The 10 Most Captivating Quotes From Full Swing Season Two

Editor’s Note: “Full Swing” Season Two was released on Netflix earlier this week. MGS had early access to the show and has been releasing commentary on the series throughout the week. This article includes spoilers. 

A year after making its debut, Netflix’s “Full Swing” series is back. 

If you missed it earlier this week, here is my review for the new season. My overall grade was a B+. The series does a nice job delving into pro golf’s drama, particularly in the first three episodes. It falls off after that point but it’s still worth watching. 

We also have a list of winners and losers from the season as a quick guide to how I thought players were portrayed. In that story, I also went through some of my favorite aspects of “Full Swing” and a few critiques where I felt the series struggled. 

This is the final MGS story of the week on the popular golf documentary. In this piece, I go through the most captivating quotes and explain why I thought they were important. 

No. 10 — Claude Harmon III: “I think there is an argument to be made that some of the LIV guys will be seen as pioneers.”

Harmon, who is Brooks Koepka’s instructor, unleashes several cringe-worthy takes that will make LIV bots proud. 

It starts in the first episode with this: “Everybody said that all of the LIV guys would be insignificant and nonfactors in the majors because there was no competition on LIV.”  

This is disingenuous given how most of the players who went (at least originally) were past their prime or were in poor form at the time.  The delusion reaches a boiling point when Harmon says LIV players could be considered pioneers in the future. 

Unless I’m missing something, these golfers did not invent the “get paid astronomical sums by the Saudi government” scheme. 

And their leaving the PGA Tour has made professional golf significantly worse so I’m not sure exactly what they are discovering beyond the dump trucks of cash. 

No. 9 — Zach Johnson: “I’m exhausted and my brain is fried so I’m just not going to speak.”

The American Ryder Cup meltdown in Rome was encapsulated in this scene where captain Johnson is being driven away from the course after Day One. 

Johnson is one of my biggest letdowns of Season Two, although it’s hardly a surprise based on how the Ryder Cup went. 

He doesn’t show many qualities of leadership, constantly talking about how he hates getting to bring only 12 players to the team. 

His exhaustion after Day One is concerning. He doesn’t want to think about pairings and there doesn’t seem to be much of a plan in place for the second day. 

Maybe it wasn’t such a shock the Americans got blown out of the water in Italy. 

No. 8 — Wyndham Clark: “I’m reminded of my mom saying, ‘You’re going to be someone great.’”

I’m a big fan of Episode Three (“Mind Game”) with Clark and Joel Dahmen. 

One of the best moments in that episode is when Clark conquers his inner demons and wins the U.S. Open. Clark’s voiceover is this line about his mom—whom he lost to cancer earlier in life—as the episode shows him finishing off his victory. 

It’s an emotional quote on its own but the buildup to that moment makes it hit a lot harder. 

You could argue Clark was the most vulnerable player in this season of the show. He let camera crews watch his sessions with a sports psychologist and talked honestly about his mental struggles. 

It’s nice to see. 

No. 7 — Rickie Fowler: “Can you imagine where we’d be if LIV was backed by an Amazon or Apple?

Fowler is not the first person to say this but I think it’s worth unpacking the sentiment that the landscape of professional golf would be a lot different if LIV’s source of funding was not so blatantly nefarious. 

The problem I come back to is that professional golf—regardless of who runs each league—is not big enough to bifurcate its audience. This is not football, soccer or auto racing. Golf is a niche sport with modest TV ratings. It’s a sport that only works as a consistent TV product if the best players are competing against each other. 

Fowler’s point might be that a more palatable sponsor would have lured the majority of PGA Tour players into a new league. There is an argument to be made that all the stars would have left in that case and maybe that would have been better for golf in the long run. 

But what we have now is LIV siphoning off enough notable guys to weaken the Tour—but not anywhere near enough to make LIV a viable product. 

No matter who is running either league, that is bad for golf. 

No. 6 — Dustin Johnson: “The guys who went to LIV, we took a lot of criticism. We’re the ones who took the risk for everything so why should they be compensated?”

I wrote about DJ in my earlier pieces but this quote is a symbol of the division in professional golf. 

Johnson is a guy who cares mostly about his family and doing whatever else he wants. Golf isn’t a top priority. It seems like he saw LIV purely as a business deal that helped his family. 

Is that wrong? No. A lot of us would do that given similar circumstances. 

