The putt-putt champions of the internet

25:10them. But if you play the games and lose them on your main channel, you could end up in real trouble. So you have to build a whole pipeline that eventually lands the best stuff and only the best stuff on your most important platform. And for the Siniquis, that most important platform, at least when it comes to the mini golf, is TikTok. Really, everything just gets posted to TikTok first, and then Steven will take it from TikTok, throw it onto Instagram. and then when we do post it on YouTube, it's a fresh voiceover. It's a new voiceover. So it's pretty similar, but maybe a few different talking points for our YouTube viewers.

25:51But really, it just kind of gets posted all the same to all different platforms. And it's interesting to see how each one grows. Sometimes a video on Instagram will go viral, but it won't go viral on TikTok. but sometimes usually we see the same thing if a video does well on TikTok it most likely performs well on Instagram and then YouTube is just pretty consistent just we're continuing to grow our YouTube page and we're starting to see more success with it as we go okay have you have you developed a pretty good theory of what's going to work and what doesn't like when you post something can you usually predict whether it's going to hit big or not?

26:32Yeah, I would say so. Although right now on Instagram, there's a match between Steven and Carter that there's two videos with a bunch of views, like 800 ,000 and 300 ,000. And on TikTok, it didn't perform as well as that. So it's all kind of a gamble. And sometimes I like to think I know, but then I'm like, wait, maybe I don't know. Carter is another new entrant to the Twin Tour universe. He won a tournament the guys threw for some fans who wanted to play with the Twin Tour guys. Like I said, people like talking trash to Steven and Danny and telling them that they're better. So they gave him a chance to be better.

27:11The tournament went great, and they want to do more of them, both as a way to make money and as a way to generate even more content to put on their channels. Because, as I said, the only thing that is always true about every content platform is that there is no such thing as too much content. Over the course of the last year, Stephen and Danny have really started to think more strategically about what they're doing. Not just making mini-golf content and putting it out. Not even just making lots of mini-golf content and putting it out. But really trying to set this thing up to succeed in a much bigger way for a much longer time.

27:46Because really, in any moment when you as a creator are having that first viral hit moment, you can kind of pick two things. You can either do one or the other. You can keep the thing going as long as possible, knowing that nothing on the internet lasts forever. Or you can try and leverage that moment of virality to build something more sustainable. Steven and Danny tried to do both. Pretty quickly, they decided to make their golf content their full-time jobs. And they started to structure their lives in a way that could make that work. Yeah, so typically Monday through Wednesday, we'll want to film at least a YouTube video.

28:28And we shoot for a few regular season tournaments early in the weeks. And then kind of the schedule of everyone that plays with us, they have jobs, they have other things going on. So we typically try to film after work or on a weekend if it's a big major or a bracket-style tournament where we have eight players in the field. We'll try to do those on the weekend. But other than that, so we try to find times that work for everyone. And then when we're not filming, we're always editing or doing voiceovers and uploading all the content. This all sounds like a lot of work to me. I tried a bunch of different times in our interview to get the Sineke twins to tell me how grueling and terrible this job is, but they just wouldn't do it.

29:18I genuinely think they're having a good time. But they did acknowledge how helpful it is to have each other and that they found a pretty good two-man balance to get all of this done. So we figured out day-to-day. So Danny only edits the mini-golf tournaments and posts them on his page. and then he'll do all the long form mini golf voiceovers for YouTube. And then I'll take everything and put them on to Instagram, YouTube, shorts. And then I'll do my golf content and I'll record and edit all of that. So we found timing what takes Danny the same time that it takes me to do my work. so we split it pretty much what we think 50 50 to continue to upload content that makes sense which is easier to shoot mini golf or regular golf um probably mini golf because it's so quick or a lot quicker than golf content and then golf when we're recording if we're waiting on a group in front of us or the course is super busy and we're kind of like, oh, like, let's go.

30:28It somewhat gets stressful, but that's why we always find times when it's not going to be busy. So we always film during the week when we can, especially golf content. We'll never film on a weekend when everyone's out there. Danny is really the one in charge of the mini golf TikToks, which are currently the centerpiece of the whole operation. And over the last year, he and Steven have been thinking a lot about how to improve the way they film the tournaments too. So every clip we've filmed since September 4th of last year has been done by either Danny or I. We film all the mini golf tournaments, passing the phone back and forth to record.

31:09Is that why you're hardly ever playing at the same time? Yep. I was wondering about this. Okay. And then people think Danny and I are the same person because you never see the other person behind. But no, we know how we want the camera to look, the angles, and we always have to leave some room at the top for the scoreboard. So just making sure everything is recorded how we want it. How do you want it? Just like sort of describe as best you can what you want that to look like. Yeah, so you always, we want the ball in the middle of the screen when it's rolling and never too far down so the scoreboard covers the hole and you can't see a shot or something.

