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At its best, Netflix’s “Full Swing” — the golf reality series whose third season just landed — is beautiful and inspiring and wrenching, using golf as metaphor and gateway for understanding life. When it stumbles, “Full Swing” falls prey to all the worst trends of 2020s media — in-jokes, hand-holding influencers and trading insight for access.
In short — or, put another way, TL;DR — “Full Swing” isn’t a perfect show. But it’s a perfect representation of where golf is right now, and that makes it well worth watching.
For the last three years, the massive cameras of “Full Swing” have lurked at virtually all significant men’s golf tournaments, capturing the game’s best players … and also caddies, fans and journalists who have turned the documentary into a scavenger hunt for themselves. (This journalist shows up several times in the background of shots at Valhalla and Pinehurst, for the record. Yes, I paused the show to check.)
The result is a sport that’s now hyper-aware of the show, and a show very much aware of its own presence and influence. Now that everyone knows what a “Full Swing” stint can do, everyone, from players to families to visiting stars, alters their behavior around the cameras. Ben Stiller mugs on the set of “Happy Gilmore 2.” Tom Kim holds up his puppy. Kate Rose, Justin’s wife, notes that the whole family goes silent when it’s filming time. Some players enjoy the spotlight, others … not quite so much.
“’I’ll be honest with you, the Netflix thing, I struggle to let them into my life,” Shane Lowry told Yahoo Sports. “I’ve got a lovely life over here in Florida, wife and two kids, and I just feel like outside of golf, not many people know too much about me, and I don’t really want to let them in, either.” Lowry and Rory McIlroy form the focus of one episode, but Lowry — unlike many of his PGA Tour compatriots — didn’t invite the Netflix cameras into his home.
The 2024 season was rich with storylines: Scottie Scheffler’s year-long domination and Louisville arrest, the Rory McIlroy-Bryson DeChambeau duel at the U.S. Open, McIlroy’s divorce-that-wasn’t, the 2025 Ryder Cup buildup. The golf world processes events in real time with the assumption of how they’ll play on the show half a year down the line, and it’s a kick to relive these moments … even if several of them in “Full Swing” blow past unexpectedly quickly.
Limitations of rights and access kept two of the season’s more interesting stories — Scheffler’s come-from-behind triumph at the Olympics and Xander Schauffele’s two-major year — from getting much play on the show. Schauffele has made no secret of his desire to keep Netflix cameras out of players’ spaces, and the Olympics doesn’t easily share its footage. The narrative holes are understandable, though frustrating nonetheless.
There’s also a veneer of artifice coating the entire series, largely because of the conventions of the genre. Consciously or unconsciously, the show echoes the reported Netflix directive that characters must explicitly, and frequently restate a show’s plot in order to keep distracted audiences interested. In this case, this means a series of journalists and influencers offering insights like how overcoming adversity is what makes sports great, or the majors are the most important tournaments in golf. Really, it’s true.
But like a round that starts rocky and finishes with a string of birdies, “Full Swing” gets much better as it goes on. The final two episodes are among the finest the show has ever produced, because they focus on the human side — and toll — of the sport.
Episode 6, titled “Last Shot,” spotlights the story of two former U.S. Open winners: Justin Rose’s fight to outrun Father Time and play his way back into the Open Championship, and Gary Woodland’s fight against a life-threatening brain tumor. Rose’s battle is enthralling; “I would have been a good champion,” he muses after losing the Open Championship to Schauffele. “I would have enjoyed that trophy big time.”
Woodland’s journey is far more harrowing. Days before he underwent brain surgery, Woodland wrote letters to his wife and children. When he recounts those letters — “All I ever dreamed of was being a professional athlete,” Woodland recalls, “but being their dad was more than I could ever dream of” — he’s crying, and you might, too.
The season concludes with “Rebirth,” its finest episode: the tragic story of Camilo Villegas’ family, and the redemptive arc of Keegan Bradley’s ascent to the pinnacle of United States team golf.
The story of Villegas’ daughter, Mia, is far more important than any tournament result; the family lost her at age 2 to brain and spine cancer. The images of her hospital room, with the cheerful slogan, “Smile and be happy!” will stick with any parent.
Bradley’s story is one of triumph and, like a Marvel movie post-credits scene, sets up Season 4 perfectly. We won’t spoil Bradley’s climactic moment, even though it’s already been meme’d all over social media, but we will say this — you’re going to be ready for the Ryder Cup to start right now, not this September.
The question that runs throughout this “Full Swing” season — and probably for the foreseeable future — is whether McIlroy, DeChambeau and the rest are players first, or personalities first.
“As a pro golfer, you sort of have to ask yourself what’s the best thing for you?” Lowry says. “Is it to be a Netflix star, or to be a good golfer?” That’s the unspoken conflict at the heart of “Full Swing,”
The best part of this season — and the entire series, really — is that it opens up the world of golf beyond just scorecards and leaderboards. You watch “Full Swing,” and you realize that before long, Scottie Scheffler’s stardom is going to catch up to his game. Justin Rose is going to be the preeminent golf commentator of the 2030s. Justin Thomas has the potential to be the gleeful antagonist that golf needs. And Keegan Bradley will be the easiest Ryder Cup star to root for, from either team.
“Full Swing” is accelerating golf’s trend in the direction of the NBA, where the on-course hole-by-hole results are only a tiny part of the overarching narrative. For a sport that’s searching for its identity as it remains divided, “traveling circus with golf clubs” isn’t a bad brand to embrace.
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