Our Rankings System Explained
There is a hell of a lot of YouTube Golf content out there, and as much as we’d all like to spend our days curled up on the couch watching every minute of it, most of us have jobs, families or whatever else it is that people devote their time to. Fortunately, we’ve developed a solution. Our video rankings system is designed to separate the best from the rest, helping you to decide where to direct the precious, precious time you have available to you to watch YouTube Golf.
Coming up with this ranking system was no mean feat. After all, there are many things that make a YouTube video entertaining, and what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander. But as YTG fanatics, there are surely a handful of things that we can all agree make or break a video. The video rankings system we’ve devised here on YTGT attempts to encapsulate these.
There are six different areas we decided upon as the most significant in the overall quality of YouTube golf content, but not all of them are equally important so we’ve assigned each of them with a weighting. For example, most would probably agree that on-screen chemistry is more important than the golf quality – who wouldn’t rather watch Bob Does Sports take the piss and have a laugh than two scratch golfers walk around not talking to each other?
So how did we decide how much weight to give each metric? And how do we actually rate each video? Well, we made it up. It’s entirely arbitrary. We pulled the system out of our ass, and we completely make up the ratings. Here’s how it works!
Chemistry (25%)
Chemistry is the main thing separating YouTube Golf from the PGA Tour. Hearing players interact as they play a round of golf is not something golf fans have historically been accustomed to, not that there would be all that much to listen to a lot of the time. Not all of our favourite YouTube golfers are among the most entertaining people on the planet, but plenty of them are good for a laugh and even those who are not have developed some good on-screen chemistry with others which makes them a whole lot more entertaining to watch. Without entertaining people on camera and/or good chemistry between those in a video, a video is a lot less interesting than it otherwise would be, and that’s why this is rated equally as highly as any other metric.
Format (25%)
Equally important – at least according to us – is the format of a video. The quality of YouTube Golf content is continually on the rise, and no longer is it enough for creators to simply whack a ball around with nothing on the line, or to create lame clickbait headlines (Can I make a par with MY KID’S DRIVER!?!?!). Format is pivotal, and that’s why great ideas like Bryson’s Break 50 and the Horvat/Bryon Bros Major Cut series have been so successful – and you can now add the Internet Invitational to the very top of that list. A good format is pivotal to a good video, and leads us straight through to our next metric.
Tension (20%)
This was a latecomer to the ranking system, but after recognising that there was otherwise not enough to separate, for example, different Major Cut videos, we realised its importance. Actually rooting for the people in a video to achieve whatever it is they are trying to do is a big part of what makes YTG so fun, and if it ends up being a close-run thing the video is just that much better. For example, in the Major Cut series, do one or more of them find themselves right on the brink of making the cut, or does Grant miss it by 10 shots and the other two make it easily? It’s long been a pet peeve of the people at YT Golf Talk when a YouTube video thumbnail, or the intro, gives away the ending. Don’t they realise how invested we all are in the outcome? Doing so is grounds for skipping straight through to another video, which is testament to the importance of tension to a video’s overall quality.
Course (10%)
The above are the core three metrics which make up the bulk of our overall ratings, but there are three more that play their own important little role too. We start with the course. It’s possible to have a good video without it being at a good course – actually some high-profile YouTube Golfers have played at rubbish courses as part of a series idea. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. The Internet Invitational being played at such a good venue definitely added to its appeal, and when guys are wandering around Pebble Beach as opposed to their local goat track there’s no denying it adds a bit of extra oomph to the video.
Production (10%)
Our second ten-percenter is production. How well is the content cut? Is there too much talking and not enough golf; or, God forbid, too much golf and not enough talking? Are we watching shots from behind with ball-trackers, or are there shots filmed side on which give us no idea what is going on (almost like watching actual professional golf ten years ago). Most popular content creators these days will score pretty well on this metric and that’s why it’s only worth 10%, but the overall production does no doubt play a role.
Golf Quality (10%)
Finally, to the golf quality. It speaks volumes about YouTube Golf that this is among the lowest rated metrics, but surely this is the reality for most YTG fans. There’s certainly nothing wrong with good golf – watching Bryson hit absolute bombs is certainly not a bad thing and his video with Steph Curry was unequivocally better because Curry was playing like prime Tiger. Good golf is rewarded to some extent under this system, but not to the point that it prohibits average golfers making videos with high rankings. After all, some of the biggest creators out there are not great golfers - looking at you Bobby Berger - and the Internet Invitational was full of players who plenty of us mugs could wipe the floor with. Good golf is a nice-to-have, but it’s not the be all and end all.
So there you have it. Our entirely contrived, subjective ranking system, in all its glory. We fully expect this to become the barometer by which all past and future YouTube Golf videos are judged.
