The Real Reason Grant Horvat Isn’t Playing This Weekend
If you have spent any time on the platform formerly known as Twitter over the last few days, you have undoubtedly been caught up in the Grant Horvat drama.
After receiving a sponsor invite to play in this weekend’s Barracuda Championship in California, Horvat officially turned down the invite. Horvat publicly debated whether to accept the invitation for months, openly discussing the pros and cons of the decision with his 1.4 million YouTube subscribers. Ultimately, Horvat said no, citing the PGA Tour’s unwillingness to let him film the tournament as the primary reason.
“The rules and regulations around PGA Tour tournament play will not allow us to film. The only reason I was in the position to receive an invitation like this is because of YouTube and you all watching the videos, so if I’m going to play, we want film it. I am hopeful that this won’t always be the case,” Horvat said.
The visceral reaction to Horvat’s decision is why he was invited to the event in the first place. His tweet garnered 8.5 million impressions within 24 hours, accumulating several million more views when you add in all the golf aggregator accounts. Some say the PGA Tour is being shortsighted, sacrificing a significant amount of viewership for a second-tier event that could certainly use it. Others are calling Horvat unreasonable, saying he shouldn’t have even been invited and certainly shouldn’t expect to record it.
However, all these people are wrong. This decision has little to do with media rights or whether Horvat was deserving of the invite. The real reason is more interesting.