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Netflix Full Swing: Epiosdes 5-8 Recap

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EPISODE 5: American Dreams

Main focus: Matt Fitzpatrick and Dustin Johnson

As the golf year continues to move along, we’ve reached mid-summer and the U.S. Open. First, though, it’s the final round of the PGA Championship, which lets viewers get inside the head of Matt Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick was a celebrated amateur in Europe and won the U.S. Amateur at The Country Club at Brookline in 2013 (this is very important as the episode continues). Fitzpatrick’s story is countered with that of Dustin Johnson. Johnson, of course, has won everything there is to win on the PGA Tour including two majors. He’s older now, though, married – to Paulina Gretzky – and has two children. With very little left to prove on the PGA Tour he makes the jump to the LIV Tour in order to have more time with his family. Compare that to Fitzpatrick, however, who has everything to prove. The two are paired together for the first two rounds of the U.S. Open at Brookline and there’s an excellent long shot of the two of them walking stride-in-stride with Johnson looking at least a foot taller than the Englishman. That matters little as the week goes on, however, as Fitzpatrick holds off his own mental demons and the hard-charging world No.1 – Scottie Scheffler – to win the U.S. Open by one shot.

Best Moment

Fitzpatrick’s iron shot on the 72nd hole from the fairway bunker to the green that basically sealed the championship. Only in golf do you get moments that swing so largely from complete disaster to utter jubilation.

Most Emotional Moment

For a tournament whose result was known for nearly nine months, the way the creative team managed to position Fitzpatrick’s win – and the family-focus after the win was confirmed – was pure lump-in-your-throat theatre. Not to mention the soundtrack to the moment was the emotive folksy styling of Bon Iver (“Were you going to look for confirmation and if it’s ever going to happen” – oh my goodness).

What We Learned

There are two very different ways to be successful at golf. Fitzpatrick has recorded every shot he’s every hit – what club and the distance – since he was 15, while Johnson is just an athletic freak of nature.

EPISODE 6: Don’t get bitter, get better

Main focus: Tony Finau and Collin Morikawa

We’re coming close to the end of the 2022 season with a week at The Open Championship at St Andrews in the spotlight. We catch up with Collin Morikawa – the defending champion – and golf’s latest golden child, along with Tony Finau – someone who hasn’t won a major but who many believe should be in contention at the big events much more often. While Morikawa is in his early 20s, engaged, and just trying to learn to travel with a dog, Finau is bringing his entire family on the road with him as much as possible through the year after the passing of his wife’s father. Finau ends up winning the 3M Open – the week after the Open Championship – and then the Rocket Mortgage Classic the week after that. The back-to-back victories answered any questions people may have had of the way Finau treated the balance in his on-course and off-course efforts in 2022.

Best Moment

After Finau wins for the second week in a row on the PGA Tour we find out that he felt he still had something to prove. The line about that being a “Champion’s mentality” was great, and the tarmac celebration with his whole family was a nice payoff after lifting two trophies. A funny honourable mention to when Finau was driving into the parking lot at Augusta National for the Masters and he recalled the first time he got there and realized how much parking was available, but an attendant told him he had actually driven into the past champion’s lot.

Most Emotional Moment

Finau talking to the group of juniors and their family at his charity tournament in Utah about his mother who passed away 11 years prior in a car accident through tears. And then we find out she passed away the day before Finau’s wife, Alayna, gave birth to their first child, Jraice.

What We Learned

No matter where a professional athlete may be in their life’s stage, winning is hard.  

EPISODE 7: Golf is Hard

Main Focus: Mito Pereira and Sahith Theegala

The timeline for this episode jumps around more than any of the others, but it tries its best to showcase the life and times of two PGA Tour rookies, Mito Pereira and Sahith Theegala. Theegala is 24 and just bought his first house (the sequence of him doing his laundry was laugh-out-loud funny) while Pereira is 27, married, and older than the typical rookie. Viewers get taken through both of their near-misses during the year. Theegala held a share of the lead through 70 holes at the WM Phoenix Open before hitting his tee ball in the water on the 17th hole on Sunday and falling back. Pereira, meanwhile, had a two-shot lead standing on the 18th tee in the final round of the PGA Championship before hitting his tee shot into the water. Despite the heartbreak from both men, they positioned themselves well to keep their PGA Tour cards for the following season – the ultimate goal for a first-year player.

Best Moment

While it was a little heartbreaking, the post-PGA Championship disappointment with Pereira and his fellow Latin American golfers was very poignant. Joaquin Niemann grew up idolizing Pereira but now Niemann has the PGA Tour wins Pereira so desperately wants. From the rented-house comradery to each of the guys hanging back to see if Pereira could win a major, it was a nice reminder that despite golf being the most individual of sports, there’s still strength in numbers.

Most Emotional Moment

After Theegala lost the WM Phoenix Open he admitted he wanted to take his father’s advice to heart: be sad when you’re sad, because when you’re happy it makes those moments even better. Theegala collapsing into his mom’s arms and crying while his father patted him on the back in Phoenix was certainly one of those “being sad” moments. Pass the tissues.

What We Learned

Whether you’re a first-year member of the PGA Tour or a veteran looking for another big-time title, being able to play four really good rounds of golf in a row is one of the most mentally taxing efforts in sports. It doesn’t hurt, too, to have a nice support system to lean on.

­EPISODE 8: Everything has led to this

Main focus: Rory McIlroy

We’ve reached the end of the 2021-22 PGA Tour season – a year unlike any other in men’s golf. This episode is probably the most golf-centric of any of the other previous seven, but at this point in the season in makes sense. Most of the drama of who will or who won’t go to the rival LIV Tour has been confirmed and with the fourth major in the rear-view mirror it’s time for the golf world to pivot to the FedExCup and the playoffs to end the year. We focus, then, on Rory McIlroy. A nice get for the production team to nab world No.1 and the obvious biggest voice in the game. If you were hoping for the same kind of inside-access as we got with some of the other athletes you’ll be disappointed – there’s really only time with McIlroy in the gym, a junior clinic, a clubby lunch, and in a virtual-reality testing centre – but with the focus of the episode on McIlroy’s work on the course, and how impressive it had been considering his big voice off the course, it didn’t feel like we were missing much. The season had to end somewhere. McIlroy, of course, goes on to win the Tour Championship in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion while also leading the PGA Tour into its next phase.

Best Moment

The generational importance of golf being amplified when McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, and Georgia Hall playing an exhibition at St Andrews prior to The Open Championship. That is the kind of thing that can only happen in golf and even though McIlroy let the Claret Jug “slip through (his) fingers” (his admission), the pre-tournament moment between golfing greats was very special. Honourable mention to the scene in the physio room at the Tour Championship. You’ll know why when you see it.

Most Emotional Moment

The final shots of the episode when McIlroy, a winner of the FedExCup again and on top of the PGA Tour’s world – both literally and figuratively – sits down in the locker room at East Lake Golf Club and looks at his phone. “He’s always first,” McIlroy says of who is the top congratulatory message whenever he wins on Tour.

It was Tiger.

What We Learned

Golf can be fun, maddening, dramatic, emotional, exciting, and full of characters. That’s probably why we love it so much – because it’s a little bit of everything.

Find our recap on episodes 1-4 here.

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