There is a moment late in the second episode of the “Full Swing” documentary that debuts Feb. 15 on Netflix in which Brooks Koepka, wearing a blue hoodie, sits on a boat dock, staring across the water with his feet dangling over the edge and he peels back the veneer of bravado that has marked his career the way red shirts on Sunday marked Tiger Woods.
The game Koepka dominated not long ago has turned a cold shoulder his way and, as the series was being filmed last year, it wasn’t just questions about whether he would join LIV Golf that tugged at Koepka.
“I’ve had these question marks for the last year and half. Am I going to be the same golfer? Am I ever going to be the same? I still don’t know where I’m at,” he said.
“Being at the low point, you can either just give up and lay there or you’ve just got to figure it the f… out. I don’t know.”
It is personal moments like those – with Koepka, with Tony Finau, with Joel Dahmen and others – that give “Full Swing” its soul and its sizzle.
It takes viewers places where they otherwise couldn’t go.
“Full Swing” doesn’t so much tell a golf story as it tells the stories of a handful of golfers, intent on giving viewers a sense of who the players are while also focusing on what they do.
It’s sitting around a dinner table with Dustin Johnson as he considers what LIV Golf is offering or seeing Koepka, stretched out on a sofa, talking to his mom about his struggles.
There is plenty of tournament action, but the series is at its best when it’s away from the course, in courtesy cars or on private jets or between sets of exercises with the players and those around them.
Spoiler alert: Everyone it seems flies private including Collin Morikawa’s dog, and exercise clothes are the default outfit for every player.
It was an audacious idea – get the buy-in from the PGA Tour, more than 20 PGA Tour players and the four major championships – to show and tell the behind-the-scenes and inside-the-ropes stories, and it worked.
As Ian Poulter said early in the series, they picked a hell of a year to chronicle, not anticipating the civil war that would erupt between the tour and LIV, ensnaring several of the main characters including Koepka, Johnson and Rory McIlroy. There’s no hiding from LIV in “Full Swing.”
For more than three years, Chad Mumm, the chief creative officer for Vox Media Studios, wanted to create what became “Full Swing.” During the weekly meetings he led with his creative staff, the golf idea stayed on the idea board, with no progress for months.
“If you go six weeks with no updates I’m probably killing (the concept), but I was the boss so I’d keep slogging it out, pushing the boulder up the hill,” Mumm said.
“If you love something and want it hard enough, don’t give up.”
If you have never warmed up to Poulter, for example, “Full Swing” may not change your mind, but it might.
The result is an eight-episode, character-driven series that isn’t guided by a linear timeline as much as it is by the stories being told. The series jumps around – it begins with Justin Thomas winning the PGA Championship, then goes back to the Masters – but because viewers figure to know who won, it doesn’t have to be fully chronological.
It isn’t salacious (though there is a biting comment from McIlroy directed at Phil Mickelson late in the series) and it isn’t explosive, but it’s real, which is what Mumm and others were seeking. No one else was in the car with Matt Fitzpatrick as he’s driving to The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, on the day when he will win the U.S. Open.
The fact that Fitzpatrick has documented every shot he’s hit in competition for years upon years – he actually digs out yardage books from way back and has a notebook detailing what he hit on each shot, how far it went and where it finished – is a revealing detail about a shy guy.
If you liked Tony Finau before, you will love him now (and you may cry).
The same for Joel Dahmen.
The guys who took the LIV money admit they did it for the money, even if they squirm a little in doing so.
“It never is quite what it looks like on the outside. Being on the inside it gives you a lot more context,” Mumm said.
“It’s in the quiet moments before or after a round, or in the gym pushing through a tough loss or bad round. It’s a look you never really get to see. We were fortunate to have players who bought into the process and understood we were going to be there, good or bad. It’s storytelling at its core.”
Mito Pereira lost the PGA Championship when he double-bogeyed the 72nd hole. The series was right there with Pereira through it all.
It’s there when McIlroy tells PGA Tour executive Andy Pazder that the top players are pushing back about being required to play every designated tournament this year, something Pazder hadn’t heard.
The big idea of “Full Swing” succeeds because of the little things it captures. It’s a tough thing to do, but the series does it well.
E-MAIL RON