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The 7-iron in his hands at Deerfield GC, in Mississippi, was not his gamer club.

“That’s the wrong 7-iron,” Bryan said, throwing back his head and cackling. “You can go ahead and add four to my score, boys.”

As in four penalty strokes. Trouble was, not only did Bryan have the wrong club in his hands but the right one was also in his bag, meaning he was carrying 15 clubs, or one more than the rules allow. That’s a two-stroke penalty for each hole on which the offense was committed, or, in Bryan’s case, four strokes in all.

“Wait, hold on,” said Bryan’s caddie, Matt Atkins, as he began counting his man’s clubs. (Atkins actually began the qualifier as a contestant but withdrew after 10 holes and soon after assumed looping duties for his pal Bryan.)

“Yeah, we definitely have too many,” Bryan said, still chuckling. “We have two 7-irons in there.”

Indeed, they did.

“Can you imagine if we were, like, four or five [under] at this point?”

It’s unclear what Bryan’s score was at that point, because he didn’t turn in his card. But presumably the course record was not in danger.  

Bryan did play on, though. With the right 7-iron in hand, he addressed his ball on the par-3, drew back his club and … ugh. His one-armed follow-through suggested he didn’t like the result, as did his comical post-shot commentary:    

“Maybe I should have hit the other 7-iron.”

Give Bryan credit for finding humor in what was a dire situation in a cutthroat 18-hole event where every shot is precious.

Bryan, who won the 2017 RBC Heritage and also three titles on the Korn Ferry Tour, has been ranked as high as 37th in the world. He also has developed a loyal following, along with his brother George, for his trick-shot artistry.

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He entered Sunday’s final round at the Valspar Championship in a share of 53rd position. Typically, Tour pros near the bottom of the leaderboard approach final rounds with apathy; there’s neither stress nor fear of consequence. Bryan is no stranger to that approach, having once blitzed through his final round at the BMW Championship in less than 90 minutes.

But this was no ordinary round. Bryan was making the final start of his major medical extension, an exemption category that allowed him a certain number of starts with which he could regain his card. He needed a sixth-place finish to retain full PGA Tour status, while solo 51st or better would allow him to claim partial status alongside pros who finished Nos. 126-150 on the FedEx Cup points list last season.

For Bryan, even getting to the weekend was no simple task. With three holes to play on Friday, he sat just outside the cut line. He make a 16-footer for birdie at No. 7 (his 16th hole of the day) to get just inside that cut line. At No. 8 he found a bush, hacked out of it (below) and got up-and-down for a miraculous bogey that gave himself a chance. And then he striped a drive down the fairway at No. 9, hit a wedge to three feet and rolled it in to make the weekend.

Bryan played well on Saturday but finished with a bogey to post one-under 70, leaving him just outside the top 50 as he stared down Sunday.

“It’s going to take a special one,” Bryan said post-round to the PGA Tour.

But on Sunday, as conditions toughened, Bryan’s birdie reserves seemed to dry up. He hit just eight of 18 greens and spent most of the day scrambling for par. As he reached the Valpsar’s Snake Pit — the challenging trio of 16, 17 and 18 — he needed to play them in at least one under par to have a chance. Instead he bogeyed 16, made two more pars to finish and signed for a two-over 73 and a share of 62nd.

After the round he took to Twitter to express his thanks to those who have followed his chase for status.

“Been a long few years, spent most of it rehabbing shoulder and wrist,” he wrote. “Thank you to everyone for the support this week….definitely felt the love out there. I tried my hardest….came up short. It stings, but I’m not done trying.”

What “not done trying” means is that Bryan will continue to hunt for starts on Tour for the rest of the season using his status as a past champion. He’ll hope to tee it up as soon as next week’s Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship and is confirmed in the field at the RBC Heritage the week after the Masters.

At the time of his victory at the 2017 RBC, Bryan was on a rapid ascent through the world rankings. The trick-shot-artist-turned-pro won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2016 before bursting onto the PGA Tour and winning that following April. He had four other top-seven finishes that year.

