A Good Good Experience

Are you comfortable hitting golf shots in front of a camera? What about multiple cameras? What if you knew that a million sets of eyes might be watching your every swing? 

In recent weeks, I’ve received a lot of messages. Usually that means I’ve played well in a tournament or written a stirring article. The latest messages, however, were about a series of YouTube videos by Good Good Golf.

The company hosted the inaugural Good Good Championship last month at the Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. It introduced the tournament—to its following of well over a million—earlier this year as a no-entry-fee event, with a $100,000 purse. Good Good’s mission for the event was to find the next great tour pro and support his journey. Hopeful competitors filled out an application and sent introductory videos explaining why they should be chosen for the 63-player competition. 

I knew of Good Good Golf because of Luke Kwon, a professional golfer who I first met in Hong Kong during a PGA Tour China event in late 2018. Kwon was a rising professional golfer with a videography hobby. That hobby eventually landed him on the team at Good Good Golf. Until Kwon joined the team, I was ignorant of the audience devoted to YouTube golf personalities and their content. 

Early one morning in March, while my son, Miles, cuddled with me on the couch, I made an application video for the Good Good Championship. It was one continuous take, a couple of minutes in length without any production value; just earnestness sprinkled with a toddler’s charm. It worked. Before I knew it, I was reading a non-disclosure agreement from the tournament.

I had never had to sign an NDA to enter a golf tournament, and that gave me pause. The other competitors and I would be sworn to secrecy until the results of the tournament were released in a series of videos on YouTube. One of Dylan’s famous lyrics came to mind: “When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.” I signed. 

The 63-player field was filled by golf personalities and full-time professional golfers. The format was an initial qualifying round after which 12 players would advance to a 36-hole tournament. The winner would take home $50,000. The guy who finished 12th would pocket about $1500.

I was paired with Scott Fawcett, the founder of Decade Golf, and professional golfer, Ryan Sullivan. Fawcett and I go way back, as he has helped me analyze PGA Tour tournament courses. I had never played with him but knew he was seriously working on his game for a run at the Champions Tour. He texted me as soon as the pairings were released. I joked I’d know the optimal strategy by watching what he hit off the tee all day. 

The courses at Westin Kierland Resort are playable for all skill levels—interpret that as easy for pros. The fairways and greens are generous, and that invites aggressive play. If the greens became firm and fast, and the holes were cut in tricky places, the course might be protected. Everyone who played a practice round, however, knew they would have to go low if they wanted to advance. 

“Nothing says ‘mini-tour event’ like those branded, feather flags around a putting green,” Ryan French, my colleague at Monday Q Info, has been known to say. The Good Good team had the branded flags to accompany customized tee markers. Your classic tournament goody box filled with tees, sunscreen, and energy bars, sat on the 1st tee. 

Jim Nantz opens the Masters broadcast with “hello, friends.” Good Good personality Tom "Bubbie" Broders opens the debut Good Good Championship video with, “Early morning. Good Good Championship. It is the qualifying round. It feels good to be up this early. It doesn’t happen often for your boy.” 

I rode with Fawcett in the qualifying round. He had recently deleted his Twitter account and felt refreshed by the decision. I enjoy his company and his willingness to engage in conversation, no matter the subject. He recounted a heated Twitter exchange with CBS reporter Colt Knost during the Masters about optimal strategy on Augusta National’s 350-yard 3rd hole, known as “Flowering Peach.” As he described the interaction, it was evident Fawcett was going to be much happier without Twitter. 

Fawcett played well and aggressively, and we both arrived on the 17th tee at 4 under par. Sullivan had struggled on the greens all day, but his shot on the 210-yard par-3 never left the flag. It was one of those shots that didn’t need any luck to go in. We watched as physics took over. The cameras were rolling as the ball bounced straight and disappeared into the hole, and the group celebrated. 

I closed with two birdies to qualify. Fawcett faltered, and despite his hole-in-one, Sullivan didn’t have a chance. 

The leaderboard was wiped clean for the final 36 holes. My 6-under par score from the qualifying round was only one stroke behind the leaders, so I was naturally disappointed by the restart. But on this course, every player had to shoot a low score every day. We’d all go out and have to do it again. 

With 63 players to follow, the production team had covered the preliminary qualifying round broadly. The opening round of the 36-hole final was different. The 12 finalists were split into three foursomes with two Good Good personalities commentating on each group, and a handful of cameras available to document each shot. 

As I made my way down the 1st fairway, I counted five cameras and 12 carts carrying the production team. Having been a subject of Fire Pit Collective’s documentary series The Grind, I had become accustomed to being around a camera or two, but the scale of this shoot was immense. It seemed as if Good Good Golf had contracted every production contractor in the industry to make sure no moment went uncovered. 

After the opening hole chaos, I hit my tee shot on the 2nd hole into the greenside bunker on the 4th! It wasn’t what I had envisioned. We weren’t even two holes in and I could feel my heart racing. The ball sat in a depression on a downslope, 140 yards away, with trees between my ball and the green. The commentators whispered quietly, assessing the significant difficulty of the shot. 

The contact was clean and the ball easily flew over the trees. It drifted right of my target and disappeared over the desert. After a delay, I heard a few distant claps and the commentators told me my shot was good. An advantageous short-sided bounce kicked my ball back onto the green and inside of 15 feet. I rolled the putt in the middle of the hole for an unlikely early birdie and breathed a sigh of relief.

I didn’t know it then, but that shot might have been the most discussed moment of the opening round in the Good Good comments. I usually expect birdies to be followed by cheers, but in the golf content world, you find applause in the comments section.

My ball stubbornly avoided falling in the hole for most of the day, which left me four off the lead after a 2-under-par round. The improbable birdie from the bunker also won me viewer sympathy for so many burnt edges throughout the day. 

“If Mark’s putts only fell today…,” was the theme in the YouTube comments.

Starting the final round four strokes behind on a benign day, I had to get hot early. I flared my opening drive into another fairway, hit my approach over some small trees and rolled in a 10-footer. Thanks to birdies on two of the next three holes, I climbed the leaderboard. But I wasn’t alone. 

I closed the front nine in 4 under par and expected to be high on the leaderboard. Little did I know the leaders weren’t backing down. That became evident when I got to 5 under through 12 holes on the day but didn’t see any additional cameras rushing in to document my round. I simply wasn’t making up enough ground. I signed for a 7-under 64.

Out of respect for the Good Good team (not the NDA), I won’t ruin the ending for those who haven’t watched. I played well, but not well enough. The player who won elevated his game to another level and wasn’t going to be caught. I don’t know if Good Good found the next great tour pro as its mission stated. Who can predict that sort of thing? All I know is you’ll be hearing more about him in the years to come, and $50,000 pays for a lot of tournament expenses.

I can’t imagine how overwhelming all of the footage was for video editors. Within weeks, they were tasked with cutting down hundreds of hours of raw footage into a coherent tournament story. In an extraordinary feat, the Good Good editors produced a handful of stylish videos that included every shot in the final two rounds. 

My social media messages have been busier than normal since the videos dropped. All of the messages came from passionate young players and have been overwhelmingly supportive. 

I’ve been recognized on random driving ranges as “one of the guys in the Good Good tournament.” Golfers tell me how much they were pulling for me. 

“Dude, we’re big fans!” one golfer said. “We were so excited to watch.” 

“Those last two videos are, like, 10 hours long,” I said. “How much did you watch?”

“It was epic!” came the reply. “I binged all of it.”

Seeing such an enthusiastic response made me proud to have been a part of the event. The Good Good team built an inspired community of young golfers who understand having fun on the golf course is the game’s greatest gift.

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