If you were suddenly imbued with world-class golf talent and dropped onto the PGA Tour, how would you act? And how would you want people to see you?
As sports fans it’s a question we answer all the time, consciously or not. Think about your reaction to big play-celebrations, press conferences or post-game interviews. Maybe you like that an athlete is tough, or vulnerable, or confident. Maybe you like that he praises his teammates first. Maybe you like that he takes accountability for mistakes. And maybe what you’re really evaluating is that if you were in his or her position, that’s how you’d like to look and sound and feel.
The second season of Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’ is filled with intriguing characters and potential role models. Your pals from Season 1, Joel Dahmen and his caddie Geno Bonnalie, return for a soul-searching sequel episode. Wyndham Clark steps into the spotlight at just the right moment, showing strength and vulnerability and an appetite for the bright lights. Rory McIlroy is terrific as the Tour’s leading man. Brooks Koepka is a relentless, impressive force. The brothers Fitzpatrick are a delightful contrast in styles. You get the idea: There’s plenty to love.
But two pros stood out to me as the season’s biggest winners. Tom Kim and Keegan Bradley don’t have much obviously in common — but somehow you want to be both of ’em at once. You want to walk some rounds in their shoes. And you’re desperate for more good things to come their way.
THERE’S A REASON the folks at Netflix titled Episode 4 ‘Prove It.’ Tom (we’ll go first names here; these are our TV friends) entered 2023 as a star on the rise, having racked up two PGA Tour wins and an energetic Presidents Cup showing without yet turning 21. The conceit of the episode is relatively simple: Can Kim validate his newfound stardom at the game’s biggest events?
But the reason Kim emerges from the season as one of its biggest winners has little to do with his performance at the majors. It’s because the show lets us experience the PGA Tour as Kim does — and it turns out the way Kim experiences the Tour is relatable and hilarious.
An early scene shows our hero gamely signing autographs for a group of young fans only to receive a cutting jab from 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 only to hope the cameras caught it. He’s self-deprecating and self-aware, and so he also laughs off getting lost as he wanders through TPC Sawgrass, too, reminding us that for all his success he’s still a Players Championship rookie. He laughs off missing the turn for Augusta National, too.
“And we missed a turn! Very good there, Tom. Lovely.”
His debut performance at Augusta is remarkably relatable. He’s tickled to drive down Magnolia Lane. He wanders into the champions locker room and then nervously ejects himself, certain he’s not supposed to be in there. He orders a pimento cheese sandwich, because that’s what you do as a golf mega-fan suddenly dropped into a dream golf setting. And then he wanders out to the parking lot to find Scottie Scheffler laughing at him because he’s mistakenly parked in the champion’s parking lot.
This is Tom’s episode and it’s Tom’s life, served up to us as part sports doc, part coming-of-age story. This is a guy who turned pro at age 15, after all. He admits, in a particularly touching moment, that he “didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up.” He admits to the cameras that he’d like to get a little more attention from potential partners, too. “If people are seeing this, just hit me up. I’m available,” he says.
The fact that some of his first friends are Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas and Scottie Scheffler? The fact that he’s searching for dates via a Netflix show? With Kim we’re seeing real-life things play out in impossibly surreal situations.
And then there’s Tom stuck in the mud. One of the more hilarious moments of the 2023 golf season is even better upon review: the PGA Championship broadcast suddenly cuts to our hero emerging waist-deep from an Oak Hill swamp. This is where ‘Full Swing’ is as its most basic best, adding depth and context and behind-the-scenes details to a moment we’d already enjoyed. There’s Austin Johnson, Dustin’s caddie, cracking up at the story’s retelling. (“He washed off in the creek?!”) Then there’s Patrick Rodgers, asking if Tom’s had a shower. (“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 only he can.
“Y’know what’s the worst thing? I couldn’t even find my ball,” he tells Finau ruefully.
Throughout the episode, the show’s storyline and its commentators (this author included) hype up the stakes and expectations around Tom’s on-course major championship performance. But at every turn he undercuts those with some endearing scene. He can be the guy in the mud and the guy in contention, too. We often hear that the greatest athletes are never just “happy to be there.” But it turns out it’s also refreshing to see someone who’s happy to be there.
Of course, none of it would work without Tom’s talent, his work ethic and his nose for big moments. He logs a top-20 finish in his first Masters, an impressive result on any barometer other than the Jack, Tiger and Spieth comparisons introduced by the show. The mud scene leads to a missed cut at the PGA, sure, and comes at a lull in his season. But Tom reminds us in his interviews that he’s eager to be taken seriously. He’s ready to win now. And he’s even uncomfortable with his budding celebrity, he admits, if results aren’t coming with it.
