If you thought YouTube golf was just buddies playing matches, talking trash and trying to break 70 on camera, Your Golf Tour has officially changed the conversation.
YGT — Your Golf Tour — took a bunch of names golf fans already knew from YouTube, put real money on the line, divided them into teams and basically asked one very important question:
What happens if we take YouTube golf seriously... but not too seriously?
After the first stop at Pursell Farms, the answer seems pretty clear: it works.
And with Stop 2 beginning its rollout, things are about to get even more interesting.
Your Golf Tour was created by Grant Horvat and the Bryan Bros and features four captain-led teams competing throughout a multi-event season.
The captains are:
Each captain drafted a core roster, while wildcards are introduced during the regular-season events. There is real prize money involved, changing formats, eliminations and eventually a championship at Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
In other words, this isn't just another four-man scramble uploaded to YouTube.
There are teams. There are standings. There are strategy decisions. There is a season-long storyline.
And most importantly, there are bragging rights.
The first YGT event took place at FarmLinks at Pursell Farms in Alabama, a location that already feels right at home in the creator-golf world.
YGT didn't make the format simple, either.
The front nine featured team scramble golf. At the turn, captains had to make a decision: bench one player and bring their wildcard into the lineup.
Then everything changed.
The back nine moved to alternate shot, putting a lot more pressure on partnerships and making every bad swing suddenly somebody else's problem too.
That's golf friendship at its finest.
After 18 holes, only the top two teams advanced to the finale, where the competition shifted again into individual head-to-head matches.
Team Brad came out on top, earning $250,000. Team Wesley finished second with $175,000, Team Grant took third and Team George finished fourth.
But the best part wasn't necessarily who won.
It was how different the event felt.
Traditional professional golf is incredible to watch, but it can also be very polished.
Very quiet.
Very serious.
YouTube golf grew because it went the opposite direction. You hear the conversations. You see the bad shots. You get the jokes, frustration, strategy and occasional complete meltdown.
YGT is starting to combine those worlds.
There are legitimate golfers playing for legitimate money, but the personalities haven't disappeared behind a television broadcast.
You still feel like you're walking around with the group.
That's probably the biggest reason YGT has our attention.
Originally, YGT announced that its second stop would be played at the legendary Teeth of the Dog at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.
That plan changed.
Because of the logistical challenge of moving roughly 20 players and a large production crew into a golf facility with enough access to film the event, YGT shifted Stop 2 to Rams Hill Golf Club in Borrego Springs, California.
And this might accidentally make Stop 2 even more interesting.
Rams Hill is a completely different test from Pursell Farms.
It's a Tom Fazio-designed course sitting in the Southern California desert, surrounded by dramatic terrain with plenty of elevation changes and opportunities for aggressive golf.
There's also one tiny detail:
YGT filmed there in August.
In the desert.
So yes, it was hot.
Really hot.
That adds another element to the second event. Players aren't just dealing with changing formats and wildcard decisions. They're dealing with heat, desert conditions and a golf course that can reward aggressive play while punishing a big miss.
That sounds like pretty good YouTube.
The second event is again being spread across three channels, which has become one of the more interesting parts of the YGT model.
That format turns each tournament into more of a mini-series than a single golf video.
And after Stop 1, we're definitely watching.
If you've watched YGT or followed the scores online, you've probably seen another name show up:
Golf GameBook.
Golf GameBook has become heavily involved with some of the biggest names in creator golf, including Grant Horvat and the Bryan Bros, and YGT viewers have been directed to Golf GameBook to follow along with scoring.
From our perspective at Buddies on the Green, that's actually pretty cool to see.
Yes, Golf GameBook is a competitor.
But the bigger takeaway is that one of the hottest new properties in golf is emphasizing something we've believed for a long time:
Golf is more fun when everyone can follow the competition live.
Golf GameBook offers live scoring, live leaderboards, tournaments, team competitions, social interaction and a variety of game formats.
Sound familiar?
Those are also major pieces of what we've built with Buddies on the Green.
With BOTG, golfers can create tournaments, organize teams, score rounds live and let other players or spectators follow the competition hole-by-hole.
You can run scrambles, Best Ball, Shambles, Chapman events, individual tournaments and full Ryder Cup-style competitions.
But we've taken things a little further in areas that matter to the groups we built BOTG for.
Buddies on the Green isn't just tournament software.
The same group that plays your tournament can stay connected before the event, during the round and after it's over.
You can organize events, build leagues, invite buddies, share rounds, chat, follow live scoring and come back the next weekend and start another competition without rebuilding your golf group somewhere else.
We've also put a huge emphasis on the games regular golfers actually play.
Nassau. Wolf. Skins. Banker.
Instead of pulling out a calculator on the 18th green and hearing someone say, "Wait... didn't that skin carry over from 14?", BOTG tracks the action while you play.
