"Give the world what they didn't know they wanted"

Thanks to YouTube, Rick Shiels has become one of the most popular and recognisable faces in golf. Here, he talks us through his journey from PGA professional to global star

- By Neil Tappin

It’s April 2015, and I’m sat down in the Trafford Golf Centre with a young PGA professional by the name of Rick Shiels. The man from Bolton is beginning to make quite a name for himself on YouTube, with somewhere in the region of 75,000 subscribers. A lot of us are still trying to get our heads around the idea of an ‘influencer’, and, back then, it would have been easy to dismiss them as something of a fad.

Now, though, Shiels boasts a staggering 2.46 million subscribers on YouTube, and millions more follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Today, whether you’re researching a holiday, buying a new television or going out for a meal, you’re likely to dip into the world of social media, where you’ll find yourself, well, influenced…

In the world of golf, bar Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, it’s probably no exaggeration to say that no one moves the needle in the game more than Rick. Certainly, no one does more to generate interest and engagement in the sport of golf. So, seven years after we first sat down, we head to Prairie Sports Village in Burnley – which is where many of his most loved videos were shot – to find out what the next chapter holds, and what he feels about the state of the game.

If I’d said to you back in 2015 that you’d be sitting here now with 2.4 million subscribers on YouTube, what would you have said?