The real ‘independent contractors’ may have always been the YouTube golfers. That much is clear with the latest news from LIV Golf: an announcement of a new event pairing LIV golfers like Phil Mickelson with their YouTube counterparts like Grant Horvat.
On April 5, LIV will launch ‘The Duels’, a 6-team, 9-hole scramble with each team having one LIV pro joined by one content creator. It is understood the event will be filmed on Thursday afternoon of LIV’s Miami week (April 3) with the competition coverage debuting online the following Saturday. The teams are as follows:
Sergio Garcia and George Bryan
Bubba Watson and Luke Kwon
Joaquin Niemann and Rick Shiels
Phil Mickelson and Grant Horvat
Dustin Johnson and Wesley Bryan
Cameron Smith and Fat Perez
The event will take place during LIV’s Miami event at Trump Doral and the production of it will live exclusively on Grant Horvat’s channel. Horvat has created numerous videos with Mickelson in recent months, with the two of them facing off against other pairs like John Daly and his son, John Daly Jr.
The Duels is certainly of the same content family as the PGA Tour’s “Creator Classic”, a series of events that pits popular YouTube golfers against each other in a 9-hole stroke play competition on Wednesday afternoon at popular tournaments like the Tour Championship or the Players Championship. What started as a single event in 2024 is now a series of events in 2025. The most recent iteration took place two weeks ago at TPC Sawgrass and was won by Horvat.
Horvat, Shiels, Perez and Kwon play their tournament golf almost exclusively on YouTube, but Wesley Bryan is technically different. Bryan has had a fruitful pro career that peaked on the PGA Tour when he won the RBC Heritage in 2017, after winning three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2016 to earn a battlefield promotion.
Bryan maintained his membership on Tour most of the years since, and just barely missed out on retaining full membership for 2025. He is currently considered a PGA Tour member with “conditional status” and can enter tournaments from his finish in the 126 to 150 slot from the 2024 FedEx Cup points list. In other words, Bryan’s rank earned him tee times at three tournaments earlier this season — the American Express, the Farmers Insurance Open and the Puerto Rico Open. He tied for 25th at the Farmers and missed the cut at the others.
Importantly, LIV Golf events are still considered non-sanctioned tournaments by the PGA Tour, even in our era of investment negotiations in the White House between the Tour and the Saudi PIF. In order for a Tour member to compete in a non-Tour-sanctioned event played during a separate Tour event, they would have to request a release from the media rights deal they signed with the Tour at the outset of the season. That would apply to Bryan, but requests to both him and the PGA Tour for comment have been unanswered thus far.
Notably absent from The Duels is Bryson DeChambeau — who has pursued YouTube golf fans more than any pro golfer in recent months — Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka. Arguably, that trio makes up LIV Golf’s three most marketable assets. It’s possible LIV will look to imitate this competition at future events, where Rahm, Koepka and DeChambeau could be further involved.
