• Mon. Apr 7th, 2025

How Netflix’s Full Swing Humanizes the Game Like Never Before

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Apr 2, 2025


Golf has never felt more personal than it does in Full Swing. Netflix’s hit docuseries, which debuted in early 2023, just dropped its third season, and once again it delivers something golf coverage has long lacked: emotional depth. The show offers an unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look at life on tour, tracking the triumphs, missteps, rivalries, and mental tolls of modern professional golfers.

At its core, Full Swing is about much more than birdies and bogeys. It’s a window into the highs and lows that come with competing at the top level. In Season 3, we revisit major championships, get an inside look at the President’s Cup, and witness the lead-up to the selection of Keegan Bradley as the Ryder Cup captain. Through it all, Full Swing continues to do something rare.

It humanizes players like Scottie Scheffler (already an all-time great), Rory McIlroy, Joel Dahmen, Justin Thomas, Justin Rose, and many more. These aren’t just names on a leaderboard. They’re real people with real struggles, insecurities, and sacrifices.

So what is Full Swing, exactly? It’s a docuseries co-produced by Netflix and the team behind Drive to Survive, the wildly popular Formula 1 show. The first season immediately found a dedicated audience, both inside and outside the golf world. Each season follows a rotating cast of golfers across both the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, tracking their performance on the course and their personal journeys off of it.

It’s fast-paced, cinematic, and emotionally rich. That’s everything traditional golf broadcasts typically are not.

And that’s exactly why it works. The target audience includes long-time golf fans, new viewers curious about the game, and a growing younger demographic that values storytelling and personality as much as performance. For casual fans, Full Swing is a welcome entry point into a sometimes intimidating sport. For diehards, it’s a fascinating deep dive into the people who make golf what it is today.

Full Swing also doesn’t shy away from golf’s biggest cultural shifts. From the ongoing PGA vs. LIV dynamic to the presence of influencers and social media personalities popping up in episodes, the show documents how the game is modernizing. It embraces golf’s diversity, its evolution, and its expanding appeal to younger generations. And yet, it still pays respect to tradition.

It’s a series that bridges the old and the new, celebrating what’s always been great about golf while showing us where it’s headed.

More than anything, Full Swing captures the emotional rollercoaster of life on tour—the pressure to perform, the solitude of the road, the grind of practice, and the personal cost of chasing greatness. It’s this vulnerability that hooks viewers. The show doesn’t just glorify success; it reveals what it takes to get there.

For a sport undergoing major transformations in its structure, culture, and business model, Full Swing arrived at the perfect moment. It’s not just good television. It’s an essential document of golf’s turning point. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor: start watching Full Swing on Netflix.

You’ll never see the game the same way again.

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Brendon is Class A PGA Professional and founded Little Linksters, LLC, and its nonprofit arm, the Little Linksters Association for Junior Golf Development. He won 25+ prestigious industry honors, including the 2017 PGA National Youth Player Development Award. He graduated from the PGA of America Management Program and has a handicap index of 7.8.He has played golf for over 40 years and currently plays twice a month at the Eagle Dunes Golf Club near Sorrento, Florida. He loves Srixon clubs and plays a ZX5 driver with Z 585 irons. He’s written over 60 articles on GolfSpan and specializes in sharing tips to improve your golf game. You can connect with Brendon at LinkedIn, X, IG, FB, his website, or BrendonElliott@pga.com.



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