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The world of professional golf very well may have changed forever on Tuesday when the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV Golf announced an historic merger.
That plan is still in the very early phases, and the US government could still keep it from ever happening.
But it’s still got everyone in the golf world talking.
And thanks to Netflix’s ‘Full Swing’ docuseries, which began in 2022 and follows around PGA Tour players on and off the course, we’ll know exactly how players reacted to the bombshell.
Richard Deitsch of The Athletic spoke with executive producer Chad Mumm about what exactly film crews were able to catch. And the results sound incredible.
“We had a player who was literally driving to his first PGA Tour event as a professional and we wanted to see what that was like, following someone who just turned pro,” Mumm told Deitsch. “We were with him when the news broke. I wasn’t there personally, but the feedback from our team was the mood was palpable. You could just feel the uncertainty and the waves of questions that arose. It just was a dramatic day to be on-site at a PGA Tour event.”
But the show also had camera crews at one prominent player’s house when the news broke.
“If you’ve seen ‘Full Swing,’ we’ve spent a lot of time off the golf course with players that we’re featuring,” Mumm said. “It just happened to be a day where we said, ‘OK, we’re going to be at your house and we’re going to watch you hang out with your kids.’ So in the middle of the morning, they’re hanging out in the living room and all of a sudden the player gets a phone call and the whole world shifts in real-time. We were rolling on it. The dream of being in the right moment at the right time and getting unfiltered, true reaction to something so pivotal, we got lucky. I’d love to say it’s great planning, but nobody knew this was coming. I found out the same time everyone else found out.”
Mumm did not say who the two players were as they’ve yet to be announced for the second season of the show. But he did tell Deitsch that they did not participate in Season 1.
It sounds like Season 2 of ‘Full Swing’ will yet again be must-watch television.