Last year, the Black Desert Golf Course made it’s debut as a course played on the PGA Tour. For the data nerds out there, we have less historical data to use. However, there were a lot of takeaways last year and not much has changed to the golf course.

This week at the Bank of Utah, hosted at the Black Desert Golf Course, players will be positioned to hit their second shots 45% of the time from 150-200 yards. With wide fairways, this will emphasize players to separate from the field on approach.

Here are the top 10 players in the field from 150-200 yards:

1. Rico Hoey

2. Thomas Rosenmueller

3. Henrik Norlander

4. Cameron Champ

5. Matt McCarty

6. Antoine Rozner

7. Kevin YUUUUUUU

8. Kurt Kitayama

9. Joel Dahmen

10. Sam Ryder

Good Good Championship Thoughts

If you follow the entire golf landscape, on both the professional and social media sides, this announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. 

One of the biggest golf brands on social media, Good Good, has signed a three-year deal to sponsor a fall swing PGA Tour event. It will be called the Good Good Championship, hosted in Austin, Texas at the Fazio Canyons course at Omni Barton Creek.

This is one of new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp’s first big moves he has made. Some might think allowing a silly little YouTube golf brand to sponsor a PGA Tour event is dumb and worthless, however, if you take a step back and think about it from a business standpoint, it makes all the sense in the current state of the sport. 

In Rolapp’s media appearances, one of the key takeaways I had was he wants to modernize golf. Most fans who tune into the PGA Tour week in and week out understand that this needs to happen, especially from a broadcast level. That is indeed correct, but Rolapp was also citing the fact that the product needs to be modernized to bring in a younger fanbase. 

The younger generation of golf fans that the PGA Tour needs to capture are all watching YouTube golf. Across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, Good Good has over three million followers/subscribers. That is just from their main channels and accounts, not taking into account the personal brands of their main content creators Garrett Clark, Matt Scharff, Brad Dalke, Sean Walsh, Bubbie, and Stephen Canastada. 

Collaboration with social media influencers and content creators to bring a different audience to the sport has been a major emphasis for the PGA Tour lately. Over the last two years, the PGA Tour has hosted a couple of Creator Classic’s, which is a tournament among creators on the Wednesday before signature events that were broadcasted on TV and YouTube. 

Having Good Good sponsor an event will bring eye balls to the largely glossed over Fall swing on the Tour. Good Good can use their platform to market this event for the next year or so. In their announcement video, they stated that they already filmed a video at Omni Barton Creek to showcase the golf course.

The PGA Tour has emphasized the importance of the feedback loop of using short-form content to get people to watch their long-form content. Take the TGL for example. The TGL league is set up to produce great viral short form videos that then convince people to tune into the main product. This drives engagement online and gets people to talk about the TGL. 

Having Good Good sponsor this event will only allow them to do the marketing for you for this event and get their audience to show up. What is really interesting to me is how the on course experience will be. They stated in their video that they have full creative power over the Pro-Am. 

Additionally, Good Good isn’t just a media brand, they are one of the biggest apparel brands in the sport. They have their own apparel line and have a partnership deal with Callaway that they make customized balls and putters with. Good Good sells their apparel on the racks at Dick’s Sporting Goods, PGA Superstore’s, and select PGA Tour tournaments. If you just walk around a PGA Tour event or play a round at your local muni, there is a good chance you will see someone wearing a Good Good hat, golf shirt, or quarter zip. 

The PGA Tour understands that they need to bring in a younger audience to sustain growth. More and more people are playing recreational golf and the average age is only decreasing. For the PGA Tour and Good Good to partner to sponsor an event is a no brainer. However, how they market the tournament leading up to the first round, the broadcast, and the on course experience will be crucial to the success of this partnership. 

If you don’t like how the PGA Tour is following the trends of YouTube Golf, I am not sure what to tell you at this point. The influence of YouTube Golf is real. Is Good Good’s style of golf gimmicky and sometimes cringy? It can be. It is certainly not for everyone, but it’s for a specific audience. That specific audience is who the PGA Tour has to capture to be able to survive and innovate. 

The PGA Tour allowing Good Good to sponsor an event during the fall swing is pretty low-stakes and low-risk, considering it's the time of year where everyone is watching and talking about the NFL. This is a great move by both parties and I am excited to see how Good Good puts their spin on a professional golf event.

If you had to bet on one team to win the Super Bowl right now, who would it be?

We are basically halfway through the NFL regular season with Week 8 upon us. In my opinion, there isn’t one clear powerhouse team in the league right now. Could one of these teams get hot like the Philadelphia Eagles did and dominate down the stretch? Surely. However, there seems to be a lot of parity right now, which makes the rest of the regular season really interesting on how it will play out for playoff spots and seeding. 

As any sports betting degenerate does, I tend to look at the weekly NFL slate and futures during my lunch break at work. It’s a good little escape from the job. 

I was looking at the Super Bowl odds and asked this question in discord: If you had to bet on one team to win the Super Bowl right now, who would it be? I am also factoring in odds and who I believe is the best value on the board. 

My answer would be the Los Angeles Rams at 12-1. 

You could argue the Rams have the best player in the league and one of the favorites to win Offensive Player of the Year in Puka Nacua. He is currently a little banged up but he should be all systems go after their bye week this week. 

They have a veteran QB in Matthew Stafford who is 4th in the league in passing yards and has led this offense to 8th in total offense. They rank 6th in EPA (Expected Points Added) and 12th in points per game, which can be attributed to adding Davante Adams this offseason. 

I believe their defense is very underrated compared to other teams. They have one of the best young pass rushers in the league with Jared Verse. They rank 2nd in the league as a team in sacks and 2nd in total points allowed per game. 

The Rams gave the Eagles the best fight last year in the playoffs and it wasn’t particularly close. If Jalen Carter doesn’t pull off those bull rushes to disrupt Stafford, the Rams could have easily made the Super Bowl. If Stafford can stay healthy, there’s no doubt in my mind this Sean McVay coached team has what it takes to win their 2nd Super Bowl with this regime.