Bryan Bros ready for their big moment at Butterfield Bermuda Championship

WEST COLUMBIA, South Carolina – Wesley Bryan is waiting.

The thermometer has yet to crest 40 degrees on this November morning, so he passes the time in this empty parking lot by talking on the phone from the warmth of his Tesla. The person on the other end? His older brother, George Bryan IV.

It doesn’t matter that they’ll see each other in a matter of minutes. Wesley was first to arrive at their destination, the golf course they recently invested in, after stopping at a local Chick-fil-A, while George is making the hour drive from his home in Aiken, South Carolina.

George and Wesley. Wesley and George.

In some ways they’re inseparable, bundled as the Bryan Bros, but their contrasting resumes also provide an illustration of this game’s unpredictable nature. They were golfers before they became successful on social media, first as trick-shot artists and now from version 2.0 of their brother act, a YouTube channel that has more than 225,000 subscribers.

The trick shots started as a gag but also earned them enough money to keep their professional golf dreams alive. But then Wesley’s career skyrocketed. He won three times on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2016, earned his lone PGA TOUR title a year later and became a top-50 player in the world.

Injuries snatched his success as quickly as it had arrived, however. The COVID-19 pandemic resuscitated the Bryan Bros accounts, but now the content focuses on their first love: playing golf. The sons of a longtime golf pro, they grew up with a driving range and short-game area in their backyard before starring for the University of South Carolina. Their father, George III, played in a PGA Championship and the RBC Heritage, the tournament Wesley won six years ago.

This week, George IV will make his PGA TOUR debut at the age of 35 while Wesley fights for his TOUR card at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship. George, the better of the brothers during their amateur days, is finally getting his taste of life on TOUR after receiving a sponsor exemption into the event.

“I've always wanted just to say I played in a PGA TOUR event, and that's going to be really cool,” George IV said last week during an interview for the "Talk of the TOUR" podcast from the trailer at Solina Golf Club, which they purchased this past spring.

He’s made a living in golf, just not in the manner he envisioned growing up. The Bryan Bros has become a sustainable business. They hired a full-time videographer who moved from Colorado to South Carolina for the role (he was a fan who would stream their content in his college classes before becoming their colleague).

And now they own a golf course. Solina Golf Club’s pro shop is currently housed out of a trailer. A few dozen balls are stacked for sale in the corner, underneath a single rack of logoed merchandise. A small refrigerator holds waters and sodas.

Photos from a 2016 visit to the George Bryan Golf Academy, the childhood practice facility of Wesley Bryan and George Bryan IV

They have high hopes for the course formerly known as Indian River Golf Club, which had fallen into disrepair. The course is being renovated, with Wesley guiding many of the changes. The plan for Solina Golf Club is to combine a strong golf course with a laid-back, welcoming environment. Their father, who held his first head pro job at the same course, will move his academy on-site. It will be rebranded the Bryan Bros Golf Academy. There’s even hopes of hosting a Korn Ferry Tour event one day.

But their most audacious plan – to become YouTubers who play on TOUR, or TOUR players who make content for YouTube – starts this week.

With two weeks remaining in the PGA TOUR season, Wesley needs a strong performance to keep his card. He currently ranks 192nd in the FedExCup Fall. His sixth-place finish at this year’s Puerto Rico Open was his first top 10 since 2017, and he's made four of his past five cuts. It’s a marked improvement from a couple years ago, when he’d apologize to his playing partners for the amount of time they’d have to spend searching for his wayward tee shots.

George IV is getting his big-league call-up after a close call earlier this year was thwarted by … who else? Both he and Wesley were in a six-man playoff in the Monday qualifier for the Wyndham Championship. Wesley grabbed one of the three spots available. George did not.

That it’s taken this long for him to play a TOUR event is a surprise after he earned All-American honors three times and shared the University of South Carolina’s Male Athlete of the Year Award in 2010 with Whit Merrifield, who now plays for the Toronto Blue Jays.

George beat future PGA TOUR winners Billy Horschel and Michael Thompson to win a college tournament in 2008. Two years later, he tied Russell Henley for first at the SEC Championship before losing in a playoff; Henley was that year’s collegiate player of the year and went on to finish T16 at the U.S. Open.

“If I had a dollar for every time I was at a PGA TOUR event, and had a PGA TOUR player tell me how good (George’s) golf swing is, I'd be a rich, rich man,” said Wesley.

Depending how the next few weeks go, tee times on TOUR could become a more common occurrence for both of them. Both brothers are entered into Q-School’s second stage. George will be playing the event for just the second time after he was medalist at pre-qualifying and birdied the final three holes to advance out of first stage (that’s good content). Wesley will need to play second stage, as well, unless he improves his FedExCup standing over the next two weeks.

Players who advance out of second stage will play PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry on Dec. 14-17. The top five finishers there earn TOUR cards for 2024, while the remainder earn varying levels of status on the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Americas.

Wesley will always have past champion’s status on the PGA TOUR, guaranteeing him at least a handful of starts per year. The DP World Tour also is an option next year, as is the Korn Ferry Tour.

Any decisions made about where they will play will be made in the context of content, however. They’re both in their 30s now – Wesley is two years younger – and have growing families. Wesley has two children, George has one and both of their wives are pregnant.

“I see me playing professional golf as more opportunities to create content and tell our stories … because it's a unique one, it's a fun one,” said George IV.

Adds Wesley: “If and when George gets a Korn Ferry Tour card, or shoot, maybe even a PGA TOUR card, I don't think that he's going to let that get in the way of what we have going on. You're not going to see him out there grinding, playing 12 weeks in a row.”

The content game is too lucrative, and the time at home too important. They’re part of a growing cadre of golfers, most of them solid amateur players, who draw large audiences with YouTube videos about their participation in the game, some even signing lucrative endorsement deals with club companies.

None of the Bryan Bros’ internet peers have won TOUR, however. The contrasting personalities of George and Wesley also make for good content and explain their divergent success on the course.

Wesley possesses a self-confidence that makes it easier to recover from mishaps, whether that be a missed fairway or the 101 he shot in a college tournament. Whereas George is the superior ballstriker, Wesley’s game is built around his aptitude around the greens: “He literally doesn’t care where he hits it,” George IV said. But that confidence comes with a biting wit that isn’t afraid to take a jesting swipe at his older brother.

Wesley is the antagonist while his older brother is a gentler soul. George possesses more empathy but his sensitive nature used to tip over into self-doubt.

Wesley contends that George was striking the ball at an elite TOUR level during his senior year of college. But too much self-induced pressure stalled George’s pro prospects, as did the self-examination that followed every mishit. It’s not a coincidence that he’s playing so well now that his professional golf career has become secondary to social media pursuits. Not only does he know that there are thousands of supporters pulling for him, but it’s also taken the edge off his perfectionism.

“I cared too much and I tried too hard,” George IV said, “but then the YouTube thing is taking the pressure off. My attitude’s way better. I believe in myself again. I’m a YouTuber, I create YouTube videos, I shouldn’t believe I can hang with PGA TOUR players on paper but I do now, and you’re seeing it in the scores. It’s cool.”

The Butterfield Bermuda Championship could be the start of the Bryan Bros’ next act.