Netflix’s second ‘Full Swing’ season produced 2 big winners

If you have been all of a sudden imbued with world-class golf expertise and dropped onto the PGA Tour, how would you act? And how would you need individuals to see you?

As sports activities followers it’s a query we reply on a regular basis, consciously or not. Think about your response to big play-celebrations, press conferences or post-game interviews. Maybe you want that an athlete is hard, or weak, or assured. Maybe you want that he praises his teammates first. Maybe you want that he takes accountability for errors. And perhaps what you’re actually evaluating is that should you have been in his or her place, that’s the way you’d wish to look and sound and really feel.

The second season of Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’ is crammed with intriguing characters and potential function fashions. Your friends from Season 1, Joel Dahmen and his caddie Geno Bonnalie, return for a soul-searching sequel episode. Wyndham Clark steps into the highlight at simply the proper second, exhibiting energy and vulnerability and an urge for food for the intense lights. Rory McIlroy is terrific because the Tour’s main man. Brooks Koepka is a relentless, spectacular power. The brothers Fitzpatrick are a pleasant distinction in kinds. You get the thought: There’s a lot to like.

But two execs stood out to me because the season’s largest winners. Tom Kim and Keegan Bradley don’t have a lot clearly in widespread — however one way or the other you need to be each of ’em directly. You need to stroll some rounds of their sneakers. And you’re determined for extra good issues to return their approach.

THERE’S A REASON the oldsters at Netflix titled Episode 4 ‘Prove It.’ Tom (we’ll go first names right here; these are our TV mates) entered 2023 as a star on the rise, having racked up two PGA Tour wins and an lively Presidents Cup exhibiting with out but turning 21. The conceit of the episode is comparatively easy: Can Kim validate his newfound stardom on the sport’s largest occasions?

But the explanation Kim emerges from the season as certainly one of its largest winners has little to do along with his efficiency on the majors. It’s as a result of the present lets us expertise the PGA Tour as Kim does — and it seems the best way Kim experiences the Tour is relatable and hilarious.

An early scene exhibits our hero gamely signing autographs for a bunch of younger followers solely to obtain a reducing jab from certainly one of ’em.

“I don’t need your signature,” he says. “Can you go down and call Rory McIlroy for me?”

But Kim laughs that off, reacting solely to hope the cameras caught it. He’s self-deprecating and self-aware, and so he additionally laughs off getting misplaced as he wanders by way of TPC Sawgrass, too, reminding us that for all his success he’s nonetheless a Players Championship rookie. He laughs off lacking the flip for Augusta National, too.

“And we missed a turn! Very good there, Tom. Lovely.”

His debut efficiency at Augusta is remarkably relatable. He’s tickled to drive down Magnolia Lane. He wanders into the champions locker room after which nervously ejects himself, sure he’s not alleged to be in there. He orders a pimento cheese sandwich, as a result of that’s what you do as a golf mega-fan all of a sudden dropped right into a dream golf setting. And then he wanders out to the parking zone to seek out Scottie Scheffler laughing at him as a result of he’s mistakenly parked within the champion’s parking zone.

This is Tom’s episode and it’s Tom’s life, served as much as us as half sports activities doc, half coming-of-age story. This is a man who turned professional at age 15, in any case. He admits, in a very touching second, that he “didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up.” He admits to the cameras that he’d wish to get a bit of extra consideration from potential companions, too. “If people are seeing this, just hit me up. I’m available,” he says.

The indisputable fact that a few of his first mates are Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler? The indisputable fact that he’s looking for dates by way of a Netflix present? With Kim we’re seeing real-life issues play out in impossibly surreal conditions.

And then there’s Tom caught within the mud. One of the extra hilarious moments of the 2023 golf season is even higher upon evaluation: the PGA Championship broadcast all of a sudden cuts to our hero rising waist-deep from an Oak Hill swamp. This is the place ‘Full Swing’ is as its most simple finest, including depth and context and behind-the-scenes particulars to a second we’d already loved. There’s Austin Johnson, Dustin’s caddie, cracking up on the story’s retelling. (“He washed off in the creek?!”) Then there’s Patrick Rodgers, asking if Tom’s had a bathe. (“Gosh, you saw it too?”) And then there’s Tony Finau, surrounded by his coach Boyd Summerhays and his agent Chris Armstrong and now Tom relays the story to them, too, as solely he can.

“Y’know what’s the worst thing? I couldn’t even find my ball,” he tells Finau ruefully.

Throughout the episode, the present’s storyline and its commentators (this writer included) hype up the stakes and expectations round Tom’s on-course main championship efficiency. But at each flip he undercuts these with some endearing scene. He can be the man within the mud and the man in rivalry, too. We usually hear that the best athletes are by no means simply “happy to be there.” But it seems it’s additionally refreshing to see somebody who’s completely happy to be there.

Of course, none of it could work with out Tom’s expertise, his work ethic and his nostril for big moments. He logs a top-20 end in his first Masters, a powerful outcome on any barometer apart from the Jack, Tiger and Spieth comparisons launched by the present. The mud scene results in a missed minimize on the PGA, positive, and comes at a lull in his season. But Tom reminds us in his interviews that he’s desperate to be taken severely. He’s able to win now. And he’s even uncomfortable along with his budding celeb, he admits, if outcomes aren’t coming with it.

