Review: 'Full Swing' pulls on heartstrings, pulls no punches in PGA Tour-LIV feud

Tony Paul
The Detroit News

The success of the golf swing is built largely on timing.

That's the case, too, with Netflix's new docuseries on the PGA Tour, "Full Swing." The streaming behemoth and the world's elite golf tour signed on for the project in January 2022, only for the cameras to be rolling — to the tune of 700 hours of footage — when the disruptive LIV golf arrived on the scene, poaching some of the biggest names in the sport away from the tour that Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and, more recently, Tiger Woods built.

Rory McIlroy in "Full Swing."

The LIV-PGA Tour rivalry was one of the hottest stories in sports last summer, and Netflix was the beneficiary, having already scored interviews with the likes of Dustin Johnson (and wife Paulina Gretzky), Brooks Koepka (and wife Jena Sims) and Ian Poulter, before each of them defected to LIV golf, along with Phil Mickelson, who wasn't interviewed because he might've been suspended by the PGA Tour following his controversial comments on Saudi Arabia.

"(Bleep) you, Phil!" the PGA Tour's new golden boy, Rory McIlroy, says to the cameras. "I hope that makes it in."

Yeah, that definitely made it in.

"Full Swing," a fascinating, eight-episode pull-back-the-curtain look at a year on the PGA Tour, doesn't obsess over the LIV rivalry, but uses it as an intriguing backdrop while chronicling the lives of some of the best golfers in the world, on and off the course, and not just the biggest names, either.

Brooks Koepka in "Full Swing."

Hard-core golf enthusiasts probably will wish there was more on the LIV-PGA Tour dragout, which ultimately led to banishment from the PGA Tour for anybody who left for the Saudi Arabia-funded startup. But the more-casual sports fan or even non-sports fan — for whom the docuseries is aimed, as evidence by the elementary explanations of what a par is, and a bogey, birdie and eagle, in the first episode — will have no problem with the project as presented, because so much of the stories pull on the heartstrings. And we all can get behind that.

One of the best episodes on that front introduces us to Joel Dahmen, a top-100 golfer in the world, who doesn't seem to want to be more than that.

"Somebody's gotta be the 70th-best golfer in the world," he says. "It might as well be me."

Joel Dahmen in "Full Swing."

Netflix gives us the back story on Dahmen, who lost his biggest fan, his mom, to cancer when he was in high school. He admittedly never properly grieved, and that set him back on his golf journey — as did his own battle with cancer, six years after his mom died — before he reached the PGA Tour shortly before his 30th birthday. Dahmen finally earned his first PGA Tour win in 2021.

Netflix follows Dahmen on the course, on his own, and even shopping for baby strollers (seems like they bought two), and even a qualifier for the U.S. Open. That's right. Even being the 70th-best golfer in the world (he's 93rd now) doesn't get you an automatic spot in the sport's hardest test, one of the season's four major championships.

Last summer in Columbus, Dahmen played a relatively mediocre first 18 holes in the qualifier, then opted to skip the second 18. Instead, he had lunch, downed two White Claws, and tore up the second 18 to make the U.S. Open, where he was tied for the lead after the first round and finished tied for 10th. Dahmen, as down-to-earth a guy as you'll find on the PGA Tour — no wonder he's such good friends with Traverse City's Ryan Brehm, another PGA Tour player who lacks much of an ego — always liked to tell anybody who would listen that he wasn't good enough to win a major championship, but we don't believe him anymore.

Other easy-to-root-for players that Netflix follows around include Sahith Theegala — who just moved out of his parents house, and uses a cardboard box for a laundry basket — and Tony Finau, who recently started prioritizing traveling the PGA Tour with wife Alayna (after she recently lost her dad) and their large family, over spending more time on the range. There were skeptics, but he won two weeks in a row last summer, including at Detroit's Rocket Mortgage Classic, which gets only a brief run on "Full Swing." The better footage was from an airport in Utah, where Finau, after returning from Detroit, danced on the tarmac, with the Rocket trophy in hand.

Tony Finau, Alayna Finau and Sienna-Vee Finau in "Full Swing."

"You can get so engulfed in the game of golf," says Finau, "a lot of time you don't enjoy the joys in your life."

There are big names followed by the Netflix cameras, including Justin Thomas (who won last year's PGA Championship, as Mito Pereira, since gone to LIV, blew it down the stretch), Collin Morikawa (who's dog wears shoes) and, of course, McIlroy, who more-than-willingly became the face of the PGA Tour during the summer's scorching-hot public war of words between his tour and LIV golf.

The series, naturally, closes with the last tournament of the season, the Tour Championship, where McIlroy, making up massive ground the last two days, surpasses Scottie Scheffler for the FedEx Cup title and $18 million. The first congratulatory text is from Tiger Woods, who didn't participate in the docuseries.

Amazingly, the docuseries — an unfiltered look at a sport long so buttoned-up — didn't even need him.

Talk about good timing.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tonypaul1984

'Full Swing'

GRADE: A-

Rated TV-MA: for language throughout

On Netflix