Despite only starting out on YouTube to boost his coaching profile and pad out his teaching diary, Rick Shiels has become one of the most trusted authorities in terms of golf equipment reviews.
It's been quite a journey for the man from Bolton, who has risen to international stardom and recently started working with LIV Golf, a move he admits he received some backlash for.
It's not the first time he's been under the spotlight in his career, though. Indeed, his first ever club review actually landed him in a bit of trouble with sporting behemoth (and lately one of his main sponsors) Nike…
Back when Nike had just entered the golf equipment market in the early 2000s, a local rep visited the driving range where Rick worked to show off the new products – specifically the drivers.
Shiels decided to cheekily take a chance and asked if he could briefly borrow the drivers for a hit on the range. As they were demos, the rep gladly obliged.
So Rick quickly set up a couple of cameras in his coaching bay and recorded around 15 minutes of footage of him hitting shots and gathering data before returning the drivers to the rep.
Later that day, he recorded a voiceover of the session and posted it on his YouTube channel. Unfortunately, at that stage of his career he had never heard of the concept of a product embargo, and unbeknown to Shiels he had inadvertently broken one and given the general public its first glimpse of the sporting giant’s new driver!
Unsurprisingly, the video generated a lot of interest and marked the beginning of his club-reviewing journey.
And what an unbelievable journey it's been since then. But does Shiels intend to carry on making YouTube videos indefinitely?
"No, I don’t want to be an old man making YouTube videos if I’m honest. People might already say I’m an old man making YouTube videos, but what’s the saying? You’ll never work a day in your life if you do something you love," he says.
"And I’ve been very fortunate, really. I’ve loved making content. I’ve loved travel. It’s been better than my wildest dreams and I don’t know when it will really hit me.
But I don’t want it to last forever. I feel like there’s a natural pathway to pass it on to the new youthful creators who are coming through. It’s great to see and I want that to continue.
Maybe I’ll take a managerial role, maybe setting up a management company to help new YouTubers coming through onto the scene. I’ve always had this idea of setting up YouTube channels that aren’t in golf – almost taking the knowledge that we’ve learned in golf and applying it to another sport.
Padel is huge at the moment. Could we find the next Rick Shiels in padel potentially or the next Good Good in Padel? Who knows? But I think that’s a nice pathway to go down.
And I’m really excited about the kids’ programme that I want to set up. If, in five years, that’s what I’m doing, I’d be really, really happy introducing kids into golf and having hundreds of thousands of kids coming into the system. I would be delighted with that."