But since then Bryan has battled injuries and struggled to find his form. His T12 at the 2020 Sanderson Farms Championship was his best result since 2017. He made zero starts in 2019 and just 23 total in the three years since. Bryan’s 2022 began with a promising T27 at the Sony Open but he missed his next three cuts entering this week’s Valspar.

He finished the week at two under par. Four under would have given him a 10-way tie of 48th place; five under would have guaranteed him partial status for next season. Instead he’ll start on the steepest road in the golf world: the one that leads back to the gates of the PGA Tour.

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Surf the Bryan Bros Golf YouTube page, and there are dozens of videos that capture the golfing life of brothers Wesley and George Bryan. Matches, trick shots, you name it. On Friday, Wesley added another. 

Miracle. 

Wesley is also a Tour pro, and at this week’s Valspar Championship, he is playing in his final event on a major medical exemption. Which means this: Finish at 51st alone, and he secures conditional Tour status. But finish sixth alone, and Wesley Bryan keeps his card.  

Only, with two holes left at Innisbrook, and sitting on the cut line, Bryan double-crossed an iron over the par-3 8th green and into a bush. 

“That is not good,” analyst Gary Koch said on the Golf Channel broadcast. 

But this was.  

Bryan kneeled down into the bush. He choked down on an iron and slapped his ball out, avoiding the greenside bunkers. From 34 yards out, he pitched to 2 feet and cleaned up for a bogey four. 

Now one over the cutline with one hole to play, Bryan hit just three more shots. On the par-4 9th, after a drive down the left side of the fairway, he hit his approach to 3 feet and rolled in the putt for a three. 

Six strokes. When seven would have sent him home. He started Saturday tied for 49th with a whopping 23 other players, then shot a one-under 70. On Sunday, Bryan will begin in the same position, though now with 12 others; he’s seven shots back of a tie for sixth.         

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?! WE STILL HAVE HOPE!!!!!!!” the Bryan Bros Golf Twitter account wrote shortly after the knees shot.

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The post How this entrepreneur built a brand chronicling golf challenges with his friends appeared first on Golf.

The post How this entrepreneur built a brand chronicling golf challenges with his friends appeared first on Golf.

“I can do that,” Wes said.

That afternoon these down-on-their-luck, wannabe touring pros filmed their own version and uploaded it to YouTube and promoted it on Twitter. When it reached 100 views, they decided to do another video. One thing led to another and Bryan Bros. Golf became a mini-empire, flooding various social media channels with trick-shots videos. Deals with Callaway, Lexus, Bose, GoPro and other big-time brands poured in. It was one night in particular, at the PGA Show in Orlando in January 2015, when the magnitude of the moment hit George, who slumped on a couch and muttered, “I can’t believe this is real.”

Watching over Bryan Bros. was a college friend of theirs from University of South Carolina named Joe Gilliland, who carried the weighty title of CEO, though he had his skeptics. “I left a good job in finance,” he says, “and my parents were baffled. My mom was continuously saying to my dad, ‘How is this a real job?’”

Growing up in Kansas City, Garrett Clark was an ardent fan of the Bryan Bros. From the age of nine he had his own YouTube channel featuring him “just doing stupid stuff around the house,” he says. “My childhood dream was to be a YouTuber.” The financial success of Bryan Bros. allowed Wes and George to focus on their dreams of reaching the PGA Tour, and when George came to Kansas City for a Web.com event, Garrett sought him out. (Wes reached the PGA Tour in 2016 and won at Hilton Head the following year.) Garrett didn’t ask anything about golf, focusing on more important matters. “I had a ton of questions about social media and how they built their brand,” he says.

Garrett was an accomplished junior golfer, a gifted scrambler who once won a tournament by shooting a closing 68 despite hitting only two fairways. He spent all of December 2016 practicing trick shots of his own and began uploading them to Instagram. The ensuing summer he didn’t play dozens of junior tournaments, as he always had, focusing instead on creating fun videos. His Instagram audience began to build. Garrett matriculated to Kansas Community College to play for the golf team but felt stifled; his content creation went fallow because so much time was spent on trivial things like academics and team practice.

