From the minute the announcement about ‘The Q at Myrtle Beach’ was made, it was met with a mixture of intrigue, excitement, and skepticism. After a ton of hype, the video of the event, pitting 16 golfers against each other for a single spot in the upcoming Myrtle Beach Classic was released Tuesday afternoon, and was a mixed bag at best in its execution and presentation.

The video also revealed a couple of other truths about these golfers, what goes into making quality content on YouTube, and called into question if an event like this needs to be done again in the future.

***SPOILERS AHEAD PLEASE STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS ON HOW THE EVENT ENDED***

Let’s start with the presentation of the event, which to be frank, was pretty darn poor considering they had eight of the best YouTube golfers in the event. Yes, their golf games may vary, but all eight of those guys have teams that follow them to film, edit, put graphics in, mix sound, etc. Basically, they have a full production on each video, and when it goes to YouTube it looks polished and professional, and that’s half the appeal of these YouTube golf videos. It’s a quality video, with lots of golf shots, and a chance for these guys to show of their personalities.

‘The Q at Myrtle Beach,’ well, we got a lot of golf shots. And that wasn’t always a good thing. The way the action was shown was strange and then turned into repetitive before we had seen even half of the front nine. We saw the first group go off, hit all their shots on Hole 1. Then repeat for the next group. And the groups after that, with maybe some jumping ahead back to the first group to see their tee shots on the next hole. In terms of the amount of golf you were shown over the two-and-a-half hours, you can’t really complain too much there. But some of the stuff they showed and didn’t show made no sense, and we’ll touch on that later.

But there is about where the positives of the presentation ended. I mentioned earlier that the eight YouTubers in the field have people who follow them around and record everything, but you would not know that from the way this video turned out, because clearly they did not utilize these guys. On more than one occasion they players being shown were out of focus for long stretches, or we couldn’t see where shots ended up despite multiple cameras, or they had these really weird shots where they focused on a single area of the green, and then the ball would suddenly come bounding in, so we saw nothing of the shot but where it ended up. After a couple times of seeing the close up of an area, it became a spoiler that a good shot was coming.

And then there was the sound, or lack of we should say. On more than one occasion I was messing with the volume knob on my computer making sure the sound was on, or was checking to make sure I hadn’t accidentally muted the video. There was minimal banter between the players, almost no play-by-play or analysis other than a random voice at the end of some of holes going, “Player X makes birdie, Players Y and Z make pars, and Golfer A stumbles with a double.” As if we didn’t just see that. The thing that makes YouTube golfers sometimes more endearing than their PGA counterparts, the banter and personalities, we got almost none of it. I get this was a chance to get into a PGA Tour event so it was going to be more serious than most videos, but all we got was 16 guys going, “Shot.” “Nice.” “Good lag.” Or whatever other minimum golf talk there is during a tournament. Until the end, and that was only in the group that had George Bryan, Matt Atkins, and Grant Horvat, because of the familiarity with each other, there was almost no talking or any sort of fun being had by anyone. And part of that likely comes from the poor play a lot of these guys had to suffer through, either by themselves, or someone in their pairing.

We didn’t get anything into what the golfers were thinking either. Watch a YouTube video and before every shot we get something like, “It’s 180, a little downhill, a little wind off the left, thinking it’s a nice smooth 7-iron that I want to try and hold against the breeze.” Absolutely zero insight into what these guys were thinking or doing on any of these shots, which seems impossible given there were only 16 of them, and most seemed like they were mic’d up, or at minimum in range of microphones that could pick up what they were saying.

The only on-course stuff we got was now and again Chantel McCabe making a random appearance to interview some of the YouTubers, most of which was awkward an uncalled for. In one instance, Fat Perez had just made a bogey to fall to something like +8 at the turn, and was clearly annoyed or upset at how he was playing, and McCabe walks up and says something to the effect of, “You know I’ve seen the beer cart go by a few times and it hasn’t stopped yet?!” Which was awkward and just not funny because as we mentioned, Perez was clearly upset at how the round was going, and because anyone with any idea of how professional golf works knows you can’t have alcohol during the round. Perez tried his best to play it off, but in his head he must have been thinking, “Uhhhh, I can’t drink during this?” This brief interaction was also the only time we saw Perez’s caddie, Bob of Bob Does Sports, which was a complete missed opportunity to show and hear from one of the more outgoing YouTube golfers.