31:53So, and always, yeah, we just have our angles and we know from playing courses what angle to start the hole on if you're behind the hole, behind the player, at the halfway point of the hole, just so we don't miss. anything at all. So, and also just make sure the ball never goes out of frame. Yeah. What do you ever like sneakily retake a shot if you're like, oh, I missed it. I didn't move the camera fast enough. Like take hit that one again. Like there's been a time where you think it might be recording. Someone hits a shot and then you realize it's not recording and we'll go grab the ball. So it's like, hey, it would have ended up here.

32:35It's like, no, we don't know where it would have stopped. but we hardly now that we've been doing it for over a year run into many issues would you ever like is there a next level up like you could you know get out go out and get a person with like a fancy camera and a steadicam to be like running after you as you go down the course like is that would that help is that even a thing you would want to do i think for our youtube content, possibly for filming horizontally. I think maybe someday we'll upgrade to a camera, but with how much content we're pumping out the phone and just being able to edit on my phone, export it from my phone up to YouTube, TikTok, whatever, it's just everything's so quick.

33:23It saves time. So right now, and I think the iPhone camera is unbeatable. I actually, I've also, I've started to believe that especially on social like instagram and tiktok that actually there is such a thing as like it can look too good and and it feels weird when you see something that is like clearly professionally shot on tiktok you're like why is this why did you try so hard like just just shoot it on your phone it'll be fine yeah yeah so we we did use the camera a little bit before we started mini golf for our long form YouTube videos. But now just Danny believes in the iPhone and he's got me to believe that it's our best option, especially for the short form content, like you said, with just having a normal phone video for a TikTok rather than a very high quality, something that looks out of place on the short form apps.

34:18Danny really does do the whole thing on his phone. All the editing, the voiceover, the scoreboards, it all just happens in the CapCut app. And Danny has developed a very specific way of doing everything, especially his commentary. Every voiceover is really, at this point, I try to do them in one take, just kind of keep it natural, what I'm thinking, what I'm seeing, and not trying to make it perfect. It could be there for hours and hours with how much content we post. It's just really, I try to do it in one take. I'll I'll probably mess up one every three, but then I'll just go back, undo something and start from there.

34:57So it's fun trying to do them in one take. And I know that Danny does read a lot of the comments. So he'll get ideas from what people are commenting or stuff like that to implement in his voiceover. What's one you've added? Do you have like a new catchphrase you're workshopping right now? I honestly, it's not there's nothing really stirring right now. No, but before what was popular and still is Bella's pumped up. I don't know how I thought about that, but she's really, she doesn't look pumped up, but she is pumped up. Bella, by the way, is Steven's fiancé and is one of the main recurring characters in these tournaments.

35:37She often shows up in scrubs and she seems somewhere between kind of disinterested and entirely annoyed about being there, and then frequently just dominates everybody. If you believe the comments and the Twin Tours merch sales of the Bella's Pumped Up t-shirts, she is everybody's favorite player to root for. She's definitely my favorite player to root for. There are a few other folks who pop up in these videos a lot. There's Eddie and Wolf and Matthew, who was the one in that very first video and now also helps the Sinekees with some of the behind-the-scenes process. And if you watch long enough, you can actually see in the comments people picking their favorites and each player actually developing their own character in the series.

36:15Like, Eddie. I love Eddie. Eddie always starts great and always just collapses at the end. Wolf is super up and down. Bella is just a quiet killer in the best way. These people are now part of the Twin Torg Golf universe in a way that is, I think, increasingly strategic. And it is designed to make sure that this thing can last. Making that thing last, by the way, is the whole game now. More on that coming right after this break. We'll be right back.

37:06The New iPhone 17 Pro

37:16All right, we're back. So you can pretty easily imagine how a bunch of mini golf videos would get boring over time, right? Same guys, same course, over and over. It eventually just gets old and repetitive. There's a reason you see creators of almost any kind start to do wild challenges or bring on celebrity guests or just pivot completely. there are usually only so many ways to do a thing until you need a new thing to do. Danny and Steven Sineke, the Twin Tour golf guys, are only a year into making mini golf content, so maybe they'll eventually have to resort to gimmicks and celebrity guests over time.

37:50But for now, their plan is to add a lot of structure to their mini golf world in the hopes of turning it into something that you watch and follow much more like a sport. And in the hopes, frankly, that it becomes a total never-ending content machine. And Stephen and I, we pretty much play in almost every tournament. But really, who's ever available when we're looking to film, we'll film with seven, about six to eight regular season tournaments. And if you get a win, you get your invite to the major. We'll have a bracket style tournament, which is now called the playoffs before the big major. So how many people win is how many people are going to be in the major.