That's probably not something YGT needs to worry about with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.
Your Saturday foursome might.
There's another difference that matters for tournaments and outings.
Golf GameBook's tournament system connects its web-based Tournament Manager with the Golf GameBook mobile app for player scoring.
BOTG can make the experience even simpler for event participants.
For supported tournament events, golfers can receive an invite, open the scoring experience in their browser and start keeping score without creating an account or downloading another app.
For a group of buddies, that's convenient.
For a 100-player charity tournament where half the field doesn't want another app on their phone, it's a much bigger deal.
BOTG also brings live scoring together with:
Golf GameBook is an established platform with millions of golfers using it around the world. We're not pretending otherwise.
But bigger doesn't automatically mean built exactly for your golf group.
That's where we think BOTG is different.
There's a bigger story here than Grant Horvat, the Bryan Bros or who takes home the YGT money.
Golf competition is becoming interactive.
People don't just want to see the final score anymore.
They want to know who is leading right now.
They want to follow their friends from another hole.
They want to watch a match flip from 2 DOWN to All Square.
They want to talk trash.
They want formats that change the strategy.
They want their weekend golf to feel like an event.
YGT is showing what that looks like with cameras, professional golfers, huge YouTube audiences and serious prize money.
But here's the fun part:
You don't need any of that to make your own golf more competitive.
You probably don't have $250,000 waiting for the winner of your Saturday round.
If you do, please invite us.
But you can steal almost everything else.
Create teams.
Draft players.
Play nine holes as a scramble.
Switch to alternate shot.
Finish with singles matches.
Put the scores on a live leaderboard and let the rest of your buddies follow along.
Maybe throw a few side games into the mix while you're at it.
That's what we love about what YGT is doing.
It's professional-level competition wrapped around the part of golf that has always mattered most:
playing with your buddies and having something worth talking about when the round is over.
Stop 1 delivered.
Now let's see what happens in the desert.
Chad Comstock is a passionate golfer and contributor to Buddies on the Green, sharing insights and experiences to help fellow golfers improve their game.
The Open returns to Royal Birkdale this week. A fun field guide to the dunes, the legends, and what golf's oldest major can teach your weekend foursome.
A whole generation found golf through YouTube, not Sunday coverage. Here's how creators rebuilt the game around personality, stakes, and having fun.
Run a charity golf tournament players love — live mobile scoring with no app download, branded for your cause, sponsor visibility, and simple per-event pricing. Here's how.
If you thought YouTube golf was just buddies playing matches, talking trash and trying to break 70 on camera, Your Golf Tour has officially changed the conversation.
YGT — Your Golf Tour — took a bunch of names golf fans already knew from YouTube, put real money on the line, divided them into teams and basically asked one very important question:
What happens if we take YouTube golf seriously... but not too seriously?
After the first stop at Pursell Farms, the answer seems pretty clear: it works.
And with Stop 2 beginning its rollout, things are about to get even more interesting.
Your Golf Tour was created by Grant Horvat and the Bryan Bros and features four captain-led teams competing throughout a multi-event season.
The captains are:
Each captain drafted a core roster, while wildcards are introduced during the regular-season events. There is real prize money involved, changing formats, eliminations and eventually a championship at Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas.
In other words, this isn't just another four-man scramble uploaded to YouTube.
There are teams. There are standings. There are strategy decisions. There is a season-long storyline.
And most importantly, there are bragging rights.
The first YGT event took place at FarmLinks at Pursell Farms in Alabama, a location that already feels right at home in the creator-golf world.
YGT didn't make the format simple, either.
The front nine featured team scramble golf. At the turn, captains had to make a decision: bench one player and bring their wildcard into the lineup.
Then everything changed.
The back nine moved to alternate shot, putting a lot more pressure on partnerships and making every bad swing suddenly somebody else's problem too.
That's golf friendship at its finest.
After 18 holes, only the top two teams advanced to the finale, where the competition shifted again into individual head-to-head matches.
Team Brad came out on top, earning $250,000. Team Wesley finished second with $175,000, Team Grant took third and Team George finished fourth.
But the best part wasn't necessarily who won.
It was how different the event felt.
Traditional professional golf is incredible to watch, but it can also be very polished.
Very quiet.
Very serious.
YouTube golf grew because it went the opposite direction. You hear the conversations. You see the bad shots. You get the jokes, frustration, strategy and occasional complete meltdown.
YGT is starting to combine those worlds.
There are legitimate golfers playing for legitimate money, but the personalities haven't disappeared behind a television broadcast.
You still feel like you're walking around with the group.
That's probably the biggest reason YGT has our attention.
Originally, YGT announced that its second stop would be played at the legendary Teeth of the Dog at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic.
That plan changed.
Because of the logistical challenge of moving roughly 20 players and a large production crew into a golf facility with enough access to film the event, YGT shifted Stop 2 to Rams Hill Golf Club in Borrego Springs, California.
