When Nick Stubbe gets on the course at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta ahead of the Tour Championship, his goal is somewhat simple.
“We just gotta birdie one, as long as we birdie one, you know, kind of house money. Let it fire from there,” Stubbe, better known as “Fat Perez” to the hundreds of thousands of fans that follow his content, told The Post in a recent interview.
Stubbe is not a professional golfer, rather he is part of the social media channel “Bob Does Sports” and the accountant-turned-golf content creator is at the epicenter of a massive explosion in popularity for golf content on YouTube and social media.
And it has led the PGA Tour to lean into that blossoming popularity to set up the Creator Classic, a nine-hole tournament the day before the start of the Tour Championship that pits some of the biggest golf content creators against one another on the same course the pros will play.
Stubbe, along with Garrett Clark, Paige Spiranac, Gabby DeGasperis, Tyler Toney and 12 other creators making up the field, will take part in the inaugural tournament that will be streamed on the PGA Tour’s YouTube channel, Peacock and ESPN+.
The meteoric rise of YouTube golf and golf content creators on various platforms has helped drive interest in the sport and helped a younger demographic find its love of golf through the different creators that have followings.
In July, The Athletic reported that over a 90-day span this year there had been more than 4.3 billion views of golf videos on YouTube, and some of the most popular creators boast nearly a million followers or more.
For instance, Clark, who is part of “Good Good Golf,” has over a million followers on his personal page and the “Good Good” channel is inching toward two million followers.
“Bob Does Sports” has 832,000 followers on its YouTube channel alone and DeGasperis’ follower count sits at over 600,000 between TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Their videos range from funny challenges to trick shots to playing a round of golf with a professional golfer or celebrity. Barstool Sports’ Frankie Borelli, who co-hosts the site’s “Fore Play” podcast, played a round with Islanders forward Mat Barzal and Clark posted a video with musician Noah Kahan.
Bryson DeChambeau, the two-time U.S. Open champion who plays on the LIV Golf tour, has also taken to the creator space and made headlines last month when he released a video of himself playing golf with former President Donald Trump.
Part of the rise in popularity of the content is that it’s relatable for so many people and the familiarity and loyalty that the audience develops with the creators.
“I think we just hopefully resonate with our fan base as just normal guys kind of going out there and playing golf,” Stubbe said about what draws people to the “Bob Does Sports” content.
“Maybe our viewers see each of us in their buddy, they’re foursome. I got a guy back home that’s just like Perez, or just like [channel creator Robby Berger], whatever it may be. So just, I think us, you know, I always say we’re incredibly lucky. We have the best job ever just being ourselves and playing golf, it’s not hard to do that, and for whatever reason, it’s resonated with people.”
‘Great family programming’
DeGasperis, better known to those who follow her as Gabby Golf Girl, is the next generation of golf fan and the younger demographic that the PGA Tour is hoping to tap into as they dip their toes into the creator content world.
At 16 years old, DeGasperis is uniquely positioned to have an insight into what people her own age and older are looking for in the content they produce. She’s seen firsthand the impact it’s had on helping to inspire more people to take an interest in the sport.
During a conversation with The Post, DeGasperis noted that her brother, who she said is not a golf fan, has taken a liking to golf content in part for the trick shots or the funny challenges from content creators.
“The tricks shots that I do is a big thing that I know gets a lot of kids involved,” said DeGasperis, who has made them a regular part of her content. “It’s kind of sick. You watch it for 15 seconds and you’re like that was awesome. I think there’s so many different things that kids get exposed to with golf that they didn’t think golf was about before.”
The numbers would suggest that interest and participation in the sport are up, with data from the National Golf Foundation indicating increases in total reach, total participation, and youth and young adult participation.
The annual Graffis Report showed that there had been more on-course youth golfers in 2023 than any year since 2006 and the group has seen a 40 percent increase since 2019. Young adults (18-34) saw their third consecutive year of growth in 2023 and are at their highest point of participation since 2015.
It’s not totally clear just how connected the explosion of golf content is to the increase in participation, but it has certainly given the PGA Tour plenty of reason to take notice.
While DeGasperis’ and Stubbe’s content differs in some ways, they both notice that their audience runs the gamut of demographics.
“I have 5-year-olds come up to me and I have 50-year-olds come up to me,” DeGasperis said. “I was just talking with a 20-year-old guy and then I’m talking to a 15-year-old kid and a 40-year-old. It’s crazy because it really reaches so many different people.”
The content’s ability to reach and touch such a wide audience is what caught the eye of Chad Mumm, the founder of Pro Shop and the producer behind the hit Netflix docu-series “Full Swing.”
Pro Shop, a golf media and commerce company, is helping to put on Wednesday’s Creator Classic and Mumm told The Post that he had started to take notice of the content on YouTube, specifically, over the past four to five years.
“What’s fun about it is it’s really, in some sense, great family-friendly programming. The golfers are all for the most part pretty talented at golf, but there’s just a rhythm to it,” Mumm said.
The Creator Classic ‘experiment’
PGA Tour senior vice president of media Chris Wandell is very honest about what the Tour is hoping to accomplish with Wednesday’s Creator Classic, and that’s trying to draw in the large audience that the creators involved have to the Tour Championship that’s taking place the following days.
The creators involved are being encouraged to bring their video teams and shoot content during the Creator Classic to release on their own platforms.
“But we also hope that that might bring some of these different audiences to the PGA Tour to tune in on Thursday and Friday on ESPN or Golf Channel. Or tune in on Sunday, when it’s coming down to the wire on NBC, and these are fans that probably don’t typically watch the PGA Tour,” Wandell said.
“We think if this test is successful, we’re probably bringing a lot of live and non-live eyeballs to the Creator Classic itself, and then our hope is that there’s enough content generated during and after the event that it brings new fans and different demographics to the Tour Championship and the PGA Tour in general.”
Wednesday’s event isn’t the first time the PGA Tour dipped its toe into working with content creators. Earlier this year the Tour put on The Q at Myrtle Beach, which was a qualifying tournament that involved content creators and aspiring golfers and would have given them a chance to qualify for the Myrtle Beach Classic.
Mumm said that the goal for the Creator Classic is for it to be “seriously entertaining” and melding the YouTube golf experience with the professionalism and stakes of an actual PGA Tour event.
“We’re not going to try to dumb it down, but we also don’t want to take the YouTube out of the YouTube golf,” Mumm said.
The broadcast will have reporters on the ground that the creators will speak with throughout and talk them through shots and their nerves.
The 16-person Creator Classic is set up as a nine-hole competition that will use stroke play and doesn’t include handicaps, nor will any strokes be given to any of the players, with the four lowest-scoring players after eight holes advancing to a one-hole playoff.
“Just little things like that [make it so] nobody can really run away with it and win it in the first five holes, there will be drama,” Mumm said. “We love in pro golf, cuts make for great drama sometimes. And you know, who’s on that bubble of getting that last spot in the playoff, I think will make for really compelling TV.”
Wandell is also viewing Wednesday’s Creator Classic as an experiment of sorts for how the PGA Tour can build up its profile and learn a thing or two from the content creators involved.
“We’re encouraging both the talent and the cameras to sort of experiment,” Wandell said. “Getting cameras close to people, following the audio in a closer way that we normally wouldn’t do on the PGA Tour. … We’re here to learn. We’re here to see what works and what doesn’t.”
He later added: “From the invention of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to the rapid rise of YouTube golf, we are looking for new fans. We love this recent tournament in golf fandom just because it’s a much younger audience with that different viewing habit. … All of this is, it’s an evolution of content distribution and fan development. We’re excited to continue to evolve.”
