What do you get when you combine St. Andrews, the Home of Golf in Scotland, with OutKast, the rap and hip-hop duo from Atlanta?
A three-person golf comedy troupe that is promoting the Myrtle Beach market.
St. André Golf is based in Atlanta and is comprised of Aaron Chewning, Hannah Rae Aslesen and Jonathan Pawlowski.
Their sketch golf comedy skits have gained a huge following on social media outlets, and they have partnered over the past two years with Golf Tourism Solutions, the marketing, technology and event operations agency that promotes the Grand Strand.
Both Aaron, 36, and Jonathan are from Atlanta, while Hannah is from Minneapolis, and they all now live in Atlanta. They formed St. André Golf three years ago, and are now three of the more followed golf content creators and influencers.
In its three years, St. André Golf has gained 460,000 followers on Instagram, 355k on TikTok, 154k on Facebook and 19k on X, along with 174k subscribers to its YouTube channel.
About the name?
“We wanted it to look good on a shirt, so we didn’t want just a golf pun,” Aaron said. “. . . We wanted it to look classy on a shirt or merch if we wanted to do that. We wanted it to sound like a golf brand, such as a nod to classic golf. St. Andrews would be the tie-in there. And we wanted it to be tied to Atlanta. I love all things Atlanta. I love OutKast. Andre 3000 from OutKast is the André of St. André. So St. Andrews and André 3000, put them together, St. André Golf, which I love that it’s kind of two separate worlds and let’s put them together.”
Fiinding a niche
Aaron attended Full Sail University, a film and television school in Orlando. He moved back to Atlanta following school and was committed to creating comedic content.
“In high school I was the video guy making funny, stupid rap vidoes,” Aaron said. “I’ve kind of only ever done one thing in different capacities.”
Aaron was a creative director at a couple digital marketing agencies, focusing on comedy, and did some standup comedy in Atlanta
“I would always push clients to do funny videos,” Aaron said. “There was a career path there for me, but I always wanted to grow my own thing, and once I started to realize the lane was open and I could make messing around on a golf course with my friends a job, I quit my agency job and went all in.”
While Aaron was with the agency and performing standup, Hannah and Jonathan were doing improv comedy. So the three knew each other in Atlanta comedy circles.
They worked together with a film crew on some videos for brands before the creation of St. André Golf, and they decided to become a team.
“It was a great time,” Aaron said. “I thought everyone brought a lot to those videos. They improvised a ton and our video guy is incredible. So when the St. André idea popped up, I had these comedy friends I had worked with and it was obvious who I wanted to pick.
“They had no idea what it was going to be. I didn’t either. But they said yes because we worked together in the past, and I’m glad they did.”
Golf was always going to be the foundation for the sketch comedy troupe.
“It was all golf the whole time. It’s my favorite hobby and always has been. I had been I guess building this skill set doing comedic videos forever, and there is a creator boom in golf, the Bryan Bros are great ones. There’s a lot of really good YouTubers and golfers, there wasn’t a ton of scripted comedy in the golf space.
“I had a couple ideas for one-off sketches that we thought about making, but I started to write them out and ended up writing 30 or 40 ideas, and that was the lightbulb moment of ‘Oh wait, this could be a full brand’, and that turned into, ‘This could be a business,’ which turned into, ‘I’m going to quit my job and make this happen.’ ”
Golf hasn’t always been a thing for Hannah and Jonathan.
Hannah is an athlete who played hockey and other sports, and worked at the private Interlachen Country Club in Minnesota – which has hosted some USGA major championships and a Solheim Cup – so she was around the game of golf, though she didn’t play a lot.
Jonathan was a baseball player and didn’t play golf.
“They were just my funny friends,” Aaron said. “I asked them to be in some videos, and when they started to take off, after a month or two, I started to say, ‘Hey, maybe you guys should start playing golf.’ ”
Aaron is a 4 handicap, Hannah has played her way down to about a 15 handicap, “and Jonathan, we don’t need to talk about that,” Aaron joked. “He is a psycho in the best way. In Myrtle Beach last year we had him walk into a pond and get fully submerged. We didn’t know there was a gator in that pond until after. He’s gotten naked in a couple sketches and we’ll blur everything out. He’s the wild man. I’m not doing any of that stuff. We write a role and it’s like, ‘That is for Jonathan.’ ”
The Myrtle Beach connection
St. André was approached by GTS about some content desires it had. The agency has its own following on social media through its Play Golf Myrtle Beach brand, including 184,000 followers on Facebook, 59.4k on Instagram, 27.5k on TikTok and 9.4k on X, as well as 16.6k subscriberrs to its YouTube channel, and is trying to grow in the digital marketing realm.
“I’ve come to Myrtle Beach a ton in my life,” Aaron said. “I knew it was an incredible golf market, had loved my time here in the past, it’s close by. It checked every box, really. So we jumped at the chance. It’s been a really fun partnership so far.”
GTS is also partnering this year with content creators the Bryan Bros – Wesley and George – and in the past it has enlisted social media influencer Paige Spiranac, media personality Charlie Rymer, Coastal Carolina alumnus and former world No. 1 golfer Dustin Johnson, and others, to promote the market.
St. André’s first year with GTS in 2024 consisted of some sketches and rounds at different courses, and the trio’s workload has increased this year.
Aaron does a series that runs every two months on the GTS YouTube channel called ‘Course Cases,’ in which he’s filmed typically playing nine or 18 holes of a course and gives it a rating with a lot of humor thrown in.
“I try out some of these courses, kind get to know the story a little bit, talk to the head pro and play at least nine holes, and usually get my butt kicked,” Aaron said. “I get to meet some of the great people, play some incredible golf courses and really kind of get to know the golf scene down here, which has been awesome.”
Aaron said a third season of Course Cases is set to be filmed in the fall, winter or spring.
“Whatever they want us down here for, we’ll come down. We absolutely love it,” Aaron said. “I had my bachelor party here last year. A different vacation. No content.”
From Aug. 25-28, St. André essentially hosted the Play Golf Myrtle Beach World Amateur Championship’s 19th hole at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Chewning played in the tournament and participated in karaoke night in the ballroom along with Hannah and Jonathan “because we’re all a bunch of idiots who like to sing karaoke,” Aaron said. “It’s an absolute party at the World’s Largest 19th hole.”
The future
Where can St. André Golf go from here?
“I’ve always been a kind of one year at a time type guy, so we have the sketch comedy thing down,” Aaron said. “That’s our bread and butter, we love it, we’ll keep doing that forever. But we are leaning more into YouTube now, so telling bigger stories, getting to partner with some incredible courses and brands.”
St. André recently did a long-form video for the upcoming Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York, and could venture to dream big.
“You know, what does a pilot look like? Should we pull off a movie?” Aaron said. “We’re kicking those ideas around so we’ll see where that goes. But we’re not sure, just kind of enjoying the ride for now.”
St. André has some longer-term partners it has been working with and providing content for including Bridgestone, johnnie-O clothing, the Long Drink canned gin-based cocktail, and PGA Tour Superstore, which is headquartered in Atlanta and shares office space with St. André there.
St. André hopes to make Golf Tourism Solutions and Myrtle Beach a more long-term partner as well.
“I hope we get to keep working with Play Golf Myrtle Beach for years to come,” Aaron said. “Hopefully we’re going to be at the World Am for the next few years. We love working with this crew and being down here.”
