He’s The Most Interesting Man In YouTube Golf

In a sport bursting with eccentric characters, he may just be golf’s incarnation of “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Matt Greene is a golf guru, former pilot trainee, homegrown poker player and seasoned continent-hopper whose travel log would put most of us to shame.

However, it’s his efforts in the world of YouTube golf that have truly set the South African apart.

Every golfer needs a Sidekick

As founder of the “Golf Sidekick” brand, Greene has leveraged his rich tapestry of life experiences to pioneer new ways to help golfers worldwide.

His combination of unfiltered wisdom and wit has inspired his followers (and he has more than 350,000 subscribers) to play the game using an approach rooted in simple principles of self-knowledge.

The channel is centered around the mental game and course management, encouraging golfers to grow their games around mechanical flaws rather than stubbornly trying to change them.

Most importantly, he’s done it all while standing in defiance of the corporatization that has flooded the sport, and YouTube golf, in recent years. His one-man band, no-frills approach to content creation fits with his persona of a humorous back-to-basics teacher who’s unafraid to call it how he sees it.

Growing up in South Africa as an all-around athlete, golf was just another sport on a list of many for the Golf Sidekick. Between his endeavors in cricket, field hockey and track, golf was very much a secondary pursuit.

“I never had coaching,” Greene told MyGolfSpy. “I just went out and played.”

It wasn’t until his enrollment at Johannesburg University that his true love affair with the game began to take shape. He diligently skipped classes after finding himself disenchanted by his major.

Soon, his focus steadily shifted to the world of golf.

“I used to watch BBC Food and play golf only,” Greene says. “I would go to the golf course at 6 a.m. when I was supposed to be at lectures.”

While he was meant to be learning about economics and data analysis, Greene was teeing it up with a league of 50 elderly golfers around a frighteningly tight parkland track in the heart of the city. Despite his truancy, however, he found new lessons to learn around these hometown links.

In this regard, he was an A+ student.

“I started to learn a different way through them to play the game. It was just thinking the ball around and doing strictly what you can do.”

Golf Sidekick spent his college days becoming an expert in what he affectionately termed “old man golf.” This style of play was markedly different from how he had previously approached the sport—it emphasized sharp mental management, planning and, most importantly, playing within one’s personal limitations.

In essence, he became a disciple of the dink.

Searching for purpose

Outside of golf, however, Greene found himself becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his life. Searching for a spark, he switched his major. That didn’t help.

He soon dropped out of school and began bouncing between careers.

He enrolled in flight training for a year, earning his pilot’s license before being stonewalled by a burst eardrum.

To make a livable wage, he even became a poker shark, building a sizable bankroll from near zero.

With these limited prospects, it didn’t take long for him to make a seismic decision. After finishing up his last few university credits via correspondence, he hit the reset button in definitive fashion.

“I left South Africa as soon as possible. Just sold everything I had and came to Thailand with probably about $8,000 U.S. to my name.”

It was here in his new home of southeast Asia that all of his experiences would coalesce into a new effort within the world of golf.

“I’ve always had this idea of building something from nothing. I guess that’s where Golf Sidekick comes from.”

What would become Greene’s new career began as nothing more than a website. “Words on a screen,” as he put it. GolfSidekick.com was founded as a place to share the accumulated knowledge he had gleaned from his decade-plus playing the sport—from his self-taught days back home to his time redefining the way he played in Johannesburg.

He sought to encapsulate these learnings into digestible written guides that golfers could use to improve, whether their goals were to break 100 or break par.

The website was far from an instant success. Unfazed, he persisted.

“My first affiliate check was seven dollars. I just kept going and suddenly YouTube took off out of it.”

Creating a niche in the YouTube golf space

Greene initially had begun filming videos as a method of cross-promotion. They were designed to illustrate the course management concepts discussed in his articles and ultimately funnel viewers back to the website.

This model did not last long. His straightforward style of production struck a chord with the burgeoning sphere of YouTube golf.

The channel exploded in popularity and he pivoted to focus on video production full-time.

