Listen in on a Bryson DeChambeau press conference these days and there is a 99.9 percent chance the topic of his YouTube channel comes up. And it’s never him forcing the issue, either. That said, when a question about it does come up, he’s happy to ramble.
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On Tuesday at the US Open, DeChambeau was thrown a bit of a bouncer on this front. He was not asked specifically about his channel or any recent videos posted on it, including a very topical one of him playing Oakmont that has garnered over two million views. He was instead asked if any other players have asked him for advice on how to start a channel of their own. Only two, DeChambeau claimed. Well, one, really.
“Phil. Phil Mickelson has been one of the only ones to do that,” he said. “Jon Rahm has talked to me a little bit about it. He’s busy with his family, and I totally respect that, admiration for that.”
Three toddlers will certainly keep you busy. As for Mickelson, his kids are much older, giving him extra free time to contemplate diving headfirst into the content game.
“Phil has been extremely interested,” DeChambeau continued. “He sees that as also a viable option for commercialisation, the future, inspiration, education, entertainment. He did a short game series back in the day. He knows what teaching means to the public.
“It’s so funny because he’s taught me a bunch in short game, so we kind of exchange ideas in that role. He teaches me a couple things out of the bunker and wedges, and I’m like, all right, here’s something we do for our channel that makes it a little more interesting. Kind of fun stuff. It’s fun.”
DeChambeau mentioned a few key pieces of advice that have helped his channel grow immensely (DeChambeau has 2.04 million subscribers). The first is be yourself, something Mickelson has never had trouble with, the second is to do the content you want to do, and the third, perhaps the most shocking of all especially for those of us who live on the internet (not proud), is to listen to … the comment section?
“Listen to the people in the comments section,” he said. “Go through, read them all, see what they want from you. Those are the things that we look at the most. That’s why we’ve grown our channel, and I say ‘our’ because it’s a team. I’ve got a team behind me. We’ve grown our channel to over 2 million followers now and couldn’t be more thankful, and it’s literally by listening to the comments section, by looking at the comments and seeing what they want.”
In fairness, not all comments sections are created equal. On X/Twitter or Instagram, it would behoove you to avoid the comments section entirely. On YouTube, though, the crowd skews a bit more positive and engaging. Of course, there’s still plenty of haters out there. But, per DeChambeau’s advice, if you sift through all that sludge you might find a number of ideas your fans want you explore and if you can execute on them, you’re off and running. Being six-time major champion Phil Mickelson is a big plus, too. Something tells us he’ll do just fine once he gets a channel of his own up and running.
