Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’ Season 2 Tackles PGA-LIV Drama Head On
When Rory McIlroy heard about the PGA Tour’s secret negotiations to merge with LIV Golf, he wondered why he spent so much effort defending the tour. He was still smarting from a missed cut at the Masters after feeling overwhelmed by the dual burdens of on-course challenges and behind-the-scenes battles.
“The pressure I was feeling to be this sort of spokesman or this leader, I think that was part of the problem,” he told an interviewer in the first episode of Full Swing’s second season, which was released on Netflix Wednesday.
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Then the PGA-LIV news hit on June 6. “Why did I just waste 12 months of my life to fight for something that was always going to come back together,” McIlroy asked himself.
Well, for one thing, it made for good TV, Rory.
Full Swing leans into the PGA vs. LIV battles for slightly more than an episode, chronicling the significance of LIV golfer Brooks Koepka winning the PGA Championship and the shock players on both sides felt when PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced the ventures planned to come together.
Full Swing also documents a bit of LIV Golf life, showing a couple scenes from LIV events and hearing from Dustin Johnson about his decision to join the breakaway group as well as from his wife Paulina Gretzky about the criticism they’ve received since.
Monahan himself even appears briefly, including in a behind-the-scenes moment documenting how he planned to message the decision to players.
However, the boardroom drama ultimately fades into the background, as the show returns to the strengths Netflix sports docuseries regularly rely upon: the ability to introduce and humanize star athletes young and old.
As another season of golf gets underway this year, many of the questions first posed last June still remain. What will a combined tour look like? Will defectors be punished and/or loyalists rewarded? The ultimate impact of new investment from the Strategic Sports Group and the likes of LeBron James in the PGA Tour is also uncertain, left for future Full Swing seasons to discuss.
This collection of episodes ends back on the golf course, and back with McIlroy, at the 2023 Ryder Cup. The U.S. vs. Europe competition “is among the last great professional sporting events where winning, and not prize money, is the reward,” according to the event’s marketing.
“It’s the purest competition in golf,” McIlroy said in the fall. “For me, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
On the outskirts of Rome, he got a team victory to cap a tumultuous year—and a reminder of what’s worth fighting for.
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