How this AFL trio are riding the wave of a YouTube craze

YOU CAN almost hear the ball fizz as it thuds into the green.

It is a golf swing executed nearly to perfection, and now the ball is feeding back towards the hole. It has been struck just beyond the flagstick, but with enough backspin for the ball to bite against the surface and roll agonisingly just past the cup. It eventually stops, just a couple of yards shy of its intended target.

For a footballer with one of the most lethal right-foot kicks in the game, Bailey Dale makes for a decent leftie golfer. And for a player who had 49 disposals in a match earlier this year, who is an All-Australian and has played in an AFL Grand Final, had he holed this effort it might have been his greatest athletic accomplishment to date.

But while there are howls of anguish from Dale, there’s no time to reflect. Within an instant, thoughts turn to business. “Did we get that?” his Western Bulldogs teammate, Anthony Scott, yells out to a videographer standing on the edge of the tee box. Staring down at a controller guiding the drone that’s zipping around overhead, there’s an approving nod coming back at him. It’s all on camera.

This is ‘Duck Hook Golf’ and it’s growing. Quickly. It started as a passion project, hatched from an idea Scott had while lifting weights in the gymnasium at the Whitten Oval. He had always been obsessed with golf, loved the increasing popularity of ‘YouTube golf’ even more, and wanted in. Together with Dale and fellow Bulldogs teammate Oskar Baker, the trio sat down and formulated a plan to create similar content of their own.

“I’d had an idea to start my own channel and I approached ‘Bakes’ and Bailey and asked if they were keen to jump on board,” Scott tells AFL.com.au. “After that, we started ‘Duck Hook Golf’ and filmed every now and then when we were playing. Now, it’s evolved into filming a fair bit more and we’re absolutely loving it.”

While it was initially just a bit of fun, Scott began to recognise a gap in the market. Every golfer he was following on YouTube was American. With golf quickly becoming one of the most popular participation sports on Australian shores as well, why weren’t there more Aussies capitalising on its rising status online?

“I watched a lot of ‘Good Good Golf’ early on,” Scott says. “I just accidentally stumbled upon them on YouTube and loved their stuff. A lot of those guys have branched out and gone solo, but I still watch them. But they’re all in the US. There’s not really that many guys in Australia doing it.”

The Bulldogs boys are now serious about their content creation venture. While it still takes a back seat to footy – they’ll only ever play on days off, on longer weeks, or whenever an afternoon is free and carts are available to save their legs – they realise the ‘Duck Hook’ brand is taking off.

They’ve got 4K camera equipment, wireless microphones and drones to capture the action, while they use pinpoint ball-tracing technology to add to the spectacle for viewers. They’ve even got their first employee, Charles Murray, a young videography and editing whiz who approached the trio about shooting and uploading their every moment on the course.

“The biggest limiter for us was actually holding the camera,” Scott says. “We don’t have too many skills when it comes to videography or editing. We love playing golf and having that burden on us to shoot low scores, while holding a camera … to have Charles there holding the camera for us is lifechanging in that regard.

“It’s probably going to up our content five-fold. We meet every second day to chat through what we’re going to do for the week. It’s just really easy, knowing that in this content game it’s all about producing and producing and producing, and staying relevant. Having a plan to produce a lot of videos, and having someone to do that for us, is so helpful and will allow the brand to grow exponentially.”

But it helps that they’re all very, very good golfers as well. Dale’s handicap has dipped into the 3s recently, Baker is into the 4s, while Scott is in the 7s. Across a leisurely afternoon round earlier this week, there’s glimpses of this talent – and the understandable frustration that often helps to provide some of their content’s lighter moments – on full display. All of it is caught by Charles, ready to be clipped up and sent out virtually straightaway.

The highlight nearly arrives when Dale comes within inches of holing a short par three. But that perhaps wasn’t even his best shot of the day. After grabbing for a three wood at a 291m par four, he cuts a dogleg by going over the trees and lands it within a few feet of the hole. The fact he’s hardly moved by the ball’s position when he arrives in his cart moments later suggests this might be a regular occurrence.

Baker stripes his first off the tee, a good sign of things to come. But after stalking around the lie on his birdie attempt a few minutes later, he realises he’s left his putter on the practice green. It was perhaps a fairer reflection of what was to come, as he spends much of the day scrambling crafty shots from difficult spots on the course.

“The week-to-week of footy obviously has its up and downs with the wins and losses,” Dale says. “But when we get on the course, we don’t even think about that. We get out, we love filming it, we love playing the game, we just have fun. It’s a different sort of outlet, away from the club and away from the spotlight. We enjoy that time with each other.”

On this particular afternoon, the content is designed for short-form pieces to roll out on the ‘Duck Hook’ social media channels. There’s a three-hole stroke play challenge, a nearest-to-the-pin competition, and other battles designed to work as giveaways for their followers. But their future is more ambitious.

They have already started producing ‘Duck Hook’ merchandise – balls, polos, caps, vests, towels and more – while they see their content future on YouTube. That’s where they can flex with the type of creative, long-form features they’re interested in pursuing as the brand continues to grow.

Getting teammates to join them on their channel is helped by the fact that golf is incredibly popular at the Whitten Oval. This weekend, there’s a 26-player sweep that’s been organised for The Open Championship – golf’s final major event on the 2025 calendar – while the likes of Tim English, Ed Richards and Taylor Duryea are also renowned among the AFL’s best golfers.

Rory Lobb also has his own golf pages on social media – and plays off against Scott on the picturesque Jack’s Point course in Queenstown, New Zealand, in a video on their YouTube channel – while the ‘Duck Hook’ crew have even organised an event against Australian professional Ben Wharton that has featured online as well.

But this is just the start. As footballers across the competition continue to hunt for ways to switch off away from the field – and look towards life after footy, as well – ‘Duck Hook’ has become the perfect creative avenue for this trio of talented Dogs. While footy remains their ultimate priority, golf isn’t a bad outlet to have bubbling away in the background.

“It’s great to be able to do this,” Baker says. “To have something that we enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis, getting out and playing golf and then filming content and also moving into merchandise, it’s great. We love it.”