YouTube golf has exploded in popularity over the past couple of years. Due in part to Covid and the lack of live golf, the number of channels with huge viewership and very high quality content has been taken to another level recently.
The buzz around these channels has been increasingly noticeable with major club manufacturers becoming more involved with the high profile ones. Said manufacturers, such as Taylor Made, Titleist, and Callaway have made large investments in the top channels and, presumably, see this as a way to get in front of more eyeballs and a younger audience.
Many of these deals have only taken place this year so the impact of astroturfing will be interesting but you would like to think that the viewer will be the winner here – better content with access to more golfing superstars and collaborations with other YouTubers.
I will cover the top instructor YouTubers in another post, I’ll update the link when it is published, but this post is about channels that provide great content. This, of course, is subjective, but of you like to watch golf being played I would highly recommend the following.
Good Good
I’ve been watching Good Good since the beginning. It was essentially made up of a collaboration of friends that had their own channels, of varying degrees of success. They have become a golfing empire and have really changed perhaps the whole golf media industry.
They have a lot of fun content and are so enthusiastic. They play many different games within the game and are usually very entertaining. Check out their channel here.
Bob Does Sports
Another channel that has grown tremendously over the past year is Bob Does Sports. These guys are very funny and do many ridiculous things on course such as eating challenges, speed golf or drinking games.
Not for the faint hearted they also have Fat Perez: legend!
Not A Scratch Golfer
Adam has a super interesting and has had quite harrowing past few years. His approach is to showcase how a non-scratch golfer actually plays. I believe he’s a similar handicap to me and I think everyone having a handicap above scratch can pick something up from him.
Golf Sidekick
Matt is very philosophical about his golf. To be fair he may rub you up the wrong way, however, his mantra is very simple and effective. Golf Sidekick talks about the “way of the playa”: keeping it play; avoiding big mistakes; avoiding the “hero” shots and generally being calm on course. He has a number of “how to break XX” videos, and, again I think everyone can learn something from them.
I’ll be discussing one of his concepts, 666, in a future post.
Bad Golf
Picking a fifth channel for this list was actually quite hard. I ended up with Bad Golf. These guys are allegedly of celebrity status in the UK and they are really not that good at golf.
John is a lefty and improving so I am not sure whether he should still be allowed on the channel. However it is really him that makes the videos worth watching. His responses to some of his bad shots are priceless.
Honourable Mentions
If you are from the UK, you are probably very aware of Rick Shiels or Peter Finch. I feel they put out a lot of content that won’t appeal to all but they do have some excellent videos – especially when playing with others.
Bryan Brothers have some good stuff too: one of them, Wesley, is a tour pro, and they often play against other professionals which is fascinating to watch their performances in non-competition mode.
You can find my top rated subscriptions on my YouTube channel, @golfisfun18 – why not give me a subscribe while you are there? I intend to push more content, that is hopefully fun this year: waiting for the snow to go away. And here is a list of my favourite videos.
I hope you enjoyed my favourite YouTube Golf Channels, what would you add or remove from the list?