Brad Dalke is a good PGA Tour player, says Colt Knost, himself a former PGA Tour player and now a PGA Tour TV analyst.
And that leads to a natural PGA Tour question – for someone who it is not one of YouTube Golf’s biggest stars:
Would he make the next tour?
The thought made for an interesting exchange during this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar podcast, which you can watch in full here. Knostone of the show’s co-hosts, said he played with Dalke last year. He said he was familiar with Dalke’s background, which includes an NCAA team championship win while at Oklahoma, a 2016 runner-up finish at the USA Amateur and two major championship starts. Dalke was also part of the winning team in Barstool Sports Internet Invitationalwhich brought together 48 online golf personalities for a $1 million tournament.
“Everyone at YouTube Golf obviously just raves about your talent and it’s true,” Knost said on Subpar. “Like you have the talent to play on the PGA Tour.”
It means he would have the unique choice of trying to play golf at the highest level, or continuing to play golf on YouTube, where golf videos have just exploded in popularity. But it is not as simple as it seems.
After trying professional golf after college, he said he remembers the “grind.” And the fight is not about the Good Good team member.
“You know, I love the competition,” Dalke said at Subpar. “I love to compete and I’m in such a different place now than I was when I was playing pro golf before. I mean, when I was playing pro golf before, I think to be fair I was probably a handicap in two. …
“I couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn with the driver. Trying to fix my driver made my irons terrible. So I couldn’t hit a golf ball to save my life. Luckily, I still have my wedges and I’m holding my own in it a little bit. But now I’m such a different golfer. Like now I’m too good to be a golfer. hey, I want to come back and compete again and see what I can go against these guys now, now that I have my game.”
But being a full-time pro golfer, he said, required work.
The fight was “too much.” It was expensive. “You don’t make a lot of money unless you get to that high level,” he said, “And there’s a lot of money on YouTube right now.”
All that being said, if a special invitation was made to a tournament, Dalke said he would play. Of course he would.
“I think it’s a matter of, you know, if I get some exemptions from sponsors and I get some chances that way, obviously I’ll take that and make the best of it – I’ll try to play my best in those moments,” Dalke said at Subpar. “But as far as going through Q-School and going to the PGA Tour Americas and Korn Ferry, that doesn’t sound very appealing to me right now, to be honest. You know, the YouTube money is pretty good.
