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The most popular golf swing on YouTube doesn’t belong to Tiger Woods
You would think of all the golf swings you can find on YouTube that one from Tiger Woods would have the most popular. But according to one research project, you would be wrong.
The team at GolfSupport.com crunched the numbers and determined that the honor actually goes to 2017 Masters champion Sergio Garcia, whose clip from the 2013 Arnold Palmer Invitational—in which he was shown climbing a tree to play a one-handed shot—had 8,917,464 views. Tiger had to settle for second, with a collection of his top 10 shots on the PGA Tour garnering 8,174,705.
Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
In addition to trying to identify the most popular golf swing, GolfSupport.com also explored which was the “most valuable.” It used a methodology developed by Influence Marketing Hub to put a value on to YouTube views, which accounts for costs per 1,000 impressions (CPM) versus cost per click; estimated gross earnings per 1,000 views; estimated earnings per subscriber; and estimated variance based on video engagement.
The formula ultimately determined Garcia’s video had an estimated total earning value of $16,497. Woods’ video was second in this category two, with a value of $15,124.
Luke Donald came in a surprising third with a slow-motion look at his swing from 2011 (when he was world No. 1) with 4,191,568 views and a value of $7,754. A 2007 video of Ben Hogan’s swing and a 2013 look at Rory McIlroy’s swing round out the top five. (While McIlroy has a video with some 11 million views when he takes on a golf robot, we’re guessing it did not qualify as a swing-related video.)
The top female on the list was Michelle Wie at No. 7.
It’s not quite major win for No. 2 for Garcia, but any time you can best Woods at, well, pretty much anything, you take it.
Here are the top five as determined by GolfSupport.com, along with Wie's swing:
Sergio Garcia
8,917,464 views
$16,497 estimated total earnings value.
Tiger Woods
8,174,705
$15,124
Luke Donald
4,191,568
$7,754
Ben Hogan
4,038,316
$7,471
Rory McIlroy
2,352,587
$4,352
Michelle Wie
1,801,069
$3,332