Last week, Grant Horvat posted a tweet saying he had been invited to play in a PGA Tour event but wasn’t sure he should accept the offer.
It turns out the tournament in question is the Barracuda Championship, an opposite-field event at Old Greenwood in Truckee, Calif. The tournament will be played while the Open Championship is at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland.
To me, this is a no-brainer: Horvat should play.
Why YouTube golf sponsor invites are good for golf
There is a lot to unpack here.
The first is that we are all aware professional golf needs as much publicity as it can get. Rory McIlroy’s Masters victory pulled in phenomenal ratings, but the Tour isn’t in a position to rest on its laurels. It needs to fight for every inch when it comes to entertainment value.
Given that is the case, the Tour has moved to a two-tier system where signature events bring the top players together and the rest of the calendar is meant for everyone else to battle for their livelihoods and future spots in the signature events.
Within that structure, sponsor invitations—spots tournaments use to invite popular players for increased exposure—can be tricky.
I have been against guys like Jordan Spieth getting free access into the signature events via sponsor exemptions. Personally, it would be more entertaining for him to earn his way back into those events. It would also help the lower tier of events by having guys like Spieth involved.
But when it comes to the lower tier of Tour events, more aggressive “one-off” sponsor invites make total sense.
There is nothing wrong with inviting a popular figure to play in a tournament. He isn’t taking someone else’s spot and he isn’t going to be a Tour member.
These tournaments are desperate for attention so why wouldn’t you bring him in?
If Horvat plays in the Barracuda Championship, I’m betting more than half the audience tuning in will be doing so to see how the YouTube golf star performs. I would be one of them.
How would Horvat fare if he played?
Honestly? Horvat would probably miss the cut by a wide margin.
He’s a good player but it’s not like he has much (or any) experience at this level. He didn’t even play high-level college golf.
Even with that being the case, Horvat is good enough to be in the field as a promotional tool.
And what if he did make the cut? That would be a story worth writing about.
Regardless, I could see how winners of the Creator Classic (which Horvat recently won at TPC Sawgrass) could get more exemptions into future Tour events. This is along the same lines as the Myrtle Beach Classic qualifier.
Take the immensely popular world of YouTube golf and get those characters involved with the Tour.
It’s also similar to someone like Steph Curry playing in a Korn Ferry Tour event or even an LPGA player like Michelle Wie or Lexi Thompson competing with the men.
It’s not something for every week of the year—but it’s great as a one-off to get more eyeballs on the product.
The responses to Horvat’s tweet say it all: he should play without any regret.
“If you want to play, you should play,” wrote Tour winner Michael Kim. “It’s a sponsor’s invite and any person or maybe even tour pro that wants to tell you that you’re taking a spot or you should ‘earn it’ is total BS.”
“You respect the game, respect the pros and actually have realistic expectations … give it a shot, use it as an experiment on yourself and show the people just how amazingly talented the alt fields are,” wrote Matt Gannon.
Exactly. There is nothing but upside here.
What do you think? Let me know below in the comments.
The Swami
1 year ago
100% on board. eyeballs on alternate events are already super low. they should be able to fill the field with literally almost whoever they want as a few sponsor extras just to generate interest and viewing to try to make back advertiser-spent dollars.
totally agree that some players shouldn’t keep getting invited on past results to Signature Events on a rotating sponsor exemption until they prove worthy again, but also totally agree alternate events should fill the field they have available (which is already by default ‘lesser’ top tier golfers) with a few that move the needle interest-wise.
OpMan
1 year ago
You’ve got that backwards and upside down.
Back in the day, there were no Signature or Elevated events.
We had the WGC, but the powers that be in the US decided that the WGC was diluting US talent and made sure it went away to put more focus on the PGA Tour. The Tour went wayward because it wanted to generate more cash and bigger prizes and advertising dollars just to try to promote its star players especially during golf’s waning years when the economy wasn’t so good and Chinese money was having too much influence not just in Hollywood but in golf and businesses, and look where we are with that, now! Beyond ridiculous, xenophobic, prejudiced and racist. And now you have to also deal with the Saudi and LIV.
Remember the Q-school Tour? It’s now Korn Ferry and had various other head sponsors in years past. How do you think the Q-school Tour guys feel when they see a Youtube video making clown taking one of their spots? What if one of those players is YOUR kid? You would want a dude like Horvat just being given an invite to play even though the kid has never actually qualified through anything to get to where the actual hard-working Tour guys have?
This is just an indication of where the PGA Tour has gone wrong, ever since the money-grabbing skirt-chasing years of Eldrick Tont.
They need to look at the players who are playing hard and working hard and going up and down just barely making the cut or retaining their cards and ask them how they feel.
Golf is supposed to be an honourable game, a game where one calls a penalty on the self, and yet in the business side of it they are as shady and dishonest and sick as any other money laundering scheme, and then wonder why they wasted so much time and money up to now making a whole mess of it
SBrach
12 months ago
I understand the perspective of someone from the Korn-Ferry tour missing out on potentially being able to play the event but if viewership is declining then sponsors will start to leave or invest less in the event and if there is no event then it’s much worse for everyone in golf. I understand that is the extreme hypothetical but it helps to make the point. Increasing the viewership and engagement of the fans will likely help more of the guys trying to get their cards more than one Korn Ferry tour player getting to play this event. The pga tour decrease fully exempt card holders from 125 to 100 in recent years partly to address slow play and increase competitiveness but also to reduce cost; the pga tour now guaranteeing a minimum salary of $500,000 (which I think is a good thing – allows the lower ranked card holders to focus solely on golf) means they save $12.5M by excluding 25 more card holders. If they can increase some viewership then maybe they get a little more sponsor money and can increase the number of card holders again. Also calling Grant Horvat a ‘Youtube video making clown’ is uncalled for. He is a good golfer, he respects the game, and he is giving fans and inside look at rounds with some of the best golfers in the world. Now if this were the U.S. Open, or the RBC Heritage I would say he should absolutely not be given a spot.