Throw in that there was no music and almost no sound effects until the last green of the last group, and there was very little to engage the viewers and let them know stuff was heating up, or something exciting was about to happen.

Then there were the graphics. They looked fine, but were little if any help. Here’s what each graphic looked like when a player was hitting their shot:

You’ll notice right away that we get the hole, their score, and what shot it is. That’s it. No distances, no indicator or what club they were using, and in addition to that lack of info, they also failed to have an on-screen leaderboard at any point to show where that player was in the field as they lined up their putt or went for a green in two.

In addition to all that, what they chose to show as far as shots as the round progressed was very strange. Once again, spoilers abound from here on out, so here’s your last warning.

Let’s start with Micah Morris. He did not have a good day to put it mildly, at one point rattling off three-straight double bogeys to fall to +6. The next shot we saw from him was a tee shot on a Par 3 that found the water, but we didn’t see it go in the water because despite cameras everywhere, they stayed on the shot from behind the tee. That was the last shot we saw of Micah until the 14th hole when he found a little bit of magic, and hit a great iron shot to about 12 feet, then made the ensuing putt for eagle. Which got him back to +10 for the round on his way to a +14 total of 86.

I get they don’t want to keep showing a guy struggle on every hole, and the real drama of the event was who would win, but as more and more of the YouTube guys fell out of contention, we saw less and less of them. I could not tell you a single shot Grant Horvat hit on the back nine. The same for Luke Kwan. Even more confounding was a shot they showed by Cole Lantz, one half of BustaJack Golf. Lantz was around +7 on the 12th hole, so well out of contention at this point, and probably hadn’t been shown in around four holes, when suddenly we see him in the pine straw over the back of the green.

Typically on TV when they suddenly show a guy who is out of it, it’s because they hit a great shot and have a moment to remember despite the struggles. Lantz promptly bladed his pitch out of the woods, blasting it over the green back into the fairway, and then hit a pitch shot that came up 20 feet short of the flag. I legit have no idea why they decided to show those shots after not showing any other shots of his for a handful of holes. It felt like they had to show SOMETHING of his, and this was what the decided, to kick him while he was down.

It was frankly a pretty bad broadcast and video when you remember that there were eight full-time YouTubers in this field, any one of which could have had their crew put together a better video, and when you remember that the people who put this event on had more than a month to get it ready for sharing. It just felt like a very corporate video, that neutered all the things that makes YouTube golf fun and different from pro golf.

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Now onto the golf.

When this idea was first revealed, the golf chat I’m met it with a mixed bag of reactions to, “Well that’s kind of fun,” to, “Well this is going to end in disaster.” And both of those statements came true.

In case you weren’t aware, or just never could piece it together, with the exception of George Bryan, who was a 3x All-American in college and was a stroke away from being the SEC individual champion, none of these YouTube guys are anywhere close to being a professional golfer. Sorry if that bursts your bubble of what you thought of some of these guys, but it’s the truth.

To be clear, they’re still very good golfers…when they get to play on a resort course from 6,500 yards where you can drive the ball almost anywhere and still find it to hit again. And maybe a lot of them have delusions of grandeur because they might have beat PGA Tour winner Wesley Bryan in a match where he’s clearly out there just for fun, and they’re grinding away from 6,500 yards hoping to shoot even par, or maybe a couple under at best.

