'Full Swing' Season 2 delves into new territory

A four-time major winner falls short of his expectations and shares a rare moment of self-doubt.

Brooks Koepka? Nope. He was Season 1. In Season 2, it’s Rory McIlroy having a locker-room reckoning after letting another major slide by in last year’s PGA Championship at Oak Hill.

“My technique is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I almost feel like I want to do a complete reboot,” says McIlroy, a statement met by the protestations of his manager, Sean O’Flaherty.

“It’s the only way I feel like I’m going to break through,” McIlroy adds. He’s shown looking at a photo from his 2011 U.S. Open victory at Congressional. “I need to get back to being that guy.”

“Full Swing” is back with old standbys, new faces and a deeper look into the lives of its subjects.

The second season of the critically acclaimed Netflix docuseries dropped on March 6, and viewers will find a series more willing to take chances after playing it safe in its debut season. Vox chief creative officer Chad Mumm, the man behind the popular Netflix show, spoke after the first series launched of how pleased he was that players were happy with their portrayal in the documentary. Some of that may have been necessary to build trust, but Season 2 is a braver, deeper dive that seems less concerned with its subjects’ opinions. The creators embrace a more authentic sort of storytelling, providing the viewer with a more textured look behind the scenes.

There are new cast members, like Wyndham Clark, who delivers one of the season’s highlights with his episode alongside one of the returnees from Season 1, Joel Dahmen. Together, their episode focuses on mental health. It’s an example, along with the Ryder Cup in Rome, of the series delving into new territory.

Clark and Mumm sat together at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (which Clark would win a few days later) to watch a clip of the U.S. Open champ’s episode, one of Mumm’s favorites.

“I've got to give so much credit to Wyndham for really opening himself up to the cameras,” Mumm said. “It's not easy to just have a bunch of strangers show up with movie cameras and come into your living room and film you doing a meditation.”

Clark called it, “part of my calling in both golf and life” to share his story. What his openness produced was an episode that Mumm called “legitimately moving,” an inside look at Clark’s work with sports psychologist Julie Elion, which helped him capture not only his first PGA TOUR title at the Wells Fargo Championship but also his first major at the U.S. Open.

The story of Clark, the breakout player of 2023, is complemented by the appearance of Dahmen, who alongside caddie Geno Bonnalie was the comedic foil of Season 1. This time, though, we see Dahmen struggling with stardom and the increased responsibilities of parenthood. Bonnalie suggests he see a mental coach; Dahmen doesn’t want to. They’re at loggerheads until a tearful embrace inside a private jet, a scene that shows both the luxury and hardship of professional golf.

The second season starts with Rickie Fowler and Jordan Spieth gleefully hitting balls at a Port-A-Potty while Adam Hadwin is inside, suggesting we’re about to see the lighter side of TOUR life that made up so much of Season 1. That notion is dispelled when McIlroy opens up about his difficulties shouldering the load of the PGA TOUR while trying to win majors.

“I didn’t say, ‘Hey, let me lead,’” McIlroy says of his manifold obligations as arguably the game’s most popular player. “I maybe put myself in this position without really knowing it.”

When Koepka wins the PGA Championship, McIlroy reckons with the fact that he’s no longer the most prolific major winner in his generation, a status he held with pride. He opens up to his caddie and manager, wondering aloud if he’s no longer good enough to separate from the field.

“I watched my episode with Chad at Pebble Beach, and I watched the Ryder Cup episode, too,” McIlroy told PGATOUR.COM. “I felt like it did a good job encapsulating the season. You’ve got to set the boundaries early and they’ve been very respectful. They probably got a little more access to me as the season went on than they did in the first season.”

Another powerful episode features Fowler, who broke a lengthy win drought at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, and his wife, former amateur track standout Allison Stokke. Fowler’s comeback win, which culminates with a tearful scene inside the clubhouse at Detroit Golf Club, allows us to see another side of the amiable and telegenic veteran pro.

“It worked out,” Fowler told PGATOUR.COM. “Being part of the first season, there wasn’t much of a story on my end. I wasn’t playing well and didn’t do anything to give them a reason to showcase me in an episode. I needed to step up and give them a story; I’d been struggling.

“At least now, being part of an episode – you know, there’s so much content that they don’t get to use,” he added. “For me, it was almost two years of footage edited down to 25, 30 minutes.”

For its first season, "Full Swing" shot 750 hours of raw footage and combed through another 3,000 hours of archival footage. This time it was 900 hours of raw footage and 10,000 hours of archival.

What’s more, the series takes advantage of its unprecedented access, which gets even better in its second season, all of which makes “Full Swing 2” an upgrade over the original. We see Tom Kim aimlessly wandering around Augusta National, in search of nothing more than one of the club’s famed pimento cheese sandwiches. Scottie Scheffler points out to Kim that he has accidentally parked in the champions’ parking lot, and Kim struggles to get his bearings behind Augusta National’s clubhouse, an area normally hidden from golf fans’ view.

The show might have been hesitant to include such moments in Season 1, not only because a player could potentially find it embarrassing, but also because it showcases some of Augusta National’s most secluded areas. Kim, after taking a wrong turn into the Champions Locker Room, finally gets his sandwich in the club’s Grill Room – a lot of work for the same sandwich that patrons can purchase for a couple of bucks.

“My trainer’s probably not going to be happy,” Kim says after placing his order. In another scene, he jokes that the cameras should change their angle to make him look thinner.

“You have a nice face,” a voice says from behind the camera.

“Not a lot of ladies have told me (that) so far,” Kim quips in response.

The hardest moment of Season 2 is the gut punch in which Zach Johnson tells Keegan Bradley he didn’t make the U.S. Ryder Cup Team. Justin Thomas does make it. Full Swing had cameras on all of them; rarely has watching people on the phone been so entertaining.

Although fans will have already seen the Ryder Cup action in the last episode, the stories of Luke Donald and Johnson, Bradley and Thomas, plus McIlroy, are where the series shines.

“The first season everyone was kind of learning as they go,” Fowler said. “I feel like both sides have a better understanding of how things work, players knowing how to say no. Your story is still going to be told, but you can dictate how much you let them in.”

To judge by Season 2, the players let those cameras in quite a bit.