38:35And then we also added player of the year points. So you'll get two player of the year points if you win a bracket style tournament in the playoffs. You'll get three if you win the major, two for second, one for third. And then we pile up all the player of the year points for the whole year, which runs from September to September now. So we're through one year. Danny was player of the year in year one. He had the most points. And that feels like cheating. Give yourself player of the year. I don't know. But now it all reset and we just are in our first season of the new year. There's a really delicate content balance in there.

39:18They're trying to both keep viewers hooked and make them want to watch the next one, but also to get new viewers interested. On TikTok in particular, you're not going to land on the first one of these. You're just going to find a random three holes of a random tournament, and that has to be captivating too. So for the Twin Tour guys, the whole system resets every month, and they're always looking to add new players to freshen things up. But there is still that big annual payoff, which genuinely does feel like a real capstone if you've been watching all their videos all year. The guys didn't want to tell me exactly how much money they're making from all the stuff they're posting now, except to say that it is working as their full-time job.

39:56Most of the money that they're making comes from monetizing directly on the platforms. That means ad splits on YouTube, creator funds on TikTok, that sort of thing. That works to a point, but as you get bigger, and I think especially as you realize how finicky those platforms can be and how dangerous it can be to depend on them for your entire livelihood, everybody ends up wanting to diversify. So far, one of the coolest things that I've seen from the Twins are Golf Guys is that they've found one very clever way to bring some new money in. They started asking people to Venmo them money to contribute to a prize for each tournament winner.

40:31it kind of it happened last winter uh we were traveling a lot and it was getting expensive and it was kind of a thought that came by if we do a full season we're putting in hard work and if you win and if you're a viewer and you enjoy the content maybe you've watched the entire season so far you're like wow thanks for the entertainment i appreciate you guys you guys help me on my lunch break you guys get me through my day whatever it is they send some money in and it kind of gives us something to play for but also rewards those that play well and helps cover costs of travel for these people that come with us and whatnot so it's really kind of just a tip like a thank you for the entertainment and then it also helps and it does our end it puts a lot of pressure on it knowing, hey, I'm playing for this.

41:29And if I play well, it's mine. Or if I don't play well, it's kind of going to hurt. It's kind of a lot of money for a round of mini golf in some of these. Oh, it's pretty cool. And kind of wanted it to make it feel like a true tour, like the PGA Tour. They have all the money for the players. So kind of just making it a tour feel and competitive and something's on the line. It's a good way to get the players paid. And since Danny and Steven win a lot, it gets them paid too. But it also feels different than them just being like, pay$5 a month to access all of our content. It makes fans feel involved, like they're sponsors of the event, and it makes them feel like they're directly contributing to the game itself and not just to some business entity somewhere.

42:15So far, it's not a lot of money. I've seen the purse so far as high as like$1 ,700, which is not pro-athlete money, but to be fair, is kind of a lot to win for a round of mini golf. The fan tournaments and the Venmos will help, but ultimately the Twin Tour guys do want to do the typical brand deals. But those are easier to do in regular golf than in mini golf. Like, every golf creator eventually gets sponsored by a big golf brand. There's a whole path there. But I'm not sure who the big name in mini golf is, you know? Plus, at some point, every sufficiently big creator becomes a product person.

42:50You put your name on a makeup line or an energy drink or a weird lunchable competitor or gadget accessories or your own golf bag. I'm not sure what that thing is here, but I do have some ideas. Is the next step like the twin tour mini golf putter? That would be pretty cool. I feel like a lot of people, if you go mini golfing, you're just using the putters there. So maybe a custom putter for people, but we haven't really thought much about it yet. Would you ever, would you want to design a course? We have talked about that and Big Putts, the course that we play, has talked about opening up another location.

43:32So potentially partnering with them and they've given us freedom to design holes and from all the courses we've played, figure out what we like, what hole we would want to see there. But it would be a fun thing to set up our own mini golf course someday and have it somewhere we can film content whenever and not just filming content, but promoting our own business, our own course. So it's definitely something we've been thinking about and maybe someday we will do. What is the like ideal hole for great content mini golf as far as you guys are concerned? Like what does it need? What has to happen?

44:11I think for performance on social media, I think something that kind of takes some time to get down to the hole while also having a smooth green. So something that kind of takes maybe about eight seconds to see whether or not it's going to be online if it has a chance to go in for a hole in one. And so a little longer hole with the suspense, you have five to eight seconds of like, oh, this could go in, this might not go in, you still don't know. And then you see it miss or go in the hole. So I just like the holes that are typically a little bit longer and courses that have a little quicker greens, I feel tend to perform well.