Here were the scores of all the YouTubers in the field:

Micah Morris 86
Cole Lantz (bustajack) 83
Fat Perez 81
Grant Horvat 79
Luke Kwan 78
Dan Rappaport 76
Peter Finch 73
George Bryan 69

Again, with the exception of George Bryan, who unfortunately lost in a playoff to Matt Atkins, and I guess Peter Finch who just played solid all day but wasn’t really a threat, six of the eight YouTubers were nowhere near winning this thing and frankly, short of lightning striking all eight of the actual pros who played in this, weren’t going to win it no matter how well they played.

Micah Morris, who last year in his video talked about how badly he wanted to be a pro golfer, and was putting in the work and learning from his mistakes and whatever other motivational cat poster saying he likes to use, has three rounds under his belt in PGA-sanctioned events in the last year. He has shot 82-75-86 for a total of +29, and a missed cut at a PGA Tour Canada event.

Aside from Bryan, who has a couple shots he will want back when he rewatches this video, it’s not like any of these guys were a bounce or two away, or a swing tweak away from suddenly being on the PGA Tour. 86, 83, 81, 79, 78, and event Rappaport’s 76, which is a heck of a round most days, is straight up bad in any sort of PGA Tour setting.

In their slight defense, this course was brutally tough, the TPC of Myrtle Beach plays as a 74.1/144 from the tips, at around 6,950 yards. The driving areas were tight, the greens had massive slopes in them, and a number of holes hugged the water either off the tee or right next to the green. A 10-handicap at this place would have needed a miracle to break 90.

But these again are alleged scratch golfers, and one broke par, while one other finished within five shots of the winning score. Hell, even Rappaport’s 76, which is an incredible round for an amateur golfer on this layout and considering the circumstances, was still seven shots off the pace. It’s not like he was one or two lip-outs away from wondering what might have been.

To give you an idea of just how overmatched these guys were, the WORST score among the eight pros, who again are guys with no status on the PGA Tour, and minimal status on the Korn Ferry Tour, as well as a 15-year old amateur, was a round of 77 by Jamie Wilson. The worst pro/high caliber am still beat over half of the YouTubers, and on a day where he probably could not have played much worse, and likely made a couple bogeys because he knew he had to try and go for broke on some holes. The YouTube guys other than Bryan and Finch, were just trying to get off the course so they can upload a video.

Then there was just the weird dichotomy of the event itself. The eight pros/high level ams, and George Bryan, must have thought this is a hell of an opportunity. Rather than having to beat out 70+ guys in a Monday qualifier, I just have to beat 16, seven of which have no real shot at winning this thing? Sign me the hell up.

And you could see that in how things played out on the course. When the YouTubers hit a bad shot, or missed a putt, they were upset, but it was more resigned to the fact that this wasn’t going to be their day, it’s a real bummer, but oh well because they get to make a YouTube video about it where they make the “VCR SUCKED ME OFF?!” face in the thumbnail.

Contrast that with watching the pros miss a putt, or miss a fairway, and it was AGONY, because this is their livelihood. If they don’t win this event, they don’t have a YouTube video sponsored by some shirt company or meal delivery service. They’re back to trying to get into KFT events, or playing the mini tours hoping to scratch up enough money to keep trying to be a pro golfer.

Morgan Deneen is the one who stands out most in my mind. Deneen really hit the ball well for most of the day, and had a good number of decent birdie looks throughout the round. But he could not buy a putt, and seemed to get more and more frustrated and upset as the round went on before his swing finally abandoned him late. I almost wonder if these pros having to get paired with these YouTubers bothered them, because it couldn’t have helped as you’re trying to get to red numbers, and there’s Micah Morris shooting +10 on the front nine.

In the end, it went the way anybody who follows YouTube golf would have expected, aside from George Bryan, the only thing the YouTubers proved was just how far they are from being professional golfers.

I do think this event was a good idea, and a fun break in how things are done at the professional level. But frankly, they didn’t need eight YouTubers in this event, other than for the fact that they would and will draw in clicks on the video from their fanbases. They probably don’t need to do something like this again, but if they do, maybe have a YouTuber pre-qualifier, and the Top-2 advance into the real qualifier.

If they do this event again, at minimum they should hire the YouTuber crews to put together a more interesting golf video.