I grew up in golf. My grandfather was a charter member at Champions Golf Club when two Masters Champions started the club and passed the hat to celebrities and oil & gas executives to help fund the club. It was a golfers club with two championship courses and a storied history: a US Open, a Ryder Cup, multiple TOUR Championships, a US Women’s Open, and dozens of top amateur events. I still have Masters champion Jackie Burke’s 1958 set of Macgregor Tourneys that he played on tour with—including at Augusta. I was born into golf.
When I moved to Austin, I joined Austin Country Club at age 27, bypassing the waitlist due to Harvey Penick’s son asking the membership committee to approve me immediately. My first startup was SiriusXM’s PGA TOUR Radio, which is still going strong today. I’ve experienced playing golf at the most exclusive clubs in the world (and loved every minute of it).
But somewhere along the way, something changed. The game that Harvey Penick described with “If you golf, you are my friend” became increasingly exclusive, increasingly elite, and increasingly disconnected from what makes golf truly special.
The Great Disconnect
Golf began as a gentleman’s game—a pastime, not a profession. It was about enjoying the outdoors, challenging yourself, and connecting with others. Professional golfers were once looked down upon; the idea that you would make golf your job seemed to miss the point entirely.
Today, professional golf has become a world of its own—a bubble where players compete for $20 million purses while complaining about how hard life is on tour. Country club golf has become the domain of the top 1% of the 1%. The traditional golf establishment has built walls around the game, creating an insider/outsider dynamic that serves neither the sport nor its future.
Meanwhile, something remarkable is happening outside those walls.
YouTube golf has exploded. The top 500 golf creators on YouTube have over 1 billion followers. YouTube golf trumps professional golf in both number of followers and total engagement by a factor of 20x. It is most likely that more people under 35 know and love Bryson DeChambeau for his YouTube channel than his professional career.
Why?
The Authenticity Revolution
I love the private clubs that have given me the pleasure to play elite golf on pristine courses. But lately, I find myself longing to play at local municipal courses, to be amongst fellow lovers of the game from all walks of life.
I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Erik Anders Lang of Random Golf Club and attending his events where 100+ people play 9 holes AT THE SAME TIME. Recently, I played at a local muni and realized I was having fun meeting people completely different from me in country of origin, race, and age—but we all had a great time due to our mutual love for the game.
The vitriol shown at the professional level—leagues fighting each other, the inside-the-ropes culture, throwing clubs, refusing interviews citing mental health, complaining about how hard it is on tour—makes it clear why many are leaving traditional golf media to watch YouTube creators having fun. They may not be the best golfers ever, but we identify with them.
Why Gen Z Embraces a Different Golf
Gen Z and Millennials aren’t rejecting golf—they’re rejecting the stuffy, exclusionary version of it. They’re embracing a golf lifestyle that’s:
- Authentic: They value real, unfiltered personalities over polished, corporate images. They want to see the frustration, the joy, the mistakes—all the emotions that make golf human.
- Community-Driven: They seek belonging, not exclusion. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves, where shared passion matters more than handicap or status.
- Experience-Focused: They care less about pristine conditions and more about memorable moments. A drone challenge or a wild trick shot creates stories worth sharing.
- Diverse and Inclusive: They reject the homogeneous culture of traditional golf. They want to see people who look like them, from all backgrounds and skill levels.
- Digitally Native: They consume content differently—on demand, across platforms, with interactive elements that make them participants, not just viewers.
This generation doesn’t just want to watch golf—they want to experience it, share it, and make it their own. They’re drawn to creators who break down barriers, who make the game approachable without dumbing it down, who celebrate the joy of golf without the pretension.
The Birth of InspirePlay
This realization led me to create InspirePlay—”the channel your country club warned you about.”
We’re not just creating golf content; we’re creating Golf as Mainstream Lifestyle Entertainment.
We’re bringing reality TV formats to golf, with all the drama, personality, and emotional investment that entails.
Our approach to match play isn’t about technical perfection—it’s about creating compelling entertainment:
- We challenge players to hit drones out of the air
- We create elimination challenges where competitors must hit stingers to knock people out
- We film confessionals where players reveal their true feelings about competitors
- We create alliances, rivalries, and storylines that extend beyond a single round
We’re not making golf common—we’re making it cool. We’re bringing edge and attitude to a traditionally buttoned-up sport. We’re creating content that makes traditional golf establishments uncomfortable in all the right ways.
The Future of Golf Entertainment
As I write this, I realize that my fellow elitists will not like what I have to say—but I also realize that professional golf has lost its way. Harvey Penick would agree.
The future of golf entertainment isn’t in making the game more exclusive or more technical. It’s in making it more entertaining, more authentic, and more accessible while maintaining its edge.
It’s in creating stories that transcend the old boundaries of golf—mixing drama, lifestyle, and authenticity to draw women and men alike into a bigger cultural movement. Just as the IPL turned cricket from a traditional sport into global entertainment, we’re shattering golf’s insider walls by making it as much about the personalities, rivalries, friendships, and emotions as the shots themselves.
It’s in embracing the reality TV elements that create emotional investment—confessionals, personal storylines, dramatic editing, and manufactured drama.
It’s in recognizing that golf isn’t just a sport—it’s entertainment, it’s lifestyle, it’s culture.
InspirePlay isn’t just another golf media company. We’re creating an entirely new category at the intersection of golf, entertainment, and lifestyle. We’re not improving golf content—we’re completely reimagining what golf content can be.
So yes, we are the channel your country club warned you about. And we’re just getting started.
