Robby Berger wasn’t much of a golfer. He wasn’t “known.” Guest service managers usually aren’t, even at the L.A. Four Seasons. But these days? The 34-year-old is one of the most-watched golfers on the planet. He still can’t break 80, but he’s leaned on his plus-handicap personality to go platinum, his every Bob Does Sports YouTube video commanding seven-figure views, just one arm of an expanding media empire built on good times. Can Bob and friends finish 36 doughnuts in nine holes? Can they beat Xander Schauffele in a match? Josh Allen? LeBron James? Berger reflected on the journey on GOLF’s all-new “Drop Zone” show. Here’s an excerpt, edited and condensed for clarity for the latest issue of GOLF Magazine.
And yes, this was before LeBron announced his own YouTube Golf intentions.
Dylan Dethier: I’m curious: What do you tell your parents’ friends that you do for a living?
Robby Berger: That’s a good question. I [usually] say YouTube, and their first question is always, “Do you make money off of it?” They’ll just go right into it. I tell them it’s kind of a radio show with advertisements. But if my parents aren’t around and there’s no chance somebody’s going to get [what I’m talking about], I tell them I still work at the Four Seasons.
DD: Who was it—maybe Max Homa—who said that when he’s in an Uber, to try to simplify the conversation, he’ll tell the driver that he’s in real estate.
RB: [Laughing] Correct! At least with Max, it’s golf. With YouTube, it’s like, people don’t get it.
DD: It’s my understanding that you’re not really a golf lifer. Has your interest in the game mirrored its rise in popularity among athletes and, specifically, among guys your age?
RB: The more we’ve done Bob Does Sports, the more I’ve fallen in love with [golf]. We hit the perfect storm when we started releasing videos—right around Covid, when things really started to pop. The thing that helps us, and it’s not on purpose, [is that] a lot of the YouTube [golfers] you see are sticks, [which makes hacks like us] relatable. People say, “Bob plays bad on purpose.” You can’t give me that much credit, because I’m trying.
DD: Having interviewed famous people and now having become famous yourself, have you experienced a change in perspective? Do you see celebrity differently now?
RB: What’s eye-opening for me is how people handle it. With every single interaction you can tell who handles it well and who doesn’t. Like, I hope there never comes a day where it makes sense for us to be playing golf with LeBron James, or it makes sense for us that we’re playing with Max Homa. I always want that rush of going to a course—like, “I can’t believe we’re doing this with Max Homa!”
DD: How do you think YouTube golf is trending, because there’s a crazy amount of interest right now. Are we in the middle of something that will keep growing? And are there ways Bob Does Sports will have to adapt in order to stay ahead of the curve?
RB: It’s a good question and one we talk about all the time. I’ve tried to set everything up where, if YouTube is done tomorrow, I’m still in a good spot. Talking to somebody like Jet, our producer, he’s so glass-half-empty. Like, “It’s all going to go away!” But the way I see it—and, of course, I could be wrong—is I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon. What I think you’re going to start to see is what we did with the Internet Invitational. You have so many eyeballs on this that I think it’s going to continue to grow and grow. I think the thing that’s hard to do is— if you’re putting out a video every week, it’s like, All right, how do you change it up? So, getting creative on that front [is important].
DD: What do you do to get away from the fact that so much of your life now is content?
RB: To be completely honest, I love it so much that it’s what makes me happy. There’s so many videos out there of me since I was a kid. I was always filming stuff; I was always doing content. So that’s always been in me. But there’s the business side of it where, mentally, I need a break at times.
DD: Recently, you shot a Bob Does Sports video with LeBron James. You guys get up to a lot of nonsense just being yourselves. That’s part of the beauty of your show. Is there different pressure, then, when LeBron is on the channel and you have him for X amount of time?
RB: Yeah, for sure. I wanted to make the most of it. Like, I knew we had nine holes [with him], and there’s so many things you could ask him. Obviously, when there’s a big guest coming on [the show], I make sure I’m ready to go. I probably prepared for LeBron as much as anybody. The two guests I’ve prepared most for were LeBron and the guy who killed Osama bin Laden.
DD: What shoot did you prepare for harder?
RB: The bin Laden [guy], because I had more time. I spent maybe at least a month preparing. I mean, I felt like I could have shot bin Laden at [that] point.
DD: LeBron probably wasn’t even on your wish list when you started Bob Does Sports, because he didn’t play golf when you first got into this. Now that he’s teed it up with you, do you have a wish list that maybe doesn’t seem quite as crazy as it once did?
RB: I think Michael Jordan could do one of the funniest things of all time and come on the channel—after seeing LeBron on there, I think that would be absolutely hysterical.
A guy that I’ve wanted a while to come on the show … I like guys who you haven’t seen too much on YouTube, and I want Jordan Spieth so bad on the channel. I think he would be such a fun get. So, him. Rory. But Michael Jordan coming on would, I think, be the funniest thing of all time.
DD: Summing up, how is it that someone as big as LeBron James ended up playing golf on your channel? How do you make sense of it?
RB: Well, I think we’re just very authentic to ourselves, and people can see us having a good time. What you see is what you get with the channel, and I think LeBron appreciated that and just wanted to go out and have a good time. If you’re being somebody you’re not, it just doesn’t have a ton of longevity. And I hope we do have longevity because of who we are. So I think if we just keep being ourselves, keep having fun and showcasing that in a good light, really anything’s possible. And, hopefully, people want to keep tuning in.
