What the most viral golf tournament of the year revealed about golf fandom

The past twelve months have had a little bit of everything: a Grand Slam career, Ryder Cup chaos and much more. With 2026 on the horizon, our writers look back at the most memorable moments from 2025 and explain why they mattered.

No. 15 — The zero-torque putter motion | No. 14 — ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ takes the golf world by storm | No. 13 — Joaquin Niemann’s big 2025 (and crucial 2026) | No. 12 — JJ Spaun kills Oakmont

Stories from 2025, No. 11: The Internet Invitational

There’s no way around it: If you want to understand the year in golf, you’ll have to familiarize yourself with the questionable alarm clock habits of a failed professional golfer.

The journey from a year of possibilities to a clouding controversy that defined golf’s current entanglement with the Internet begins with Lu Ko Kitin, former PGA Tour professional and current YouTube golfer.

Kwon is one of the many main characters in perhaps the story of the golf year: YouTube. And undoubtedly the story of the year on YouTube – the Internet Invitational – Kwon played an even more important role: the heel.

When Kwon laid his head down to rest the night before the start of the Internet Invitational, the Good Good Golf star had no way of knowing he would spend most of his November facing the wrath of the comment sections. He couldn’t have known what awaited him in the corners of the Internet, near and far after he had been exposed during the opening session of the Internet Invitational for oversleeping. And it’s safe to say: like Kwon had Had he known the backlash he would receive when the video was eventually released, he wouldn’t have followed his morning snooze by generally discrediting his 20-handicap playing partner, popular Barstool Sports personality PFT Commenter.

Every good story needs a villain, and apparently so does every good made-for-the-internet, half-reality TV show, half-influencer golf tournament. By failing to meet his starting time for the opening session of the Internet Invitational, Kwon was the spark that ignited the Internet fire that grew into the Internet Invitational.

And without the great success of the Internet Invitational? Well, I’d say we’d all be a little dumber about the tectonic shifts happening in the golf world in 2025. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind.

The idea arose organically. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy looked around the golf creator sphere (influencerverse? internetdom?) and recognized a trend: dozens of YouTube golf influencers had achieved individual success because of their talents, but they had no place to congregate. Like the pre-tour days of professional golf, Internet golf was a collection of individuals, and those individuals could prove collectively more valuable than the sum of their parts.

Portnoy assembled a sponsor (Dunkin’), a guest course (Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri) and a dream guest list (everyone from Bob Does Sports to Good Good). Before long, he had found enough money to make an attractive offer: a week-long mega series bringing together the biggest influencers in the sport.

But getting a yes on his guest list took a deft hand. For starters, the structure of the golf influencerverse was based on the idea of ​​self-determination. The whole point of becoming a YouTube superstar was that you didn’t need the help of an established media brand like Barstool to do so. On the other hand, $1 million wasn’t pocket change, but it wasn’t exactly life-changing money to offer to a group whose companies regularly rake in similar amounts of money themselves. In 2025, one Portnoy target (Good Good) raised a fundraising round 45 times the size of Portnoy’s winner’s prize.

Portnoy knew that money and followers weren’t enough to win over the YouTube Golf stars he wanted, so he promised something more: attention. Competing in the Internet Invitational allowed participants to dominate the golf spotlight during a dead time on the calendar. They could capitalize on their competitors’ notoriety, and their collective performance could amount to something that felt substantive… even if the quality of golf didn’t.

What followed in the next six episodes and 4 p.m of heavily edited content is nothing less than the roadmap to the modern golf internet – a look at the ways in which TV golf has changed from tournaments and trophies to entertainment and attention. It’s also a taste of what happens when you bring together four dozen of the biggest and most entertaining voices in professional golf under one roof: No one in the sport is able to look away.

Ultimately, the mind-blowing journey of 48 golf content creators competing for a million dollars racked up 25.2 million views on YouTube, tens of millions of impressions on social media and earned the undivided attention of the greater golf world for well over a week. The final episode, which featured Cody “Beef” Franke (who tragically passed away shortly after filming) appeared on camera, is so gripping that it’s impossible to spoil even six weeks later.

But more than any individual success – and more than any heartache or heartwarming final episode – the Internet Invitational told us something about the ways golf changed in 2025. TV deals and tours are no longer the only ways to watch must-see golf competitions. Professional golfers are no longer the only stars who can capture the sport’s attention. And the world of content creation is no longer an afterthought to the big show. Above all, the Internet Invitational proved that the real power of golf television lies in its ability to give us emotions without manufactured drama – and reminded us that golf No any drama is actually not a wave at all.

As professional golf enters another turbulent offseason, the major tours would be wise to remember the rules that drove YouTube’s astonishing success in 2025: the new playbook for maximizing audiences, amping up drama and genuinely believing that more is more.

And if that’s all too complicated, perhaps pro golf can take a simpler lesson – one that Luke Kwon learned the hard way:

It’s good to have heroes, but it’s better to have heels.