The highly-anticipated golf docu-series, Full Swing, has premiered on Netflix.

The eight-episode run, shot during the unprecedented time in men’s professional golf through 2022, features an in-depth look at some of the biggest names in the game and the ups and downs they face as both golfers and human beings.

The production team behind the program is the same as the Formula 1 series Drive to Survive (now in its fifth season) that helped catapult the racing series into the mainstream.

While there hasn’t been confirmation of more seasons of Full Swing, the program has certainly given both golfers and non-golfers alike a look at the lives of these stars not-yet scene before – or maybe ever.

Here’s a breakdown of Episodes 1 through 4!

EPISODE 1: FRENEMIES

Main focus: Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas

One more day 👀

Prepare to see the TOUR like never before on @Netflix’s Full Swing premiering Feb. 15. pic.twitter.com/xUIlVGSGKg

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 15, 2023

The first episode of the series starts with a dramatic, cinematic musical selection. Beauty shots of some of the top courses in the world. Quick clips of some of the people that will be featured in the upcoming episodes. And the first quote on camera we see comes from Canadian swing instructor Sean Foley.

“One word to describe golf this year? Disruption.”

While part of the episode was focused on Golf 101 (What’s an eagle? How does a 72-hole PGA Tour event work?) it quickly turns back into the dynamic between Spieth and Thomas, specifically focused on their weeks at the RBC Heritage – which Spieth won.

Thomas, at the time, hadn’t won a major in five years and hadn’t won a PGA Tour event in 14 months. Skip ahead and there’s Spieth shooting a television commercial while Thomas is grinding on the driving range. With winning, of course, comes privileges.

The guys jump on a private jet (earlier in the episode they were playing $1,000-a-hand guess-a-card) and head to Southern Hills for the PGA Championship – clearly showing the series is not in chronological order.

The PGA Championship tees off and Thomas is in the mix (although his allergies are acting up, and there’s a funny interlude when he’s at a drugstore trying to get as much medicine as possible – still in his golf clothes!) although he struggles Saturday and falls down the leaderboard.

Golf fans know what happens next. Thomas stages the biggest comeback in PGA Championship history (he was seven shots back to start the day) after Mito Pereira, the 54-hole leader, hit his tee ball in the water on the final hole of the day and made double bogey. He defeated Will Zalatoris in a playoff.

Kudos to the creative team who pumped up the Hollywood-style nature of the finish (from an event nine months ago) with some brooding music and behind-the-scenes footage of Thomas and his family.

EPISODE 2: WIN OR GO HOME

Main focus: Brooks Koepka and Scottie Scheffler

The second episode of the series is all about one thing: winning. And we see the juxtaposition between two guys who are on the opposite ends of that winning spectrum in 2022 – Brooks Koepka and Scottie Scheffler.

Scheffler, of course, won four times in a 57-day span last year en route to winning Player of the Year honours, including the Masters. Even though Scheffler seems to be winning every time he tees it up on the PGA Tour he still admits winning is incredibly difficult. While we don’t get too much inside access into Scheffler’s life, there’s a fun conversation captured with he and caddy Ted Scott about his wife’s favourite hotel-bed snack food.

Koepka, meanwhile, had long been the PGA Tour’s alpha dog. He won four majors in two years and had an incredible stretch of golf not seen since Tiger Woods in the early 2000s. He had a chance to win the WM Phoenix Open (he was the defending champion) but lost to Scheffler. He wanted to win the Masters, but admitted after an opening-round 75 that he “couldn’t compete” with the guys on top of the PGA Tour. We had a blonde-haired Koepka in the gym, chatting with fiancé Jena Sims, putting towards a wine bottle in a hotel room, and generally just moping around as he tried to figure out what the heck was wrong with his golf game. Koepka would go on to miss the cut at the Masters where Scheffler won, and admitted for the first time in 32 years of playing golf, he was “embarrassed.”

At the end of the episode, we also get another teaser about LIV Golf and if Koepka had been thinking more about the Saudi-backed circuit.

EPISODE 3: MONEY OR LEGACY

Main focus: Ian Poulter

This is the first time we see a deeper dive into how LIV Golf got its start, and what the back-and-forth decision-making process has been for one golfer: Ian Poulter. Poulter has been a long-time Ryder Cup hero, a multi-time winner on the PGA and DP World Tour, and as we see in this episode, a family man.

Poulter played poorly at The Players Championship and then lost out at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, including a second-round match-up against fellow Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick. We get the first in-depth look at the emotions of losing when Poulter throws his clubs in the locker room, while Fitzpatrick sits silently on his phone on the other side of the room.

While on the golf course Poulter is struggling, he’s clearly enjoying his family time as a mid-40-year-old dad. He admits he’s missed 50 percent of the growth of his kids and it’s getting harder these days, but he’s also provided well for his family – he’s made enough money to afford them a private jet from Florida to England for a summer holiday.

The threat of LIV Golf upending men’s professional golf continues to be a thread throughout the episode, and Poulter finally admits that guaranteed money was something that tipped him over the edge. He’s made about $33 million in his PGA Tour career, but the rumour circulating had Poulter’s LIV Golf signing bonus at $40 million. He missed the cut at the PGA Championship and got emotional being away from his family for five days without anything to show for it, but when he returns, he’s made his decision to tee it up at the first LIV Golf event of the year, “just down the road” from his family home in England.

EPISODE 4: IMPOSTER SYNDROME

Main focus: Joel Dahmen

While the episode featuring Joel Dahmen – the first to focus on someone that non-golf fans likely have no idea about – starts and finishes with some pretty funny moments, the balance of the episode is emotionally solid and provides viewers with the first tear-jerking moment of the series.

You've never seen golf like this! Full Swing is now on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/MY6ELpLrzy

— Netflix (@netflix) February 15, 2023

Again, the episode has a juxtaposition, this time not of winners and losers, but of the guys on top of the golfing world and how they got there and Dahmen, who, well, is the first to admit that the world’s best are just built differently than he.

Dahmen lost his mother to cancer six months to the day when she was told she would have six months to live. He had cancer himself while in college, but beat it. Lona, Dahmen’s wife, is introduced in the series as a calming presence in his life and admits with Dahmen having had testicular cancer, they weren’t sure if they would be able to have a baby. She gets pregnant, however, and there’s a wonderful moment in a stroller store (Dahmen also tells his father on Father’s Day he’s about to become a dad, too).

We also meet a caddie for the first time in the series, but not just any caddie. Dahmen’s, Geno Bonnalie, is his childhood best friend. Bonnalie wrote an email to Dahmen eight years ago to “apply” as his full-time looper, and the pair both read parts of it on screen (prompting another misty moment).

Most of the episode is focused on Dahmen’s run at the U.S. Open at The Country Club last summer. Dahmen wasn’t even sure if he would try to qualify and after the first 18 holes of said qualifier he nearly quit. He had a couple of drinks, however, (like, alcohol) and went out in the afternoon, shot 5 under, and got a spot in the field. He was the 36-hole co-leader and although he dropped back Saturday, he still finished tied for 10th – his best career major result.

This was the first time we learned more about the U.S. Open in the series, and we hear from Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, and Collin Morikawa – some of those guys that Dahmen says are “built different” – heaping praise on Dahmen’s big week on the big stage.

Find our recap on episodes 5-8 here.