There is a moment where golf influencers contain.
It comes early in the second episode of the Internet Invitational, a barstool/Bob Does Sports million-dollar clash of golf influencers. The main drama of the first episode – which, at three hours and 47 minutes, is half an hour longer than that Titanic – stems from Luke Kwon, the best golfer on his team, sleeping through 9:30am, effectively costing the team a full point. It’s not Kwon’s tardiness so much as his lackadaisical reaction that seems to first confuse and ultimately inflame his teammates, and that the tension boils when he enters the clubhouse after the morning session to a sardonic round of applause from former NHLer Ryan Whitney.
“Atta boy, Luke! Great job, Luke. We appreciate it,” Whitney calls to Kwon as he approaches the buffet line. “Take some lunch with you. Luke Kwon, very nice for the online invite.”
There’s some bickering about what the score would have been if Kwon had shown up at the morning session — “It’d have been 7-5, you dumb f—,” Whitney yells, instead of the 8-4 hole they’ve opened — which leads to a double-double of his ambivalence.
“Still no change,” he shrugs. And that’s when Whitney walks out.
“Who is this guy?!” he screams, standing up, apoplectic. “Is this guy serious? You think 7-5 and 8-4 are the same thing? It’s not over, d-puff. You didn’t show up until kickoff and then you showed up and didn’t care you were late. You’re the worst possible draft pick. This guy is a the clown.”
If you haven’t seen any of the Invitations and just looked at the paragraph above thinking, what on earth am i reading? Well, fair enough. It’s more than possible that none of these are for you. But the scene — a blasé golfer standing by the salad bar to the music of a brash, 4-foot-4 NHL defenseman with a vengeance in his eyes — is a perfect metaphor for the entire event and the waves of content creators crashing on the golf center’s shores.
There’s a lot of hype about the Internet Invitational, whose participants are pros at making golf fun. But what works is that this moment is real. For a split second it looks like we might have some kind of physical confrontation. After all there’s $1.7 million on the line and one guy doesn’t really seem to care. But Whitney eventually decides to retreat instead, leaning back into his seat and muttering under his breath.
“I hate this guy, dude,” he says. “I hate this guy so much.”
It’s not something you hear a lot on the PGA Tour.
Why ‘Internet Invite’ Works
I’ve previously dipped my toes into the ocean that is YouTube Golf, so I didn’t start the week planning to spend seven hours of (admittedly not that much) precious time watching 48 golfers of varying abilities battle it out part 1 and 2 of a six-part mega-series (swallow, check notes) mega-series, the total time of which will rival that of the current Ryder Cup. But if I’m instinctively repelled by pictures of mouth-opening screams and the manufactured drama of a golf match on YouTube, here I was drawn to the opposite; From the opening of the video we are in the room with four dozen artists who, for once, have no control over the show in which they will star.
The biggest initial achievement of the Internet Invitational is the gathering of some of the biggest names in the space and the competitions in which they are bound to interact. The opening scene is a star-studded cocktail party that feels like the introduction of a celebrity reality show. (I suppose that’s exactly what it is.) What keeps you from Xing for the next few hours—and what makes it beyond the usual boundaries of golf—is the presence of three massive out-of-this-world media personalities: Dave Portnoy and Barstool’s Big Cat, who serve as commentators, rules officials, and provocateurs, and PFT among the higher-ups. compelling story.
“How often does an event get together with this group of people?” Portnoy asks in the opening, referring to the assembled combination of individual groups and boy bands, who often collaborate, but not like this. He gets a nice answer: This group of people? never.
“I know maybe 25 percent of them,” PFT later adds, referring to the characters in the room. This seems like the right figure to serve as a proxy for viewers who may be fans of some, but likely not all of them of the gathered personalities. After all, there are only so many hours in the day. (On the other hand, more than four million people watched the first episode in the first four days. There are, in fact, many hours in the day.)
The Barstool event is co-hosted by the Bob Does Sports crew, led by Robby Berger, who at first seems like a regular guy until you spend a little more time watching and realize he’s in the running for world’s most likable guy. Berger (known, really, as Bob) captains one team while Sam “Riggs” Bozoian, head of Barstool’s golf division, takes the other side. They are Team Orange and Team Pink, a scheme that echoes the colors of event sponsor Dunkin’ Donuts and a reminder of what keeps this entire ecosystem running. (Money, that is. Not coffee. Although there is plenty of each.)