In the summer of 2019, following his freshman year, Garrett plunged back into YouTube, focusing on longer-form videos. In one charming half-hour tale, Garrett went to a thrift store, bought a golf bag and set of irons for the grand total of $3.81 and then went out and played nine holes in four over par. The production quality of the videos is simple but clean, with occasional surprising touches, but the key is Garrett himself: a good-looking kid with a sweet swing and slightly goofy presence who, crucially, never appears to be trying too hard.

By the end of the summer Garrett’s GM Golf feed on YouTube had 150,000 subscribers. Money was coming in thanks to the magic of the YouTube algorithm, which embeds advertisements into every video and pays the creators depending on how many people suffer through the ads, and for how long. Midway through the summer Garrett worked up the courage to tell his father Jerry, a no-nonsense financial adviser, that he wanted to drop out of college and focus full-time on content creation.

“It was World War III,” Jerry says. “I knew there was some value embedded in what Garrett was doing but it also looked a lot like an 18-year-old kid sitting on the couch playing on a computer.” The argument stretched for days and finally Jerry said he would give his son his blessing only if Garrett could prove that making YouTube videos was a viable career. Says Jerry: “I threw out the biggest number I could think of: $60,000. If he made that, I would be a believer. Well, he made that in a heartbeat. I said, ‘Son, you need to drop out of school immediately because you’ve got lightning in a bottle right now. College can wait.’”

GM Golf now has more than 200,000 subscribers and more than 33 million views. Garrett’s two accounts on Instagram have more than 230,000 followers. With an audience this vast, advertisers and endorsement partners have come calling, targeting the youthful viewership. “Dollar Shave Club did a deal with Garrett even though he only shaves about once a month,” Jerry says with a chuckle. GM Golf is active on Instagram but that is merely a brand builder and a way to funnel viewers to YouTube. “YouTube is where the money is,” says Gilliland, who became Garrett’s agent earlier this year.

A typical video is 30 to 40 minutes featuring Garrett and regulars like his cousin Micah Morris and friends Stephen Castaneda and Matt Scharff. (Each has his own thriving YouTube channel.) They might have a traditional match or ornate game of H-O-R-S-E or play a round with only one club or all of their clubheads wrapped in 100 layers of duct tape. Garrett is often dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt and cap on backward. There is no profanity. (“We’re big on safeguarding the brand,” Jerry says. “Racy content might get you views in the short-term but it costs you partnerships.”)  

What’s striking about the videos (which are embedded with seven or eight ads, ka-ching, ka-ching) is what they aren’t: no exotic destinations, no drone footage, no big-money bets, minimal pizzazz. It’s just a group of likable kids playing golf at a high level and having a good time. Asked why he thinks the videos resonate, Garrett says, “All we’re trying to do is have fun, stay true to ourselves, make the kind of content we enjoy and remain authentic.”

Along the way, Garrett’s impact continues to grow. In mid-March he and seven friends met up at Pursell Farms in Sylacauga, Ala., for a buddies trip (with a camera crew in tow, obviously). When the world ground to a halt because of the coronavirus, Garrett and his pals hunkered down at Pursell Farms with the blessing of the resort. They started blasting out videos at a furious pace, suddenly putting a sleepy destination on the map.

CEO David Pursell says that the day the first video dropped he fielded 15 different inquiries about would-be bachelor parties. “People have continued calling in, showing up to the course looking to catch a glimpse of the guys filming, booking times to stay in the summer and fall, and reaching out for all kinds of inquiries,” Pursell says. “It’s been fun to see that and continue to see the power of our story grow.” Pursell Farms is now considering building special on-site lodging for Garrett and other such content creators to become regular presences around the resort.

Among those who have been monitoring Garrett’s rise are the Bryan Bros. With professional golf on hiatus Wesley and George have been holed up in South Carolina creating content that looks a lot like GM Golf. The Bryans are playing weekly matches and filming instructional pieces, which they upload to YouTube, and otherwise retrenching. “It’s becoming what we always wanted it to be: a fun golf brand, not just trick shots,” George says. “We always thought of ourselves as much more than trick-shot artists but we got to that space first and it defined us pretty quickly.”