And this might accidentally make Stop 2 even more interesting.
Rams Hill is a completely different test from Pursell Farms.
It's a Tom Fazio-designed course sitting in the Southern California desert, surrounded by dramatic terrain with plenty of elevation changes and opportunities for aggressive golf.
There's also one tiny detail:
YGT filmed there in August.
In the desert.
So yes, it was hot.
Really hot.
That adds another element to the second event. Players aren't just dealing with changing formats and wildcard decisions. They're dealing with heat, desert conditions and a golf course that can reward aggressive play while punishing a big miss.
That sounds like pretty good YouTube.
The second event is again being spread across three channels, which has become one of the more interesting parts of the YGT model.
That format turns each tournament into more of a mini-series than a single golf video.
And after Stop 1, we're definitely watching.
If you've watched YGT or followed the scores online, you've probably seen another name show up:
Golf GameBook.
Golf GameBook has become heavily involved with some of the biggest names in creator golf, including Grant Horvat and the Bryan Bros, and YGT viewers have been directed to Golf GameBook to follow along with scoring.
From our perspective at Buddies on the Green, that's actually pretty cool to see.
Yes, Golf GameBook is a competitor.
But the bigger takeaway is that one of the hottest new properties in golf is emphasizing something we've believed for a long time:
Golf is more fun when everyone can follow the competition live.
Golf GameBook offers live scoring, live leaderboards, tournaments, team competitions, social interaction and a variety of game formats.
Sound familiar?
Those are also major pieces of what we've built with Buddies on the Green.
With BOTG, golfers can create tournaments, organize teams, score rounds live and let other players or spectators follow the competition hole-by-hole.
You can run scrambles, Best Ball, Shambles, Chapman events, individual tournaments and full Ryder Cup-style competitions.
But we've taken things a little further in areas that matter to the groups we built BOTG for.
Buddies on the Green isn't just tournament software.
The same group that plays your tournament can stay connected before the event, during the round and after it's over.
You can organize events, build leagues, invite buddies, share rounds, chat, follow live scoring and come back the next weekend and start another competition without rebuilding your golf group somewhere else.
We've also put a huge emphasis on the games regular golfers actually play.
Nassau. Wolf. Skins. Banker.
Instead of pulling out a calculator on the 18th green and hearing someone say, "Wait... didn't that skin carry over from 14?", BOTG tracks the action while you play.
That's probably not something YGT needs to worry about with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.
Your Saturday foursome might.
There's another difference that matters for tournaments and outings.
Golf GameBook's tournament system connects its web-based Tournament Manager with the Golf GameBook mobile app for player scoring.
BOTG can make the experience even simpler for event participants.
For supported tournament events, golfers can receive an invite, open the scoring experience in their browser and start keeping score without creating an account or downloading another app.
For a group of buddies, that's convenient.
For a 100-player charity tournament where half the field doesn't want another app on their phone, it's a much bigger deal.
BOTG also brings live scoring together with:
Golf GameBook is an established platform with millions of golfers using it around the world. We're not pretending otherwise.
But bigger doesn't automatically mean built exactly for your golf group.
That's where we think BOTG is different.
There's a bigger story here than Grant Horvat, the Bryan Bros or who takes home the YGT money.
Golf competition is becoming interactive.
People don't just want to see the final score anymore.
They want to know who is leading right now.
They want to follow their friends from another hole.
They want to watch a match flip from 2 DOWN to All Square.
They want to talk trash.
They want formats that change the strategy.
They want their weekend golf to feel like an event.
YGT is showing what that looks like with cameras, professional golfers, huge YouTube audiences and serious prize money.
But here's the fun part:
You don't need any of that to make your own golf more competitive.
You probably don't have $250,000 waiting for the winner of your Saturday round.
If you do, please invite us.
But you can steal almost everything else.
Create teams.
Draft players.
Play nine holes as a scramble.
Switch to alternate shot.
Finish with singles matches.
Put the scores on a live leaderboard and let the rest of your buddies follow along.
Maybe throw a few side games into the mix while you're at it.
That's what we love about what YGT is doing.
It's professional-level competition wrapped around the part of golf that has always mattered most:
playing with your buddies and having something worth talking about when the round is over.
Stop 1 delivered.
Now let's see what happens in the desert.
Chad Comstock is a passionate golfer and contributor to Buddies on the Green, sharing insights and experiences to help fellow golfers improve their game.
The Open returns to Royal Birkdale this week. A fun field guide to the dunes, the legends, and what golf's oldest major can teach your weekend foursome.
A whole generation found golf through YouTube, not Sunday coverage. Here's how creators rebuilt the game around personality, stakes, and having fun.
Run a charity golf tournament players love — live mobile scoring with no app download, branded for your cause, sponsor visibility, and simple per-event pricing. Here's how.