The event’s funniest moments come from Portnoy and Big Cat serving as mediators; Golf fans may be familiar with the racers, but Portnoy and Big Cat are largely unknown. The driving range and first tee scenes are especially fun to watch as they introduce the assembled cast, a wild cast of characters and cartoons with a wide variety of golf and club backgrounds.
“I’ve got to go check on ‘Duke,'” Portnoy says at one point, referring (dive down the Google rabbit hole) to a larger-than-life character with an impressive golf ball swing that Bob encountered during a random round of munis and adopted as a recurring member of his crew. Among his many memorable lines are these:
“I want to gently rock them to sleep,” he says of his opponents. “Like after you shoot a deer in the neck and hug it.”
“Dude, you better watch yourself, you’re going to end up with a Barstool contract before this day is out,” Portnoy says with a nod, always on the lookout for needle-moving personalities. However, he adds an on-camera admission:
“I want to hire him – but at the same time he doesn’t know when the conversations are over,” he says.
It’s the caustic and arrogant king of DOD (DOD refers to the off-deck driver, his specialty). DOD King never seems to break character: His partner tells him “don’t call me sweetheart” before they leave the first tee, he declares he wants his payout “in a bag of quarters” after winning a hole, and he decides to hit the driver between his legs in an attempt to confuse his opponents – and then pops it.
“That’s why he’s king,” the Big Cat shouts amid the confusion.
Mostly there’s good banter, good-natured competition, golf that ranges from stellar to mediocre, impressive views from Big Cedar Lodge, impressive production quality, and non-stop action in a dozen simultaneous matches. Lots of personalities shine in limited minutes (Nadeshot and Daltoosh, to name two) and the whole affair is enjoyable, if intense.
But the show-stealer—and, as it turns out, the title-stealer—comes from an unlikely source: Luke Kwon, a professional golfer best known for his content career and now best known for his starring role.
Kwon’s evil arc begins at a cocktail party, where he pairs up with PFT and responds by telling PFT that he doesn’t even need to show up.
“Got it,” he says. “You can swing it over and over, I don’t give a ho-. You can just go do something else and just not golf.”
It’s with particularly dark irony, then, that Kwon is the one missing his time, leaving the 22-handicap PFT to face two top players playing a toss-up against him.
Kwon’s absence at 9:30 a.m. is difficult in itself. But his behavior after he gets out is what makes him. And when he reaches his bewildered partner, Kwon responds by trash-talking the guy who just got betrayed. Everyone involved is taken aback by the heel turn, both in real time and afterwards.
“I didn’t think it was productive to argue with him when we were trying to compete, but he was kind of an advertisement for me,” PFT said. on his podcast this week. “He said, ‘You’re not going to make that shot,’ like my teammate, which is wild to say.”
“He just kept saying, ‘we’re wasting our time here,'” added one producer. “It was strange how much ad-libbing he was doing after he was (late).”
“It’s crazy,” says Portnoy — no stranger to villains — in real time, watching the scene play out. “Kwon is the cockiest guy ever. He’s crazy.”
As word spreads throughout the course, as Kwon continues to brush aside repeated chances to express remorse, reactions flood in.
“Well, I’d like to wake up,” is the closest he gets.
“You know how they say if you wake up and get out of bed, you’re going to win this game? He didn’t,” says a teammate.
“He’s done. He’s dead to me,” says another.
Another, the philosopher Joey Cold Cuts, expands on this idea.
“What the f— are we doing here, man? People are jumping up and down, DMing us that they want to f— come play in this s—. I don’t care if he hears it — you’ve got to wake up and show up. If you play bad and f— it, that’s fine. But are there people who are (desperate) to win this?
Ultimately, Kwon’s behavior stands out because it crosses YouTube Golf’s only prohibited threshold. Poor golf can be forgiven, and so can poor behavior. But in the Internet Invitational and content play in general, caution is the whole point. Violating this principle turns you into a villain.
Or, in this case, something even worse: The main character.
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