The way some of us consume golf content is changing and we can learn a lot from it for free, writes tour caddy Sean Russell
Aside from the final round of The Masters and the odd LIV Golf event, I rarely watch tournament golf on TV these days. I do watch a fair bit of golf on YouTube though, mainly because it’s way more entertaining – and educational – than the 72-hole tournament drudge served up on tour each week.
Bryson DeChambeau is king of the golf YouTube hill by a mile. For me, it’s not the pure entertainment of things like his Break 50 series, or him trying to break the course record on some random course, it’s listening to what he says before every shot that’s most interesting.
Even though it’s not much more complicated than him saying what shot he’s seeing, why it’s that club, and what he’s trying to do, there’s no negative words in there. He never says “hopefully” or “this might just.” It’s all positive and calculated, and he effectively caddies for himself. It’s something all of us could, and should, do every time we play.
I also like Rick Shiels’ stuff, even though I really shouldn’t because watching a club pro chop their way round a championship course in a vain effort to break 75 shouldn’t be on anyone’s must-watch list. But again, it’s weirdly entertaining, and among it all there are some gems that we can all learn from.
The best example of this is his video with Scott Fawcett, the guy behind the DECADE system of course management – the precursor to all the stats-based programmes that are the bible of any tour player worth their salt these days. With Scott getting him to apply the principles of DECADE over nine holes at a pretty tricky course, chopper Rick became a proper golfer and played his best golf ever – even breaking par. This was because of some really simple things – including the fact he wasn’t short every hole, especially into the wind, as Scott made him be honest about how far he actually hit his irons and apply the rule of thumb that if it’s a 10mph wind against then you add around 10% to the yardage, and so on.
Then there was Rick’s putting. Leaving a putt short was, on some greens, very sensible, even if it was for eagle. Seeing a 3ft square around the hole for every long putt, rather than the hole itself, meant there were no three putts.
Scott also made Rick pick the correct target – the middle of the green – not an optimistic one like tight flags next to bunkers, then commit to it, verbalising what he was going to do before he addressed the ball. There was none of this “I knew I was going to do that” which we all hear each weekend.
So go on, give YouTube golf a try, because you can learn way more from watching the right content on there than you can from watching any tournament on TV – and best of all it’s free.
