There’s a moment where the golf influencers break contain.
It happens at the beginning of the second episode of the Internet Invitational, a Barstool/Bob Does Sports million-dollar crossover collision of golf influencers. The chief drama of the first episode — which, at three-hours and 47 minutes, is a half-hour longer than the Titanic — stems from Luke Kwon, the best golfer on his team, sleeping through his 9:30 a.m. tee time, effectively costing said team a full point. It’s not Kwon’s tardiness as much as his nonchalant reaction that seems to first perplex and ultimately incense his teammates, and that tension boils over when he walks into the clubhouse after the morning session to sardonic applause from former NHLer Ryan Whitney.
“Atta boy, Luke! Great job, Luke. We appreciate it,” Whitney calls to Kwon as he approaches the buffet line. “Get some lunch in you. Luke Kwon, too good for the Internet Invitational.”
There’s some squabbling about what the score would have been had Kwon showed up for the morning session — “It’d be 7-5, you dumb f—,” Whitney shouts, rather than the 8-4 hole they’ve dug — which leads to Kwon doubling down on his ambivalence.
“It still makes no difference,” he shrugs. And that’s when Whitney pops off.
“Who is this guy?!” he yells, standing up, apoplectic. “Is this guy serious? You think 7-5 and 8-4 are the same thing? It’s not over, d—puff. You didn’t show up to the tee time and then you showed up and didn’t care that you were late. You’re the worst draft pick possible. This guy’s a clown.”
If you haven’t watched any of the Invitational and just skimmed the above paragraph thinking, what on earth am I reading? Well, fair enough. It’s more than possible that none of this is for you. But the scene — a blasé golfer standing by the salad bar suddenly facing the music from a brash, 6-foot-4 NHL defenseman with vengeance in his eyes — is a perfect metaphor for the entire event, and for the waves of content creators crashing on the shores of golf’s establishment.
There’s plenty that’s contrived about the Internet Invitational, whose participants are professionals at making golf entertaining. But what works is that this moment is real. For a split-second it seems like we could get some sort of physical confrontation. There’s $1.7 million on the line, after all, and one guy doesn’t seem to really care. But Whitney ultimately decides to pull back instead, retaking his seat and muttering under his breath instead.
“I hate this guy, dude,” he says. “I hate this guy so much.”
Not something you hear a lot out on the PGA Tour.
Why the ‘Internet Invitational’ works
I’ve only previously dipped my toes into the ocean that is YouTube Golf, so I didn’t begin my week planning to spend seven hours of [clearly not-so-] precious time watching 48 golfers of wildly varying ability do battle in parts 1 and 2 of a [gulps, checks notes] six-part mega-series whose total runtime will rival that of the actual Ryder Cup. But if I’m instinctively repelled by the open-mouthed screaming thumbnails and manufactured drama of a YouTube golf match, I was drawn in by the opposite here; from the video’s opening we’re in the room with four dozen entertainers who, for once, have no control over the show in which they’re about to star.
The Internet Invitational’s greatest initial accomplishment is this assembly of some of the biggest names in spaces and competitions in which they’re forced to interact. The opening scene is a star-studded cocktail party that feels like the intro to a celebrity reality show. (I suppose that’s exactly what it is.) What keeps you from Xing out in the hours that follow — and what brings it beyond golf’s usual boundaries — is the presence of three massive media personalities from outside this world: Barstool’s Dave Portnoy and Big Cat, who serve as commentators, rules officials and provocateurs, and PFT, who’s among the higher handicaps competing but ends up in the middle of its most compelling storyline.
“How often does an event with this group of people get together?” Portnoy asks in the opening, referring to the assembled combination of one-offs and boy bands, who often collaborate but not like this. He gets a pleasing answer: This group of people? Never.
“I know maybe like, 25 percent of them,” PFT adds later, referring to the characters in the room. That seems like about the right figure to serve as proxy for the viewers, who may be fans of some but likely not all of the assembled personalities. There are only so many hours in the day, after all. (On the other hand, more than four million people have watched the first episode in its first four days. There are, in fact, a lot of hours in the day.)
Barstool’s event co-hosts are the crew from Bob Does Sports, headed by Robby Berger, who seems at first like an ordinary fella until you spend some more time watching and realize he’s in the running for world’s most likable guy. Berger (known, really, as Bob) captains one team while Sam “Riggs” Bozoian, the frontman of Barstool’s golf division, takes the other side. They’re “Team Orange” and “Team Pink,” a scheme that nods to the colors of event sponsor Dunkin’ Donuts and a reminder of what keeps this entire ecosystem running. (Money, that is. Not coffee. Though there’s plenty of each.)
