The new season of Full Swing fails to deliver

Have you watched the latest series of Full Swing on Netflix? I have. My verdict? Must do better!

Much of it was entirely predictable and there were few surprises within the four episodes.

You will not be shocked to learn that the opening episode focuses on the build-up to the 2025 Masters and Rory McIlroy’s emotional victory at Augusta National. The problem is that we all know the story and Full Swing was unable to bring anything new to the party.

Is Full Swing Worth Watching?

There are lots of new faces, including JJ Spaun, Maverick McNealy, Cameron Young, Ben Griffin and Chris Gotterup and the thread that runs through this series is the efforts of all of the aforementioned to make Keegan Bradley’s US Ryder Cup team. And that also means we get to see and hear lots from Bradley.

You may recall that Gotterup won the Scottish Open to stake his unlikely claim for a Ryder Cup berth. He admits that he didn’t know where Scotland was before that victory. 

Griffin was another who came from nowhere. Full Swing charts his unlikely journey. He actually walked away from the game and returned only when his boss took him to one side and offered to finance his return to the game. He won the Zurich Classic with Andrew Novak, quickly added another victory and continued to play superbly for the rest of the year.

I have to say that it felt as if this whole series was set up and engineered for an American victory at Bethpage Black. That didn’t work out too well, did it?

Bradley openly admits that he has a bad relationship with the event - on the losing side twice as a player and then overlooked by Zach Johnson when all logic dictated that he should have been in the US team for Rome.

Things Were Missing From Latest Season

There are some extraordinary omissions. For instance, there is no coverage whatsoever of Scottie Scheffler’s victories at the US PGA Championship or Open Chsmpionship. And they somehow covered Spaun’s US Open triumph with no mention of Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre, who finished second.

In fact, European golfers get little or no coverage other than Tommy Fleetwood’s heartwarming victory at the Tour Championship but only after making us painfully aware of his near-misses.

As he spoke about those disappointments Fleetwood was incredibly philosophical about it all. He said: "There’s nothing else to do but to just crack on."

Full Swing focused on the likes of Justin Rose, Harry Hall and Shane Lowry waiting by the 18th green to watch Fleetwood finally break his duck in style.

And that was the cue for Bradley to make the calls to his captain’s picks. Young and Griffin were genuinely thrilled to get the call. If you think these decisions don’t matter then you need to watch the reactions of those who got in and those who missed out. McNealy is a man who does not need to play golf for a living. His father is a billionaire. But he was genuinely devastated to miss out. As he said: "I just love competing." Why Gotterup was not chosen remains a complete mystery to me - and to him.

Focus Placed on The Ryder Cup

The final episode focuses on the Ryder Cup and what Bradley described as the best team on earth. There was the whole "will he or won’t he play" debate. He revealed that when he won the Travelers Championship, beating Fleetwood in the process, he had made up his mind that he was going to play but as the season progressed he came to realise that leading and playing was simply too much.

Had the USA been in front from the off then the coverage would have been very different, but it didn’t turn out that way, despite the inevitable appearance on day one of Donald Trump.

Instead, much of the focus of the episode is on the crowd. Why anybody would be surprised by the vitriol aimed at the European players and their families is beyond me. This is New York. It was flagged up long before a ball was struck in anger.

I have to say that the Americans are not exactly imaginative in their insults. "Telly-tubby," they yelled at Shane Lowry, while Fleetwood was told: "Get a haircut!" Very original. Where they properly overstepped the mark was in shouting out when players such as McIlroy and Rose were starting their backswings. In fairness, both men gave as good as they got, McIlroy telling one group of fans to "shut the f*** up."

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Full Swing devoted much of this episode to the American fightback on the final day. As a European, it is all too easy to forget how close Bradley’s team came to producing the most unlikely of comebacks. We all know what happened on the final day. Viktor Hovland pulled out through injury and now it was 12-5. It meant Europe needed only two more points. A formality. Or so we all thought.

Matt Fitzpatrick was five up against Bryson DeChambeau after seven holes but finished all square. Fleetwood said that he knew that it wasn’t done, Rose spoke of poking the bear. In the end, it came down to Lowry having to hole an eight-footer on the final green to retain the cup and then setting off on a glorious jig of joy when the ball dropped.

Fleetwood admitted that the Ryder Cup generates the most intense feelings he gets on the golf course but it was Rose who best summed things up when he described Europe as the most united team. And there’s the difference.

Lowry later said: "That is the most pressure I will ever face on a golf course. The Ryder Cup means everything to me." This from a man who has won The Open!

Griffin was almost in tears while trying to sum up his experience but went out of his way to pay tribute to Bradley’s captaincy, insisting that he had not put a foot wrong all week. There are those who will take issue with that.

And Bradley? "I am never going to get over this. I have to find a way to live with it."

When Full Swing was first broadcast I was pretty excited. My sense now is that it has run its course.