In retrospect it’s kind of amazing that golf produced not one but two mainstream crossover events this past week, with Phil Mickelson’s historic win at the PGA Championship quickly followed up by the viral video of Brooks Koepka’s bemused reaction to Bryson DeChambeau’s existence.
The video has by now been scrubbed from pretty much everywhere, an understandable decision by NBC/Golf Channel. (Regrettable, yes, but still understandable; it was never aired and was never meant to air. It’s a different situation than many prior incidents where the PGA Tour issued DMCA’s to take down newsworthy moments that were actually on the broadcast.)
Still, it’s fair to wonder how the video was leaked at all. Dylan Dethier at Golf.com took a stab at that question with his piece here, which is very much worth a read.
I started directly at the source, wondering how @RJWinfield had gotten his hands on the golf world’s hottest video of the year. Was he some undercover golf insider? A burner account for another player with an axe to grind? No. As it turns out, he’s — just a guy.
“Great question,” he told me. “I don’t have much of a story for you.”
Winfield had tracked down the video from another tweet, which had included a link to MediaSilo, which is essentially a secure way to share videos. Think YouTube, but completely private — you won’t be able to find a video on the platform unless, of course, you have the direct link. Multiple users had already posted the MediaSilo link to Twitter, but none had gained any viral traction because the video wouldn’t play natively on Twitter. Winfield was the first to download it and upload directly to Twitter. “The rest is history,” he said.
This is certainly the most plausible scenario. That video was too entertaining for someone to not want to share it once they watch, as we learned when it racked up 9.9 million views in a day. It was destined to break contain one way or another; the only way it wouldn’t have gotten out was if Golf Channel completely squashed it. Obviously they didn’t, though, and Dethier reports a very interesting possible reason why.
Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that Koepka himself had requested the clip from a Golf Channel contact to watch himself and send to friends for a laugh. He hadn’t intended for it to spread so widely, the sources said, but he might not have cared that it did, either. Remember how the video ended?
“I honestly wouldn’t even care,” Koepka said.
Maybe he meant it.
That certainly adds a bit of a twist to the proceedings! There’s a very real chance, though, that Koepka did indeed ask for it for a more private sharing, but isn’t happy with how it took off widely. (It’s Brooks Koepka, so, yeah, he’s probably not happy about it. Or anything else at any given time. I kind of love him for that.)
But while the video might be unavailable (unless you managed to grab it via download), it still became an immediate meme, and played into the news release yesterday of the latest iteration of The Match. It’s wild to think that there was a chance we never could have seen this clip, which is going to drive plenty of discussion (and be the reference point should Koepka and DeChambeau ever end up paired together, which needs to happen.) It might, in fact, get driven into the ground as a narrative, which tends to happen regardless.
Fortunately, though, for a day, we had that video to freely watch and share, and golf is a more entertaining sport thanks to things like this.
[Golf.com]
