing Round 2 most events.
Does this matter? It probably depends whether you like the guys getting benched really, but this is something that has been repeated in the depths of the YT Golf online community pretty regularly, and one that George himself addressed in his newsletter.
“It would add an interesting wrinkle. It would make for better content. I will give you that.
But then it is, man, what if I have to sit Tooms? He has played on the DP World Tour. What if I have to sit Taco? He won the New Zealand PGA five years ago.
As a competitor that is a tough one to get on board with. Next year, when we have actually had time to think it through, it could be a rule.”
Solution: Restrict who you can bench.
This could be done in a number of ways. If future seasons remain four events, the rule could be that all four core team members need to be benched once – including the captain. This would bring plenty of strategy in – who do you save for the final event?
Alternatively, if the powers that be didn’t want to go that hard, they could simply introduce a rule that the same player can’t be benched in consecutive events.
3. Longer first two rounds?
Problem: The first two rounds are the most entertaining, but the shortest
This might just be personal preference, but the first couple of episodes of each tournament have been the best to me. There’s more banter, more different personalities etc – but only 9 holes.
But the third episode of both events have been comfortably the longest, and in this latest iteration at Rams Hill the final round was nearly 2 hours longer than the first. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the length of these final round videos needs to change – it’s always going to take a certain amount of time to show five 18 hole matches regardless – but the balance could be better.
Solution: Extend the first couple of rounds
By this I don’t necessarily mean play more golf, because if four teams were playing 18-hole matches in every round it would be a lot of content to get through. But this latest tournament felt a bit off kilter – the first video was great but only around 2.5 hours, while the final video was a little slower but went 4.5 hours.
It’s a difficult one to fix, because the final video is obviously where the money is made and its entertainment value is to some extent dictated by whether it’s close, which can’t be controlled. But to me the first couple of videos are a lot more entertaining and should have a run time which reflects that relative to the final video.
Another alternative to make the final video a little more entertaining would be to have more involvement of the guys who aren’t playing. Get them on the sidelines, get their insights – that way there’s more involvement of all the personalities throughout the event.
4. Is it too easy!?
Problem: Some of the scores are getting very low.
What a thing to whinge about. The golf is too good. My beer is too cold. Admittedly this is a distant fourth on this list, but it genuinely was something that crossed my mind, particularly during the second round at Rams Hill.
Obviously these guys are excellent golfers and that’s the main reason the scores were low, and clearly shamble and scramble events are going to yield lower scores. But during that aforementioned round in particular, it felt on a lot of holes as though birdies were inevitable.
It may be a feature of Rams Hill – a couple of the guys did mention the bowl-type nature of a lot of the greens – but the pins seemed to be placed in very scoreable positions. Numerous holes had bowls leading to the pin which meant left, right and long all seemed to funnel to six feet.
I’d hazard a guess that this was no accident. The first port of call for people looking to have a whinge about YGT would be the fact that by and large, these guys aren’t pros, as good as they might be, and if you want to watch competitive golf you might as well stick to the PGA Tour. It’s an argument that’s pretty easy to tear down, to be honest, but regardless – bad scores early in the first couple of iterations of the tournament would only give that argument ammo.
Solution: Make it harder!
Give ‘em Sunday pins, at least some of the time. It’s probably true that low scores give the tour a bit of credibility in the initial stages, but now they’ve got a couple of low scores in the book, moving forward it would be great to see them all really scrounging to put together good scores.
It's worth reiterating that Your Golf Tour is two tournaments into what its founders expect to become a feature of the YouTube Golf calendar. It was never going to be perfect from the get go, but already it’s been one of the best things to come out of the YT Golf world. A couple of little tweaks like the above would help to make it even better
