Brad Dalke is PGA Tour-player good, says Colt Knost, himself once a PGA Tour player and now a PGA Tour TV analyst.
And that leads to a natural PGA Tour question — for someone who isn’t one of YouTube Golf’s biggest stars:
Would he give the Tour another go?
The thought made for an interesting exchange during this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar podcast, which you can watch in full here. Knost, one of the show’s co-hosts, said he played with Dalke last year. He said he knew Dalke’s background, which includes an NCAA team championship win while at Oklahoma, a runner-up finish at the 2016 U.S. Amateur and a pair of major championship starts. Dalke also was part of the winning team at Barstool Sports’ Internet Invitational, which brought together 48 online golf personalities for a $1 million tournament.
“Everyone on YouTube Golf obviously just raves about your talent and it’s real,” Knost said on Subpar. “Like you have the talent to play on the PGA Tour.”
Meaning he’d have the unique choice of trying to play golf at its highest level, or continuing to play golf on YouTube, where golf videos have just recently exploded in popularity. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.
After trying pro golf after college, he said he remembers the “grind.” And the grind isn’t for the member of the Good Good team.
“You know, I love competition,” Dalke said on Subpar. “I love competing and now I’m in such a different spot now than I was when I was doing pro golf before. I mean, when I was doing pro golf before, I think I legitimately probably was a scratch to two handicap. …
“I couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn with the driver. Me trying to fix my driver made my irons awful. So I couldn’t hit a golf ball to save my life. Luckily, I still have my wedges and putting to somewhat keep myself in it a little bit. But I’m such a different golfer now. Like I’m back to being a very good golfer now. So there’s always that itch of like, hey, I want to go back and compete again and see what I can do against these guys now, now that I have my game.”
But full-time pro golf work, he said, required work.
The grind was “a lot.” It was costly. “You don’t really make much money unless you do get to that top level,” he said, “And there’s a lot of money in YouTube now.”
This all being said, should a special invite be extended to a tournament, Dalke said he’d play. Of course he would.
“I think it’s a matter of, you know, if I get some sponsor exemptions and get some chances that way, obviously I will accept that and I will do my best to — I’ll try to play my best in those moments,” Dalke said on Subpar. “But, as far as like going through Q-School and go to PGA Tour Americas and Korn Ferry, it’s like, that just doesn’t seem very appealing to me right now, to be honest. You know, the YouTube money is pretty nice.
“But at the same time, I do, you know — if I got a chance with the PGA Tour, I would 100 percent take that chance and see what I can do against those guys.”
Editor’s note: The complete Subpar episode with Dalke can be found below.
