In summer 2021, Matt Scharf and some of his guy friends were playing a round of golf at a leafy course near Austin, Texas, when they arrived at the 14th hole, a 290-yard uphill par 4. Clad in a busy Hawaiian-print polo and a trucker hat, Scharf thwacked a drive straight down the fairway to the green, eliciting immediate whoops of “Dude!” and “Bro!” from his companions. A few moments later, as if on time delay, his friends who were already on the green went berserk: Scharf had hit an improbable hole in one.

These were not merely buddies out for a casual afternoon, but emerging social media creators hard at work. Scharf and his 20-something pals filmed this exact scene from three handheld cameras for their YouTube channel, Good Good Golf, where this video, “The Greatest Golf Shot in YouTube History,” has since racked up more than 5 million views and still ranks as the channel’s second most popular clip ever. It helped launch Good Good Golf’s rise to digital stardom, and the channel now has nearly 2 million subscribers, a crowd drawn to the guys’ youthful enthusiasm and their ease with speaking directly to the camera, inviting viewers onto the course with them.

Their content has caught the attention of traditional broadcasters like NBC’s Golf Channel, which struck up a partnership in 2023 with Good Good to stage tournaments they can cross-promote and broadcast on both their platforms.

“We do think there’s a place for us to learn from YouTube content creators,” said Tom Knapp, NBC’s executive vice president of golf. Knapp thinks they can help him solve a problem that has nagged at him for 25 years: a need to lure in younger viewers. He wants to blend the core Golf Channel audience of Wall Street executives and Washington power brokers with YouTube’s “golf bros” (his words). After all, they all share the same underlying passion: golf. “There’s no reason why we can’t serve both masters,” he said.