44:53That's interesting. I thought you were going to say like cool looking obstacles and weird stuff that's hard for people to figure out. But the time actually makes sense. And there's the, I forget where it was, but there's the one course you guys have played a bunch of times where it has like the three tiered green. I feel like that's like exactly what you're talking about. Like it takes forever to figure out if they hit a good shot or not in a way that is actually pretty compelling. Yes, and we've noticed with like obstacles, if there's a windmill in the middle of the hole, it's just kind of hard to record because it goes through, it disappears for a little bit and then comes back out.

45:29So kind of when they have those interesting designs on a hole where it's just like a straight hole with an obstacle in the middle, they just don't tend to perform as well as a clear hole with some slope on it and the ball heading towards the hole. I've been watching the Twin Tour mini golf stuff for almost as long as the Siniquis have been making it. And I really do love watching strangers play mini golf way more than I expected. And frankly, I'm psyched to know I'm not the only one. But I've also really enjoyed over the course of the last year, seeing the Twin Tour Golf guys go through kind of the whole creator journey, one video and three holes at a time.

46:10The videos get a little more polished, though never too polished. There are more hashtags over time. The graphics get better. Promotional merch starts to appear. They're now tagging the courses in the description. And actually, both Cinechis say that they're starting to drive new people to courses all over the place. There are new players that show up, and then those players get their own TikToks and their own branches of the story. They're starting to push people to YouTube because I think YouTube is just the most stable of these platforms for a lot of reasons. But one thing I really like is that the videos, the videos are still pretty much the same.

46:43Here's what it sounded like a year ago. My shot to Ty Steven on one, rolled it in. Matthew, there's still some work left. got it all tied through one. And here's what it sounds like now. At the most recent tournament, the same first hole almost exactly a year after that first video. Eddie, number one spot in the player of the year standings. Trying to keep it that way. Gonna tap it in for his two. Steven in for two, Matthew. Thank you to everyone that's contributed to this major's purse. Means a lot to us, a lot on the line. My pod got it for my two and Bella for all twos on the first hole rolls it in.

47:27All tied through one on the whole. You know what I love about that? If anything, it sounds worse. But in general, for all of the changes that they're making around these videos, the point is they're not messing with what made this video work the first time. Even down to things as simple as the music. You may have noticed it's the same song. It is the same song just about every time. It's literally a track called Epic Music, which is hilarious. It's been used 158 ,000 times on TikTok, and a lot of them are golf clips. I'm pretty sure you can blame the Twin Tour guys for that. At some point, though, I do wonder how long this one thing can keep going.

48:05There's not a ton of other mini-golf content out there right now. Both Danny and Steven actually said they're surprised they don't have more competition, especially given how much golf content there is on the internet. But there will be competitors eventually, especially if I'm right that it is like the perfect internet spectator sport. And maybe TikTok's algorithm will like those better. Maybe TikTok's algorithm won't always like mini golf. Will TikTok even be around long enough for us to find out? This is what I mean. This stuff is fragile. I don't know the answers to those questions, and neither do the Seneckys.

48:35Which is the thing that struck me the most, actually, about what they're doing. They don't really seem to be super tied to the idea that they are like mini golf content guys. They're really invested in doing this as long as it works. But I got the sense over and over that this is all just an excuse to play golf with their friends. And honestly, I kind of love that. We talk a lot on this show and everywhere about the biggest creators on the internet. The ones starting giant production companies and hiring tons of people and making millions of dollars and becoming A-list celebrities. But the Twin Tour guys seem to be happy just being a small business, like a lifestyle business instead of a unicorn startup.

49:12They're playing a sport they like, they're hanging with their friends, and they're paying the bills in the process. They have some plans to grow and expand and do more stuff, but maybe that's enough. The one thing I do wonder is if turning golf into content is making them worse golfers. And it turns out Stephen wonders about that too. The other day we went out and golfed and played really well, and then yesterday we went and played and recorded, and we didn't do too well compared to the time when we weren't recording. But then he thought about it and he said he figured it's probably okay. Mystic Stupid Putts is pretty good content.

49:47All right, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to Steven and Danny for being on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. As always, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or sick mini golf courses that we should go to for official Vergecast business, you can always email us at Vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. We love hearing from you. Send us all your thoughts and questions. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back with our regularly scheduled Vergecast on Tuesday and Friday.

50:17We have a really fun show coming up on Tuesday and oh, so much news to get to on Friday. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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