The funniest moments of the event come from Portnoy and Big Cat serving as intermediaries; golf fans may be familiar with the contestants but Portnoy and Big Cat mostly aren’t. It’s particularly entertaining watching scenes on the driving range and the first tee, as they’re introduced to the assembled cast, an outrageous set of characters and caricatures with a wide variety of golf backgrounds and schticks.
“I gotta go check out ‘the Duke,’” Portnoy says at one point, referring to [dives down Google rabbithole] a larger-than-life character with a mind-blowing move at the golf ball that Bob encountered during a random muni round and adopted as a recurring member of his crew. Among his many unforgettable lines is the following:
“I want to gently rock them to sleep,” he says of his opponents. “Like after you shoot a deer in the neck and you cuddle it.”
“Duke, you better watch yourself, you’re gonna end up with a Barstool contract before this day’s over,” Portnoy says with a shake of the head, ever on the lookout for needle-moving personalities. He adds an admission to the camera, though:
“I wanna hire him — but at the same time he doesn’t know when conversations are over, at all,” he says.
There’s the caustic, cocky DOD King (DOD referring to driver off the deck, his specialty). DOD King never seems to break character: His partner tells him “don’t call me sweetheart” before they even leave the first tee, he declares he wants his payout “in a duffel bag in quarters” after winning a hole, and he decides to putt with driver between his legs in an effort to confuse his opponents — and then holes it.
“That’s why he’s the king,” Big Cat yells amidst confusion.
Mostly there’s pleasant banter, good-natured competition, golf that ranges from stellar to mediocre, striking visuals from Big Cedar Lodge, impressive production quality and nonstop action across a dozen concurrent matches. Plenty of personalities shine in limited minutes (Nadeshot and Daltoosh, to name two) and the entire affair is convivial, if intense.
But the show-stealer — and, it turns out, the headline-stealer — comes from an unlikely source: Luke Kwon, a professional golfer better known for his content career and now better known for his starring role.
Kwon’s villain arc begins at the cocktail party, where he gets paired with PFT and responds by telling PFT he doesn’t need to even show up.
“I got you,” he says. “You can shank it over and over again, I don’t give a s—. You can just go do something else and just not golf.”
It’s with particularly dark irony, then, that Kwon is the one who misses his tee time, leaving 22-handicap PFT to take on two better golfers playing a scramble against him.
Kwon missing a 9:30 a.m. tee time is jarring in itself. But his behavior once he emerges is what does him in. He’s nonchalant when he arrives late to the first hole, inspiring Portnoy to penalize him four holes (in a nine-hole match) instead of just one. And when he does reach his perplexed partner, Kwon responds by talking trash to the guy he’s just betrayed. Everybody involved is taken aback by the heel turn, both in real time and afterwards.
“I didn’t think that arguing with him at the moment while we were trying to compete was productive, but he was kind of being a d— to me,” PFT said on his podcast this week. “He was like, ‘you’re not going to make this putt,’ as my teammate, which is wild to say.”
“He just kept saying, ‘we’re wasting our time here,’” a producer added. “It was awkward how much of a d— he was being after he was [late].”
“It’s crazy,” says Portnoy — no stranger to villains — in real time, watching the scene play out. “Kwon’s the cockiest guy ever. It’s insane.”
As word spreads across the course, as Kwon continues to brush aside repeated chances to express remorse, reactions pour in.
“Well, I wish I woke up,” is the closest he gets.
“Y’know how they say if you just wake up and get out of bed you’ll win this match? He didn’t wake up,” one teammate says.
“He’s done. He’s dead to me,” says another.
Another, the philosopher Joey Cold Cuts, expands on that idea.
“What the f— are we doing here, man? People were chomping at the bit, DMing us that they want to f— come play in this s—. I don’t care if he hears this — you’ve gotta wake up and show up. If you play bad and f— it up, that’s fine. But there’s people who are [desperate] to win this. What the f— are we doing?”
Ultimately, Kwon’s conduct stands out because he crosses the only forbidden threshold of YouTube Golf. Poor golf can be forgiven, and so can poor conduct. But at the Internet Invitational and in the content game more generally, the caring is the entire point. Violating that principle turns you into a villain.
Or, in this case, something even worse: The main character.
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