Wesley Bryan suggests how close Grant Horvat really is to being good enough to play golf on the PGA Tour

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The gap between the top YouTube golfers and the tour professionals is definitely closing when it comes to access, with the likes of Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson very much embracing the potential of the platform.

The PGA Tour meanwhile, put on the Creator Classic ahead of the first round of the Tour Championship, with a number of names from the YouTube world getting the chance to take on the back nine at East Lake.

And of course, Wesley Bryan is a PGA Tour winner who also boasts one of the fastest growing channels alongside his brother George. With that, it is no surprise that some are tempted to debate just how good some of the best players on YouTube really are compared to some of the star names they compete against.

Grant Horvat definitely appears to be one of the most talented players on YouTube. Horvat has twice beaten Phil Mickelson after being given a five shot lead. So he is clearly a very capable player.

Wesley Bryan suggests how close Grant Horvat is to being good enough to play on the PGA Tour

But speaking in an interview with Nate Edwardson Golf, Bryan suggested that there remains a huge gulf between the level of the best YouTube players and those who make a living on the PGA Tour as he was asked about the appeal of YouTube golf.

“You brought up a good point there because yes, we differentiate ourselves from the other YouTube creators, but the biggest surge is because, whether it’s BustaJack who are very good players in their own right, or even like your Garrett Clarks or Grant Horvats, they’re very good players in their own rights, but those guys, they never have a chance in a million years to play the game professionally, but they still play a brand of golf that 97.9 percent of their audience will never obtain in their 20, 30, 40 year golfing journey,” he said.

The difference between YouTube golfers and PGA Tour players

It is alarming to think that the standard some of these guys play at is apparently nowhere near the level they need to be at if they wanted to play professionally.

Many would have watched Horvat beat Mickelson and started to wonder just how many shots they would need the six-time major champion to give them before they were even slightly competitive. And for many of us, that number would comfortably be in double figures for each nine.

But a brilliant performance in a video clearly does not tell the full story of a player’s ability. There may not be many YouTube players who would have been able to hole the putt which saw Joel Dahmen make the cut at The RSM Classic with all of the pressure which came with it.

While the best YouTube players can hit shots which probably do not look out of place on the PGA Tour, they perhaps do not have anything like the consistency that they would need for that next step.