Wyndham Clark could be breakout star of 'Full Swing' Season 2

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. – Athletes and celebrities often say they want to be real and vulnerable only to panic when the time comes, retreating to the safety of platitudes.

Wyndham Clark, who figures prominently in the second season of the Netflix docuseries "Full Swing," which premiers March 6, went all in. He talks about hating golf, his worried friends and family and the mental health tipping point that led to his breakout season in 2023.

“Yeah, I mean, I didn't really have anything to hide,” said Clark, who, with "Full Swing" Executive Producer Chad Mumm, showed media a clip of Episode 3, Clark’s episode, and did a Q&A. “I also think it's part of my calling in both golf and in life to kind of share my story.

“I've had a lot of adversity and challenges thrown my way,” Clark continued, “and I think my story will I hope inspire a lot of people and the people that have had similar stuff happen in their life that maybe this is inspiration for them to keep going and anything like that.”

The first season of "Full Swing" was a crossover hit, so it was bound to continue. The second season features a deep lineup, including not only Clark but also Rory McIlroy (Episode 1), Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler, Tom Kim, Joel Dahmen (a breakout star from the first season), Matt Fitzpatrick, Keegan Bradley and Justin Rose.

There’s also behind-the-scenes footage from the Ryder Cup in Rome, with U.S. Captain Zach Johnson and Europe Captain Luke Donald. “'Full Swing' continues to give fans a chance to get to know the players through their wins, their losses, their families and their friends, all throughout a season in professional golf,” the press release says.

Clark was the redemption story of last season. An amateur and college standout, he nonetheless had unresolved anger issues. He was so volatile as to necessitate being left off the Oklahoma State travel squad, for a time, and transferred to Oregon in part to get a fresh start.

Those anger issues followed him when he turned pro, and he underperformed; "Full Swing" uses footage of him repeatedly losing his cool when things don’t go as planned. Those around him insisted Clark make a change or seek an alternate line of work.

He began clearing out the cobwebs with performance coach Julie Elion in December 2022. He changed his negative self-talk, started meditating, and read “The Energy Bus” and other books. The transformation was stark: He won for the first time on the PGA TOUR at the Wells Fargo Championship in May, then captured the U.S. Open at the Los Angeles Country Club in June.

His mental approach was the catalyst, and he goes deep in the docuseries.

“You embraced it from the first second,” Mumm said. “Really, I think that this episode is legitimately moving. Wyndham's story shares an episode with Joel Dahmen and the parallels between how they got to the TOUR and their life before, and then also the way they've dealt with things that have happened in their life is just a very fascinating and powerful contrast.”

(Both players were just teenagers when their mothers died of cancer.)

“… This episode's going to do a lot for destigmatizing the idea of therapy,” Mumm added, “and how it can help professional athletes and anybody, honestly, be the best they can be.”

Clark typically doesn’t like to watch himself on TV, and Wednesday was the first time he’d seen bits of his episode. He cringed at the parts where he was losing his temper, especially a sequence in which he attacks his golf bag. Still, he said he’s glad he participated.

“I feel like I've come a long ways,” he said, “and it's really neat to kind of look back now that I have, you know, the hindsight 20/20 vision of seeing where I was maybe a year and a half ago or even four years ago when I did hate golf and was so frustrated that I wasn't playing to my potential, to where then have an amazing year like last year.

“Hopefully I'm over that hump of a lot of the things I struggled with,” he added. “It's kind of surreal to be up here looking at this and go, wow, this really happened. I still have to pinch myself.”