He attributes this success at least partially to the independent approach he takes to content creation. His personal tone and to-the-point attitude stem from the stripped-down nature of his production which has remained the same feel since he began filming videos.

“We run a very, very lean team here. It’s one camera, me and an editor who helps string videos together.”

However, the primary appeal in his content lies in the robust and startlingly simple philosophy on the sport that his videos detail. In stark contrast to many of his contemporaries who sell golfing salvation in eye-catching, extravagant packages, Golf Sidekick espouses the dogma of accessible improvement.

“I think that golf, at a base level, is just a deep understanding of yourself. Everything is about you and getting better at what you can do.”

This means shutting out comparison so you can come to grips with your tendencies and abilities. It means effectively applying them to a round of golf via simple course management principles.

Most of us are not going to change our swings that much. But we can change our attitudes and strategies, such as taking less club off the tee to keep the ball in front of us.

Dubbed the “Way of the Playa,” every piece of content he puts out illustrates a component of this simplified approach to the game. The channel is intensely focused on breaking down misconceptions that challenge traditional ideas of what “must be done” to improve at the sport.

It’s a philosophy of self-empowerment via self-knowledge. Or “planting feathers to grow birdies,” as Greene would say.

“People get too caught up in being aesthetically pleasing. They try to play champagne golf with a lemonade swing.”

Instead of promising the innately flawed idea of “perfect golf,” he teaches viewers how to play a brand of the game unique to them. Functionality over style. His videos are not a one-size-fits-all remedy for lower scores—instead, they provide an overarching system for improvement applicable to all golfers.

The Golf Sidekick channel runs in the exact opposite direction of the vast majority of instructional content available on the platform. This is by design.

To him, videos centered around improving technique are utterly pointless for the consumer. The golf swing, perhaps the most varied movement in sports, requires instruction tailored to the individual in order to be effective. In Greene’s eyes, the generic solutions these videos claim to offer end up harming an someone’s game more than they help.

“(Swing tips) are opium for the masses. People get addicted to them.”

Thriving on simplicity

This is where Golf Sidekick thrives. He couldn’t care less about the minute aspects of his viewers’ techniques. Instead, he’s built a following on teaching players how to better think about the game—and themselves.

For example, understand your shot dispersions. Do you normally come up short with your irons? Think about that before you hit. Do you tend to pull-hook your 3-wood? Play to that.

Understand who you are as a golfer and play to that golfer—not the idealistic version of what you could be. Play to the shot you are more likely to hit instead of the one you might hit if everything goes perfectly.

“Better golfers have better decisions behind their golf because they’re more in-touch with themselves. A bad golfer will almost never seek self-knowledge.”

From the Golf Sidekick perspective, this issue of myopia among the golfing population has been exacerbated in the modern age. The perception of how to improve at the game has been skewed by the very platform he uses to fight back against golfing ignorance.

“People think that golf is supposed to look a certain way. That’s what they’ve been presented in a hyper-simulated, hyper-reality on YouTube and the PGA Tour.”

Greene combats this in part by keeping his videos independent and the production grounded. It’s just him and a camera, out on the course like anybody else. In a sport immersed in the deluge of “big money” from talent agencies, advertising firms and corporate conglomerates, Golf Sidekick makes it a point of pride that he has remained a solo act.

“I have a strong distaste for things being corporatized and monopolized. I don’t think basically anyone on YouTube is independent anymore, doing what they want without a corporate leash.”

In the YouTube golf world of corporate sponsorships and endless collaborations, Golf Sidekick is taking the opposite tactic.

“I’d rather crap in my own hands and clap. I’m not in it for that.”

Instead, Greene has positioned himself to take advantage of the influx of new golfers produced by these VC-funded endeavors. That environment YouTube golf finds itself in has made Golf Sidekick’s wisdom stand out as a niche in the space.

“A lot of people are coming into golf via these entertainment channels and they’re getting a harsh reality when they get to the course.

“Eventually you graduate to another level of golf where it becomes a pursuit of self-knowledge.”

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