Brad Dalke is used to playing in a different arena. This past weekend in Germany, the YouTube golf creator, who recently left Good Good Golf, stepped back into the competitive professional arena for the first time in six years. The four-day experience at the BMW International Open, which Dalke played on a sponsor invitation, left him feeling a different sort of pressure than his fellow competitors.
“It’s a weird mixture of there’s no stress because I’m not out here fighting for points and I’m not grinding every week on the [DP World Tour] season, but also I do kind of represent YouTube golf in a way,” Dalke said after Friday’s second round. “There’s a lot of people who love YouTube and love watching me, and they vouch for me, so I’m trying to prove it for them as well.”
But he left Golfclub München Eichenried on Sunday after a T30 finish, hoping that more opportunities like the one given to him by BMW come his way — an invite from sponsors who want to draw eyeballs to their event, the kind of younger eyeballs the YouTube sensation attracts.
“I would love it,” Dalke said after the final round. “I mean, it’s not my call, but if there are any sponsors out there who want to give me a chance, I would love to. It was such a fun week. “I’ve played so much competitive golf in my life, but it’s been a while since I was in this kind of arena. Once I got into it, though, I felt right back at home, and it’s fun.
“It’s a constant grind out there, a constant battle trying to bring that swing from the range under pressure, it’s frustrating sometimes but very rewarding when you do well with it. I mean, what a week, and I’d love to play more.”
Dalke vaulted into contention on Friday via a six-under 66 that saw him sit two shots off the lead. Dalke quickly faded over the weekend as he posted five bogeys in a five-over 75 on Saturday. He followed that with a 73 on Sunday to finish in a tie for 30th.
Despite exiting the top of the leaderboard over the weekend, Dalke, who was a golfing prodigy in his youth, found something different in Germany — something that millions of viewers and 64s on YouTube don’t provide: proof of how good his good still is when firing on all cylinders.
“It’s also been cool to see how I stack up against these guys this week, I hadn’t really gotten the chance to test that out in a long time, and I always tell people, when I’m playing my best golf, I think I can compete with anybody,” Dalke said on Sunday. “I just have to get a lot better on the days I’m playing kind of average and not so great, that’s where these guys beat me. I putted well, just didn’t have my best ball striking.
“So, I need to get better, but I know that without having my best stuff this week I still made the cut, still had a decent finish, which is cool to see and gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.”
Once upon a time, Brad Dalke appeared to be a meteor in golf. He won the 2015 Junior PGA Championship and was runner-up at the U.S. Amateur the following summer. That earned him spots in the 2017 Masters and the U.S. Open. He helped Oklahoma win the national championship and then turned pro in 2019. Big things were supposed to be ahead, but Dalke battled driver yips and eventually flamed out on the mini tours.
His turn to YouTube golf, which included joining Good Good, helped reignite his love for the game, which had been drained as he tried to grind on the mini tours. He became a YouTube sensation and was on the team that won the Internet Invitational.
“Doing the whole YouTube scene has been unbelievable,” Dalke said during a walk-and-talk in Germany. “Before I got into YouTube, I was not having very much fun with golf, not loving golf very much. Was going through a lot of struggles. YouTube helped me learn to have fun with golf again.”
Dalke had fun in Germany this past week. At times, he looked the part with flashes of his golf-prodigy self surfacing as he climbed the leaderboard early. What he found is that he’d love to play professionally as much as possible, but on his terms.
“YouTube has been great the last few years,” Dalke said. “And I’m at the point now where I’m doing well enough on YouTube; I don’t need to go grind through PGA Tour Americas. Korn Ferry, like, that’s not what I want to do because there is not a whole lot of money in that, and it’s very stressful and a lot of travel, and so it’s a point of I’m in a good spot with YouTube. I’m not going to grind my way up.
“But if I were to come to an event like this and play well and somehow kind of build off that or playing in the Rocket Classic in a month, if I do well there and kind of build off that, if I got a tour card, that’d be awesome. That’d be sick. I would play 100 percent. That’s been my dream since I was little is to play competitive golf. And my game’s finally in a spot now where I feel like I can do that and do it well. So it’s a yes, I would play if I got a tour card, I would 100 percent do that.”
He’ll get two opportunities on the PGA Tour coming up, as he is slated to play on sponsor invites at the Rocket Classic and the Good Good Championship. Then, Brad Dalke will hope more sponsors give him a shot in the arena he once thought his path would take him to. And he’ll approach any start he gets with a lesson he learned when YouTube reignited his love of golf.
“That’s one thing I’ve learned a lot from YouTube is when I’m out there just having a good time, that’s usually when I play my best,” Dalke said on Friday. “So no expectations. Go have a great time. If I have a great day, awesome. If I have a terrible day, it is what it is. It’s golf. It’s a hard game. So just go out there and have a great time. No expectations and see what we can do.”
