The inside story of LeBron James’ surprising YouTube Golf debut

How do you set up a round of golf with LeBron James?

You ask him if he wants to play a round of golf.

“I said, you know what, I’m just gonna take a shot at it,” said Robby Berger, speaking to me on the latest episode of our Golf Stuff show. “I said, ‘Is there any chance you would want to play, even if it’s just nine?’ He’s like, ‘Definitely, let’s do it.’ So it really was set up pretty much through me and LeBron, as crazy as that is.”

That’s the simplest version of what would have, a few years ago, been considered an impossibly unlikely crossover. James wasn’t a golfer. Neither was Berger, for that matter. And YouTube Golf has only recently become its own universe.

There’s more to the story. It helps your chances of playing golf with James, of course, if James has quietly — or not so quietly — been watching you play golf with your friends. And even though James’ golf obsession is less than a year old, what he lacks in experience he’s made up for with enthusiasm; he’s watched dozens of hours, Internet Invitational included, shouting out various members of the YouTube Golf mafia on social media and in post-game press conferences as he’s gone. So even though it was still surprising to see James teeing it up alongside Berger and his merry band of golf buddies, the team behind Bob Does Sports, there were signs.

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James’ obsession is a story on its own. He is endlessly interesting, and so is the way he chooses to spend his time, and I was curious to ask Berger about the mechanics of how you actually secure nine holes of golf with one of the most famous athletes — hell, one of the most famous people — in the world.

But it’s also interesting as part of a larger trend. Golf participation remains sky-high and trending up, and it’s noteworthy that top athletes across sports — think Mike Trout or Carlos Alcaraz or Josh Allen or Lando Norris or Caitlin Clark or dozens of others — are diving headfirst into the game. That coincides with the rise of YouTube Golf, which has demonstrated the appetite for competition outside top-pro tournaments. James watches live golf, too; he was part of the Tommy Fleetwood fan club last summer and was dialed into this year’s Masters.

But he seems locked in on the YouTube scene — to the point where Berger said he knew the entire team by name even as he arrived. And while the round clearly scratched an itch for LeBron, it was also a massive get for Berger and Co., who are rarely starstruck these days but found themselves awed by James’ presence.

“When LeBron got there, he knew everybody’s name, production, like everything, and I keep posting the clip, I keep laughing at it,” Berger said. “He goes to say hello to Joe [Joey Cold Cuts, another BDS troupe member], and Joe, in his mind, like, knew what he was gonna say to LeBron, and he came up, and he asks how his son’s doing, his one-year-old son. [LeBron] is like, ‘How’s Luca doing?’ And whatever Joe had on his mind, he just wasn’t ready for that. So his mind just goes into a blender and he’s trying to get the words out, but he’s stuttering. He’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, the, uhh—.’

“He can’t get it out and I just thought it was so funny and I don’t blame Joe because I can only imagine having a kid and LeBron asks how your kid’s doing, but that was to me just the funniest moment.”

Before long, though, they settled into the natural rhythm of golf, helped by the fact that James likes them — and that, on the course, he’s just a “big kid.”

“It was interesting because he really is probably the most criticized, speculated athlete I think of our time,” Berger said. “A lot of people are either on one side or the other with him. He’s a family guy and he’s a big kid. He just loves to have fun. He loves to mess around. He’s a huge jokester. And I’ve been talking to him a ton even since we went out and played and he truly loves the game and going out and having a good time and he doesn’t take himself too seriously at all — of course, I haven’t seen him day-to-day on the basketball side of things, but everything outside of it he really does just love to have fun. And I think he’s gotten to a point where his career where he is so used to any criticism that he gets like that he really is able to block so much of it all out.”

For more behind-the-scenes with James, Berger’s prediction on where YouTube golf is headed and an epic tequila-and-roof scene from after they wrapped filming that day, check out the interview on YouTube or at the embed below.