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It has never been a better time to be a golf YouTube star. Many social media-famous golfers are lauded for their online-glamorous lives, jet-setting between great golf courses, teeing it up with friends and famous professionals.
In addition to their arsenals of trick-shots and on-course hijinks, many of these influencers are accomplished players in their own right. And on Monday, March 4, the world is going to find out just how well they perform with a PGA Tour sponsor's exemption on the line.
The Q at Myrtle Beach will bring a field of 16 golfers to TPC Myrtle Beach - eight YouTubers and eight current and aspiring professionals - with the lowest score earning a spot in the field PGA Tour's inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic, which will be held May 6-12 at the Dunes Golf and Beach Club.
"Fueled by our love of golf and belief in the magic of a Myrtle Beach golf experience, GTS is thrilled to host ‘The Q at Myrtle Beach’ and welcome the players to The Golf Capital of the World," said Ryan Cannon, executive director of Golf Tourism Solutions, the Myrtle Beach-based organization previously known as Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, which has promoted the region to prospective visiting golfers for half a century.
The influencer-half of the field features an eclectic cast of characters that includes George Bryan of Bryan Bros Golf; Luke Kwon of Good Good Golf and former Good Good members Micah Morris and Grant Horvat, whose respective YouTube and TikTok presences have made them as popular as many PGA Tour players on social media. Nick Stubbe, better known as Fat Perez from the YouTube troupe Bob Does Sports, will also appear. Also participating is Peter Finch, who is based out of U.K. and whose golf equipment reviews typically draw hundreds of thousands of views.
Can a YouTube golfer earn a sport in a @PGATOUR event? We're about to find out. Learn more about the field at The Q below ⬇️.https://t.co/ye4Rv2IhT6 pic.twitter.com/Os3ASqL9y8
— Play Golf Myrtle Beach (@MyrtleBeachGolf) February 16, 2024
The remaining half of the field for The Q features some compelling professional golf hopefuls. Turk Pettit, a former Clemson Tiger who won the 2021 NCAA Championship individually and then competed in all eight events in LIV Golf's first season, seems like the current favorite to earn the spot in the Myrtle Beach Classic. Morgan Deneen, an assistant club professional from the Dunes Golf and Beach Club, played collegiately at nearby Coastal Carolina University and won the Sun Belt Championship individually in 2018. No one will have more recent competitive reps at the host course than current high school sophomore Tyler Watts, currently #112 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and one of America's top-ranked junior golfers. The Q takes place the day after the conclusion of the Dustin Johnson World Junior Golf Championship, held at TPC Myrtle Beach. One spot in The Q remains open; it will be set aside for the winner of a local PGA professionals event held February 19.
One wrinkle to The Q is that the tournament itself will be closed to spectators, and players will be sworn to secrecy about the results for a month and a half. A 90-minute video recap of the event will be prepared and released by Golf Tourism Solutions on its Play Golf Myrtle Beach YouTube page on April 23. Fans of the participants will have to wait until the release of that recap video to learn who has earned the coveted Myrtle Beach Classic sponsor's exemption.
The most recent golfer to win a PGA Tour event for which he received a sponsor's exemption is Nick Dunlap, who captured the 2024 American Express in what turned out to be his final start as an amateur.
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