Image: Samar Haddad / The Verge
In September of 2023, Danny and Steven Sanicki played a round of minigolf. The Sanickis are twins, are both competitive golfers, and were budding content creators at the time, so of course they filmed the whole round. Danny edited the footage on his phone, recorded a quick commentary track, slapped a scoreboard over top of the video, and posted the tournament as a six-part series on his TikTok channel. Neither brother really expected anything to happen.
The videos went viral. And since then, the Sanicki twins have been posting tournaments every day, bringing new friends into the fold, and building out a Putt-Putt empire all around the web. They built a complex system of tournaments and points, started awarding money to winners, and began…