The most talked about golf tournament right now has nothing to do with the PGA Tour or LIV. Instead, it’s an online event attended by dozens of gaming’s most influential people. The game was filmed several months ago and is currently being released one episode at a time on YouTube.
“Golf is an incredible tool for recreation,” said Sam “Riggs” Bozoian, host of the Barstool Sports “Fore Play” podcast, on this week’s episode of Subpar. “That’s why YouTube Golf exists. Not just to watch great golf shots.”
Case in point: the aforementioned Internet Invitational, a tournament created exclusively for YouTube hosted by Barstool Sports and BobDoes Sports, with 48 celebrities vying for a $1 million grand prize. The game was an instant hit, with each episode racking up millions of views online as soon as it was released – despite each being quite long, with the first one clocking in at nearly four hours.
Is that part of the charm of the tournament? A villain suddenly appears in the first episode. (Golf’s Dylan Dether has a great breakdown of the situation here, but in short: Rival Luke Kwon missed his tee time, upsetting his teammates, and Kwon showed zero remorse. Shocking!)
How does Bozoian, the captain of an Internet invitational tournament team, feel about people’s reaction to Quan? He shared his thoughts in the studio with Subpar hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz.
“It’s funny because when we were done and we looked back, we were all happy. We all thought it went well,” Bozoan said. “We all thought the show was so crazy. Looking back, I didn’t even think about the Luke Kwon situation. That’s why so many other things happened, like, how great it became. I didn’t even think about it.
“I’m the captain of the other team, so I’m already happy that he slept in, I’ve already said thank you to him, but I would go up to him again and say, the best thing that happened is that you slept in,” he continued. “It took over the internet. It was terrible for him. And, for a guy who just slept on it, it was a crazy build-up. So honestly, I feel bad for Luke Kwon to a certain extent, and he could have handled it better after the fact.
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“We can all handle boos better in our lives, so whatever. But for him to then go and like this supervillain because he just likes to sleep in and then not be overly apologetic, it’s probably not worth how many boos he gets.”
Bozoian said the criticism Kwon received when it came to Barstool often came from within the field.
“We’ll call you out on your nonsense—” he said. “We hold everyone accountable, and people like and tend to conflict. That’s how Barstool works.”
