PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Say what you will about the folks from Netflix’s Full Swing, they know when to drop a trailer.
Sure, there are plenty of acceptable times to release a teaser for a new season of a golf docuseries, but few strike this author as more fitting than Genesis Invitational Wednesday — the same day the PGA Tour annually hosts a VIP-only pro-am at an exclusive private club in the shadow of Hollywood.
As celebs and golf stars prepared for the hit-and-giggle at Riviera on this Genesis Wednesday, the bigwigs at Netflix seemed to agree, blasting our first look into the new season of golf’s hit show out to the world.
The teaser trailer, which weighs in at a whopping 26 seconds, does not offer much by way of substance, but it reveals plenty of clues about the shape and feel of season two, which will arrive on Netflix on March 6. And from the patio outside the Riviera clubhouse on Wednesday afternoon, two people intimately involved with the show — Netflix’s VP of nonfiction sports programming Gabe Spitzer and Chris Wandell, the PGA Tour’s VP of media business development — offered a few more.
Below, we dig through our 7 biggest learnings about season two of the new show from Wednesday at Riv.
7 clues about Full Swing season 2
1. The Ryder Cup is a major focus
One of the big criticisms of Full Swing season 1 was its lack of a propulsive force. In season 1, the series followed the 2022 season through the eyes of a handful of stars, but it struggled to show the connective tissue between golf’s events. (Part of the reason for this is golf’s struggle with having connective tissue between its events, but I digress.)
That won’t be an issue in season two. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds of the teaser for viewers to know that the Ryder Cup is going to be a huge focus of the new season, providing a central narrative tension for the show’s documentation of 2023.
Justin Thomas’ arc in the new season (rightfully) appears to follow his quest to reach one of Zach Johnson’s six captain’s selections, and two of the show’s eight episodes of the show appear to be dedicated to documenting team Europe’s thrashing in Rome.
Of course, Hatgate alone could merit a full episode’s worth of coverage, so perhaps that’s not totally shocking news, but it does qualify as notable.
2. Merger madness
The PGA Tour/PIF merger of June 6 feels like a lifetime ago, and perhaps that’s good news for Netflix, because it seems as though Full Swing cameras were rolling all over the golf world when the news broke.
“I think you won’t be surprised to hear that there was some drama on Tour last year,” Spitzer said. “We were behind the scenes for that, and much more. If you were following the game last year, I think you’re going to get a player’s perspective on how that all evolved.”
One immediate character of interest in those proceedings? None other than Rory McIlroy, whose merger reaction would qualify as the biggest must-watch piece of content captured by the show to date. And speaking of Rory …
3. The big guns are back
The trailer opens with an image sure to excite golf fans hoping for some juice regarding last year’s ongoing PGA Tour/LIV beef: Rory McIlroy sitting for his season two interview.
Rory, whose episode of the show marked probably the most intriguing segment of season 1, returns again in 2023 presumably to discuss the highs and lows of a turbulent year as the voice of the PGA Tour en route to a dominant Ryder Cup performance. He’s joined by Thomas, Dustin Johnson, Joel Dahmen and Matt Fitzpatrick as Full Swing’s repeat characters in season two.
“With season one, we were so thrilled with how it turned out, but it was sort of interesting to go out into the world,” Spitzer said. “I feel like that’s what I’m really excited about in season two — the extension of what we built in season one.”
4. New stars have arrived, too
Netflix and PGA Tour execs seem pumped about the role played by two first-timers — Tom Kim and Wyndham Clark — in the new season. Kim’s status in the show’s artwork recreating his river adventure from the PGA Championship gives some hint as to the direction of his episode, while Clark’s episode surely spotlights his life-changing U.S. Open triumph in Los Angeles in June.
5. The edit crew has been DEEP in footage
Executive producer Chad Mumm raised eyebrows when he said the show had combed through 900 hours of Netflix-shot footage and more than 10,000 hours of archival footage in the edit for season two.
PGA Tour VP of media business development Chris Wandell raised them even further on Wednesday when he revealed a striking stat about the Netflix edit team.
“We have a library of content — everything we’ve ever shot at the PGA Tour — it’s called our media asset management system,” Wandell said. “There’s one person on the production team who’s the biggest user of our system. It’s an amazing thing. A hundred people use it.”
6. Season 3 remains up in the air … sorta
Filming has already begun for Full Swing season three, but Netflix execs haven’t formally agreed to greenlight a third season of the show yet. Still, Spitzer hinted, things are looking good.
“We always want the next season to launch and then see how it does,” Spitzer said. “I’ll just say, we’re thrilled with how this series is doing, and we did continue filming. We don’t want to miss any of these first three months [of the 2024 season] to decide. So, you know, we’re filming, but we haven’t officially announced anything.”
Last year, season two was greenlighted within a few weeks of the first season’s release. Assuming season two performs as well as season one, a similar timeline can be expected here.
7. Netflix is choosing golf
A prevailing question facing a lot of golf fans since the show’s inception runs two words in length: why golf?
With bigger sports leagues offering easier access to brand-name stars and less hierarchal fracture (a pain when it comes to dealing with filming approvals), it’s fair to wonder what attracted Netflix to golf. This is especially confusing considering Netflix’s bigger machinations appear to be pushing the streaming giant closer to live sports, an area where golf presents only limited opportunities.
But Spitzer seemed to indicate that the path to golf was very much intentional.
“You talked about the larger growth strategy,” he said. “The truth is we get hit up by every league at this point who wants their own Full Swing or Drive to Survive.”
Left unsaid: there’s a reason why Full Swing exists, and those other shows don’t.
You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com. To receive golf-media exclusives before they reach the web, subscribe to the Hot Mic Newsletter below.
