Why Creator Golf Tournaments Lose Their Magic on Traditional Broadcasts
The Creator Classic exposes a cultural clash between golf’s TV format and the digital storytelling that made these influencers famous.
The problem isn’t the golf. It’s the camera, or more specifically, who’s holding it.
When the Creator Classic rolled into TPC Sawgrass, it promised to be golf’s answer to the YouTube All-Star Game: big personalities, wild moments, and plenty of content to fill TikTok feeds for days.
On paper, it had the ingredients, a legendary course, social media’s most-followed golf creators, and a prime opportunity to showcase how far golf’s influencer scene has come.
Instead, it felt flat. Stripped of their signature video editing, personality-driven commentary, and fast-paced storytelling, the creators were placed inside a traditional golf broadcast shell, complete with the hushed tones, steady camera pans, and Sunday-best politeness we associate with PGA Tour coverage.
The result? A lukewarm watch that neither satisfied traditional golf fans nor excited the digital-native audience these creators usually dominate. And it raises a question: what happens when the entertainment value of a digital-first creator gets smothered by a legacy format designed for an entirely different type of star?
Let’s start with why we watch professional golf broadcasts in the first place, elite performance is the main attraction. Fans tune in because the pros do things most of us can’t even imagine attempting. That tension, between impossibility and execution is the heart of sport as entertainment.
For creators, it’s the opposite. Fans watch them because they’re relatable. They pull off great shots (many of them) but more importantly, they entertain us while doing it. They talk trash, tell stories, and turn their rounds into episodes rather than events. Their real skill isn’t pure shot-making, it’s the on-camera performance.
Yet, when these same creators step into a world designed for traditional golf broadcasts, their advantage disappears. No editing. No reaction cams. No quirky voiceovers. Just a slow, sanitised production where decent amateur golfers get around the track.
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Golf has always struggled with TV translation, especially with the casuals. Unlike basketball or football, which come pre-packaged with speed, noise, and highlight moments, golf asks viewers to invest hours of slow build-up for brief moments of brilliance.
The classic broadcast approach, calm tones, long silences, and reverent commentary, work when the stakes are a Major Win with the world's best going head-to-head building legacies in the sport.
But this format doesn’t translate so well to creator golf, in my opinion. There’s no major on the line or a step toward season goals, and because these creators aren’t elite (they are very good), there’s less awe factor. So what’s left is a diluted version of both worlds.
The moment you lock creators into a format where they can’t do cutaways, vlogs, or jokes with the camera, you lose what made them influential in the first place. Take Good Good or Bob Does Sports. Their fans aren’t tuning in just to see if they break par. They’re there for the camaraderie, the antics, the group dynamics.
It’s about building a world, inside jokes, rivalries, and the evolution of their skills over time. Strip that away, and you’re left with…golf shots. And frankly, there are better places to watch golf shots.
If events like the Creator Classic want to thrive, they can’t just shove creators into the same template built for Rory McIlroy or Brooks Koepka. They need to rethink the production from the ground up. Hand the cameras back to the creators. Give them portable rigs, live commentary booths, mic’d-up trash talk. Let them produce vignettes, social clips, and mid-round confessionals. The broadcast needs to meet the creators halfway and allow them to do what they do if they want this format to succeed.
The match format also needs rethinking. Stroke play is great when every shot matters but in creator golf, people are less interested if someone doubles the 13th. Viewers want chaos, side bets, and moments that generate clips. Teams, challenges, and forfeits. Lean into the viral nature of the creators themselves.
Golf is undergoing a cultural shift. The sport is younger, cooler, and more accessible than it’s been in decades. Creator-led golf is part of that wave but only if it plays by the rules of digital culture, not broadcast tradition.
Putting creators into a PGA broadcast setting, for me, missed the point. It’s like taking a TikTok comedian known for 15-second clips and dropping them on stage at Madison Square Garden, expecting them to deliver a polished hour-long set to a crowd of seasoned stand-up fans. It’s going to be a tough night.
I think the Creator Classic has a place in golf entertainment and I think the creators add a lot of value to the wider culture of the sport, but when it comes to blending both the creator world with the traditional, the traditional world needs to involves the creators more on the content distribution strategy.
Thanks for reading, David Skilling.
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