“I’m a golfer. We’re supposed to be practicing and doing nothing,” he says.
A key moment in his year comes as Tom finds a useful voice in respected swing coach Chris Como, who points out that part of maturing as a golfer is getting deep into the process rather than merely obsessed with the outcome. Kim admits he wants results now. But he also knows ready to keep putting in the work.
“I’ve dedicated everything to golf,” he says. “And I still do.”
Tom keeps improving. He finishes T8 at the U.S. Open and then, in dramatic fashion, gamely guts through an ankle sprain to rally to T2 at the Open Championship. The performance garners him extra respect from fans and from peers. It serves as a reminder that he’s tough as hell. He hasn’t won, but he’s played his best golf of the year at the majors. He’s proved it.
THERE ARE OBVIOUS CONTRASTS between Tom, the 20-year-old Korean experiencing everything for the first time and Keegan, the 36-year-old American veteran who’s been to the top and desperately hoping to get back. But what binds them is the important stuff: they have a shared eagerness for golf and for life and a genuine appreciation to be able to chase the dream, one tournament at a time.
I’m biased when it comes to covering Keegan; as a fellow New Englander I lose impartiality the moment his beat-up Red Sox hat appears on screen. But his early scenes establish a passionate pro with a loving family who wants nothing more than to make his way back onto the U.S. Ryder Cup team that’ll be chosen at the end of the summer.
“The Ryder Cup is on my mind every second,” he admits.
Cameras show the suitcase Bradley brought home from the 2012 Ryder Cup; he promised himself he wouldn’t open it until he won one. Memories from the Cup, he says, have been some of the best and some of the toughest of his life. Keegan is an unapologetic try-hard, the kind of pro who is willing to say exactly what he’s gunning for without fear of falling short. And as a successful season goes on — and includes a dreamlike victory at the Travelers Championship with family and friends in tow — he allows himself to believe that a trip to Rome could be in the cards.
It would be easy for Keegan to obsess over the idea that he’s not given a fair shake, both in real time and upon rewatching. There were strong cases to be made that Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas should make the U.S. team as captain’s picks, but it was still jarring to see those three sharing a rental house at the Open Championship with U.S. captain Zach Johnson, where they sat around the table as Spieth prodded him for intel. And based on qualifying performance alone, Bradley (who finished 11th in Ryder Cup standings) outperformed Fowler (13th) and Thomas (15th) as well as another captain’s pick, Sam Burns (12th). Give any of those three Bradley’s results from 2023 and they would have been on the team. But that’s not the reality.
The most heartbreaking moment of the season comes as Johnson makes his phone calls on Decision Day. We’ve always heard about these calls — the congratulatory ones and the painful ones — but we’ve never really seen them. It’s rewarding to see the good news delivered, particularly via FaceTime from European captain Luke Donald to first-timer Nicolai Hojgaard or veteran Justin Rose. But there’s a devastating emptiness to Johnson’s conversation with Keegan. There’s an emptiness to the way he tells him that it’s nothing he did or didn’t do (not comforting) and the way he tells him he wishes he could take 30 guys (also not comforting) and the way the conversation ends less than a minute after it began. I’m not sure what I expected; it was just surprising to see that that’s the whole thing. And it’s jarring to see Johnson hang up, heart racing, expressing relief as he readies to move on to the team he’s chosen, leaving Keegan on his couch with his family, choking back tears.
Tom Kim gets a postscript. After the major season and after the end of the Tour’s 2023 playoffs he returns to the Shriner’s Children’s Open in Las Vegas, where he repeats as champion. It’s a quick snippet, but it delivers everything we’ve already grown to love about Tom: his tremendous talent, his passion for life and his willingness to be himself. What does a 21-year-old do in Las Vegas with a fresh seven-figure check?
Chocolate, Tom says. He’s going to get room service, finish a bar of chocolate he’s had his eyes on and then he’s going to go to bed.
Keegan gets a postscript, too, and if fans weren’t rooting for him after that heartbreaking phone call, they’re sure to after they see his support for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, cheering for Thomas alongside his son.
“It’s anger, sadness, it’s all the things,” he tells the camera. “But then it’s like, there’s no wrong decisions with who’s on the team, everyone’s such a great player.
“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 perfect response. He’s supportive without being deferential. He’s not backing down on his own competitiveness or self-belief but he’s going through it with humility and grace. It’s Keegan proving that he’s governed by a desire for something good — not a bitterness from something bad. Since the show has come out, Bradley has revealed further details about those scenes, including the fact that the cameras arriving at his house gave him some extra hope. But always he has refrained from criticism for those chosen over him. He’s stayed on the high road.
And that’s who you’d want to be as an athlete.