“I’m a golfer. We’re supposed to be practicing and doing nothing,” he says.

A key second in his yr comes as Tom finds a helpful voice in revered swing coach Chris Como, who factors out that a part of maturing as a golfer is getting deep into the method moderately than merely obsessive about the end result. Kim admits he desires outcomes now. But he additionally is aware of able to maintain placing within the work.

“I’ve dedicated everything to golf,” he says. “And I still do.”

Tom retains bettering. He finishes T8 on the U.S. Open after which, in dramatic trend, gamely guts by way of an ankle sprain to rally to T2 on the Open Championship. The efficiency garners him additional respect from followers and from friends. It serves as a reminder that he’s powerful as hell. He hasn’t received, however he’s performed his finest golf of the yr on the majors. He’s proved it.

THERE ARE OBVIOUS CONTRASTS between Tom, the 20-year-old Korean experiencing every part for the primary time and Keegan, the 36-year-old American veteran who’s been to the highest and desperately hoping to get again. But what binds them is the vital stuff: they’ve a shared eagerness for golf and for all times and a real appreciation to have the ability to chase the dream, one match at a time.

I’m biased with regards to masking Keegan; as a fellow New Englander I lose impartiality the second his beat-up Red Sox hat seems on display screen. But his early scenes set up a passionate professional with a loving household who desires nothing greater than to make his approach again onto the U.S. Ryder Cup crew that’ll be chosen on the finish of the summer time.

“The Ryder Cup is on my mind every second,” he admits.

Cameras present the suitcase Bradley introduced house from the 2012 Ryder Cup; he promised himself he wouldn’t open it till he received one. Memories from the Cup, he says, have been among the finest and among the hardest of his life. Keegan is an unapologetic try-hard, the type of professional who’s keen to say precisely what he’s gunning for with out concern of falling quick. And as a profitable season goes on — and features a dreamlike victory on the Travelers Championship with household and mates in tow — he permits himself to consider {that a} journey to Rome could possibly be within the playing cards.

It can be simple for Keegan to obsess over the concept that he’s not given a good shake, each in actual time and upon rewatching. There have been robust circumstances to be made that Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas ought to make the U.S. crew as captain’s picks, however it was nonetheless jarring to see these three sharing a rental home on the Open Championship with U.S. captain Zach Johnson, the place they sat across the desk as Spieth prodded him for intel. And based mostly on qualifying efficiency alone, Bradley (who completed eleventh in Ryder Cup standings) outperformed Fowler (thirteenth) and Thomas (fifteenth) in addition to one other captain’s decide, Sam Burns (twelfth). Give any of these three Bradley’s outcomes from 2023 and they’d have been on the crew. But that’s not the truth.

The most heartbreaking second of the season comes as Johnson makes his cellphone calls on Decision Day. We’ve at all times heard about these calls — the congratulatory ones and the painful ones — however we’ve by no means actually seen them. It’s rewarding to see the excellent news delivered, notably by way of FaceTime from European captain Luke Donald to first-timer Nicolai Hojgaard or veteran Justin Rose. But there’s a devastating vacancy to Johnson’s dialog with Keegan. There’s an vacancy to the best way he tells him that it’s nothing he did or didn’t do (not comforting) and the best way he tells him he needs he might take 30 guys (additionally not comforting) and the best way the dialog ends lower than a minute after it started. I’m unsure what I anticipated; it was simply shocking to see that that’s the entire thing. And it’s jarring to see Johnson cling up, coronary heart racing, expressing reduction as he readies to maneuver on to the crew he’s chosen, leaving Keegan on his sofa along with his household, choking again tears.

Tom Kim will get a postscript. After the most important season and after the tip of the Tour’s 2023 playoffs he returns to the Shriner’s Children’s Open in Las Vegas, the place he repeats as champion. It’s a fast snippet, however it delivers every part we’ve already grown to like about Tom: his super expertise, his ardour for all times and his willingness to be himself. What does a 21-year-old do in Las Vegas with a contemporary seven-figure test?

Chocolate, Tom says. He’s going to get room service, end a bar of chocolate he’s had his eyes on after which he’s going to go to mattress.

Keegan will get a postscript, too, and if followers weren’t rooting for him after that heartbreaking cellphone name, they’re positive to after they see his help for the U.S. Ryder Cup crew, cheering for Thomas alongside his son.

“It’s anger, sadness, it’s all the things,” he tells the digicam. “But then it’s like, there’s no mistaken selections with who’s on the crew, everybody’s such an excellent participant. 

“I love these guys. And one of the main reasons I wanted to make the team is I wanted to be around these guys, the energy that they have. And I see JT the way he prepares and practices. And if I was a captain I would want him in my locker room.”

It’s the right response. He’s supportive with out being deferential. He’s not backing down on his personal competitiveness or self-belief however he’s going by way of it with humility and beauty. It’s Keegan proving that he’s ruled by a need for one thing good — not a bitterness from one thing dangerous. Since the present has come out, Bradley has revealed additional particulars about these scenes, together with the truth that the cameras arriving at his home gave him some additional hope. But at all times he has kept away from criticism for these chosen over him. He’s stayed on the excessive highway.

And that’s who you’d need to be as an athlete.