LeBron James is officially a YouTube golfer. The 41-year-old future basketball Hall of Famer has become the latest athlete to become golf-crazed and he is taking his new hobby extremely seriously.
James has spoken multiple times about how much YouTube golf he watches, and even played a round on the Bob Does Sports channel earlier this year. That apparently got him interested in launching his own channel to follow his journey in the game, and he dropped his first video on Saturday morning — a 3 vs. 3 scramble with some of his 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers teammates in Scotland.
James teamed up with Richard Jefferson and Kevin Love to take on J.R. Smith, Channing Frye and Tristan Thompson — who clearly had never played golf prior to this trip — for the first half of the video, and then James, Smith and Frye are the only ones who go back out the next morning after they called it early for rain.
It is a cool glimpse into a buddy’s trip between six incredibly famous people who end up being just like every buddy’s golf trip. There is a lot of trash talking, beverages being consumed and golf shots of varying quality. Smith takes the role of the best player in the group who can’t take a compliment from his much worse friends and is too hard on himself.
James and Love are the two who aren’t very good now but clearly want to be and beat themselves up for every bad shot. Frye ends up being the sneaky MVP as he catches fire on the greens and taunts LeBron with his “Cleveland, this is for you!” line.
In between there’s a very cool, honest conversation about the realities of retirement and how challenging it is as a former pro athlete to lose that identity — with Smith and Jefferson talking about how they still haven’t come to terms with it.
The most entertaining part of the video is the banter between buddies — which is often the case for YouTube golf channels — and LeBron’s venture being successful will come down to whether he’s able to create that feeling with other groups in the same manner that comes through with his longtime friends and former teammates here.
James plans to release a video each month on his channel, documenting his newfound love affair with the game.