The Bryans’ weekly matches have become a hit in these golf-starved times and they’re now up to 47,000 YouTube subscribers. “I really questioned if people would watch half an hour of a golf match when there’s nothing at stake,” George says. “Turns out the answer is yes. There are a lot of people out there who just love golf, and if the people on screen are having fun, the audience will find you.” Both Bryan brothers suddenly seem more relaxed on camera, which George ascribes to having studied Garrett: “He’s a fun, quirky individual. He’s very relatable. If he messes up when he’s talking, he just laughs about it and moves on. I’ve always tried to be too perfect on-camera. Now I’m just trying to be myself.”

George recently filmed a match against Garrett and Micah. Off-camera, they talked a lot of shop. “I asked Garrett a bunch of questions about YouTube,” George says. “Funny how it’s flipped. Now I’m the one coming to him for advice.”

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The post British Open champion Francesco Molinari already has his retirement planned out appeared first on Golf.

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After Molinari became the Champion Golfer of the Year at Carnoustie on Sunday, Bryan tweeted that he spoke with Molinari at last year’s WGC-HSBC Champions event in China, and he saved the details of their conversation so he could make them public at the right moment.

Turns out, the aftermath of Molinari’s first major victory was perfect timing.

Direct quotes from @F_Molinari earlier this season when we played together in China…..I saved it in my notes for a moment like this pic.twitter.com/RjZAiPhLNs

— Wesley Bryan (@wesleybryangolf) July 22, 2018

Watching sports, drinking coffee and Twitter trolling? Sounds like an epic plan! Two and a half years from the time of Molinari and Bryan’s chat would be April of 2020. Molinari, who has earned over 18 million Euros on the European Tour and over $9 million on the PGA Tour over the course of his career, will be 38 years old.

While the retirement plan sounds nice, as Champion Golfer of the Year, Molinari will take home a boatload of perks from Carnoustie that may make that timeline seem just a little premature.

MORE: Brandel pulls double duty

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The post WATCH: Trick shot artist Wesley Bryan pulls off lefty chip shot in competition at Sony Open appeared first on Golf.

The post WATCH: Trick shot artist Wesley Bryan pulls off lefty chip shot in competition at Sony Open appeared first on Golf.

But despite his burgeoning pro career, Bryan is still finding time to sneak in a few trick shots on Tour.

During the second round of the Sony Open on Friday, Bryan found himself in a sticky situation on the par-4 1st hole at Waialae Country Club. His second shot came to rest on the right edge of a left greenside bunker. Bryan had no chance to hit the shot right-handed given the lie. Instead, the crafty pro addressed the ball as a lefty, taking an iron and flipping it on its head.

Based on the success of his chip, you would have never known he’s a natural righty. Watch the video below.

Trick shot during the tournament.

Do your thing, @WesleyBryanGolf!#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/05A9gIJFYR

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) January 13, 2018

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Literally translated, the fast-food chain’s old catch phrase means, “I want Taco Bell,” something Wes Bryan (probably) whispered to his caddie around the 16th tee on Sunday. You see, Bryan has a tradition after winning a golf tournament. He celebrates with the delicious goodness of TB and he’s gotten the chance to perfect this tradition after three wins on the Web.com tour in 2016.

And on Sunday, after his first PGA Tour victory at the RBC Heritage, things were no different. After wrapping up his media obligations, Bryan — tartan jacket and all — celebrated the only way he knows how: A Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Or maybe it was a Crunch Wrap. Or maybe he just gets tacos. Anyone else hungry all of a sudden?

Celebration dinner!! @tacobell pic.twitter.com/uu40UNtSvF

— Wesley Bryan (@wesleybryangolf) April 17, 2017

This comes almost exactly one year after another post-victory tweet from inside of a Taco Bell. I smell an endorsement opportunity.

A tradition unlike any other…celebratory @tacobell!! #livemas pic.twitter.com/SE1FeIDXov

— Bryan Bros Golf (@bryanbrosgolf) April 25, 2016

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Wesley Bryan shot a final-round 67 to win the RBC Heritage on Sunday in Hilton Head.

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Cody Gribble and Wesley Bryan shot 64s on Thursday to tie for the lead after the first round of the Honda Classic.

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