Ryan Ruffels, a tour pro born in Florida and raised in Southern California and Australia, felt a misconception about his career developed this year. He didn’t enter a top-level official tournament, while a YouTube channel he launched was showing promise. It looked like the former amateur star who turned pro in 2016 at 17 (despite encouragement from Phil and Tim Mickelson to play college golf at Arizona State) had ditched his competitive career.

It turns out that wasn’t the case at all.

“It’s funny, I don’t post a lot of my pro golf stuff on my social media, so a lot of people were under the impression I’d given up playing pro golf and was doing YouTube fulltime,” said Ruffels, the older brother of LPGA Tour player Gabi Ruffels and son of two former pro tennis players.

The reality was quite different for Ryan, now 26, who has 20 career starts on the PGA Tour and 51 on the Korn Ferry Tour. Ruffels had simply noticed two things rise drastically over the past few years: the cost of travel expenses and the popularity of YouTube golf. So, the now-Orlando resident decided to combine the two ideas into a YouTube channel while attempting to play his way back from injury to status on a tour.

In 2022, Ruffels lost his card on the Korn Ferry Tour, and in 2023 played a handful of events on the DP World Tour’s feeder Challenge circuit.

“If you were doing it super cheap, maybe $85,000,” Ruffels said when asked the annual cost of being a tour pro. “Traveling normally without splurging, it could be $120,000. If you’re traveling a little nicer, it could cost $150,000. It’s not cheap at all, playing pro golf.”

Indeed, PGA Tour pro Michael Kim recently posted on X that his flight and hotel expenses alone for 2024 totaled more than $92,000.

Late last year, Ruffels was asked by the most popular golf personality on YouTube, English pro Rick Shiels, to play at Isleworth Country Club in Orlando. Shiels has 2.93 million subscribers—1.2 million more than Bryson DeChambeau. “That video was out of the blue, but it did really well, and I enjoyed it,” Ruffels said. “I thought, What if I created a fun way to make enough income to just cover my expenses as a pro golfer?”

Ruffels formed his YouTube channel and invested in cameras, a drone and video editors. His hustle has resulted in 31,000 subscribers and he regularly uploads videos that receive more than 50,000 and 100,000 views. His episodes have included everything from travel to instruction and matches against his sister, as well as women’s World No. 1 Nelly Korda and pro golfer/influencer Luke Kwon. “The first step for me was to break even so the channel was paying for itself, and I did,” he said. “Then I started to make some money off it, where I’m now able to sprinkle that towards my professional golf.”

So, how does one generate revenue in golf via YouTube? It’s not an exact science, but Ruffels estimates that if a video is 30 minutes long and generates 100,000 views, it could bring in between $1,500 to $3,000 from YouTube itself. That depends on the quality of the production and the average length of viewership. Brands may also want to sponsor an individual video. Players’ apparel sponsors—Ruffels is a partner of Malbon Golf—typically have performance criteria for their on-course results at tournaments and social-media targets.

Ruffels says YouTube has also had an intangible, but positive, effect on his game. “When you play a match knowing 50,000 or 100,000 people are going to watch, there’s a bit of heat,” he said.

He also thinks it’s changing the way pro golfers such as DeChambeau are connecting with fans. “Bryson was misunderstood, I believe, in a lot of ways, but through his YouTube channel, he’s become very relatable and engaging for people to watch. YouTube [allows fans to get a] deeper understanding of your personality and you’re in control of your narrative. It’s a completely different dynamic, and why you’ll see more pro golfers start to use it.”

A young Ryan Ruffels walks with Adam Scott during the 2014 Australian Masters.

Michael Dodge

Ruffels, who was 15th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking when he turned pro, also felt he was misunderstood while he struggled as a pro to live up to his reputation as a young star. In 2013, at 15, he played a practice round with Rory McIlroy at the Australian Open. The Northern Irishman won later that week, while Ruffels made the cut for a T-24 result. McIlroy followed Ruffels’ career and would send texts of advice like, “You and your game remind me of myself.”

“In a lot of ways. I copped some slack for not [progressing properly to] the PGA Tour with players I grew up with, like Lucas [Herbert] and Cam Davis,” Ruffels said of his fellow Aussies.

Of course, one of the most prominent Australians on tour is former World No. 1 Jason Day, and Ruffels said he will launch another YouTube channel in January with his close friend and former World No. 1. Day’s caddie, Luke Reardon, and pro golfer Rika Batibasaga will feature in three videos already recorded. Day, a 13-time PGA Tour winner, said, “We will do all sorts of things from fun [videos] to instructional stuff, so I think it will be interesting.”

With the potential of a playing career still ahead of him, Ruffels says YouTube offered the palate cleanser he feels he needed.

“I felt my whole life was attached to being a child prodigy,” he said. “I haven’t yet achieved the things that I would like to yet as a professional golfer. When I come back [and play more tournaments in 2025], the goal for me is to get back on a main tour. I’ll play in qualifying schools for the Australian tour and PGA Tour Americas and hopefully progress back up that ladder. I’ll have a pretty fresh outlook on things, and maybe not so much pressure on myself.”

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com