But Johnson was paid handsomely—more than Tiger Woods’ career on-course earnings—in large part because he made a choice that inherently came with risk and criticism. 

His choice and everyone else’s decision to go to LIV helped each player individually but hurt professional golf as a whole. 

To do that and then also suggest PGA Tour players shouldn’t get anything for staying with a league where the overwhelming majority of the best players still reside … requires some blinders. 

No. 5 — Rory McIlroy: “Why the f— did I spend 12 months of my life fighting for something just for it to come back together?”

McIlroy is the only person I have on this list twice, although I could have added five or six Rory quotes. 

Props to the Netflix crew for getting this shot, which appears to be taken while McIlroy is in the car on his way to the RBC Canadian Open. 

McIlroy felt like a “sacrificial lamb” after the surprise PGA Tour-PIF partnership was announced without any players being privy to the news beforehand. 

He said exactly what most of us would say if we were in that situation. 

If you zoom out, “Full Swing” definitely makes it seem like McIlroy should have taken the LIV money instead of fighting for the Tour. And, to be fair, maybe he should have (and still might). 

The documentary doesn’t spend a lot of time on the nuances of professional golf’s landscape. There is little to no mention of how players choosing LIV came at a cost of fracturing the game further. Explanation of the framework agreement also doesn’t get enough run.

Where “Full Swing” does spend time is getting a great reaction to the news of June 6. None of those reactions says more about pro golf than McIlroy’s question. 

No. 4 — Shane Lowry: “Hey, Joe, get out of the way, you prick.”

After seeing the tremendous “Footgate” footage Netflix got of Patrick Cantlay’s caddie Joe LaCava getting in McIlroy’s way on the 18th green during Saturday of the Ryder Cup, it feels like the whole situation was overblown. 

LaCava had the right to be passionate at that moment. His player withstood heckling and hit critical shots down the stretch to win a crucial point. However, he lingered too long in McIlroy’s personal space as he lined up a putt that would have tied the match. Lowry and others let him have it, which was justified. 

But the footage shows that discussions on the green were far more amicable than we believed. LaCava admits he overstepped and the European team seems accepting of his explanation. Justin Rose even says that the antics were “funny” but that they just went on too long. 

It’s an emotional tournament and LaCava made a mistake but it was relatively tame in the grand scheme of things. 

McIlroy, while understandably upset, comes off a little fragile. His reaction later that night was heated. In most other sports, the player would have moved on without much thought. 

No. 3 — Joel Dahmen: “I want you to go caddie for Talor Gooch (on LIV) and make $17 million and then come back.”

Imagine trying to explain this sentence to someone five years ago. You would first have to explain who Dahmen and caddie Geno Bonnalie have become. 

“Yeah, one guy is the No. 193 golfer in the world. He’s funny and has an affable personality. His caddie is the same way. They are wholesome together.” 

And then you would have to explain the concept of LIV. 

“Yeah, so the Saudi government created their own golf league where they pay golfers well beyond market value to play in front of sparse crowds and a limited TV audience. The PGA Tour has lost many of its best characters and its product is getting worse, too. The Tour is also largely to blame for not evolving from its archaic structure. Yeah, professional golf is in a bad spot where fans mostly just care about the majors. How is LIV making money? Well, I’m glad you brought that up …” 

And then you would have to explain the role of Talor Gooch. 

“Yeah, so there is this middle-of-the-road PGA Tour player who left for LIV. He says a lot of dumb things, including how the Masters deserves an asterisk because a few random LIV guys aren’t qualified. Anyway, he made about $36 million in one year on LIV. That is more than the entire career of Henrik Stenson, a guy who won a major and five other times on Tour.” 

So caddying for Gooch would be profitable? 

“Yes.” 

And why does Dahmen want his caddie to leave and then come back? 

“You know what, maybe just watch the documentary.”

No. 2 — Keegan Bradley: “Do you want to go to Rome?”

Bradley says this to his wife moments after he wins the Travelers Championship to put himself in better position for a Ryder Cup spot. 

It’s tough to watch knowing what happens next. Bradley, who badly wants to make the American squad, plays relatively average golf throughout the summer but puts himself in the conversation for a captain’s pick alongside Sam Burns and Justin Thomas. 

Bradley eventually gets an awkward phone call from captain Johnson to say that he won’t be on the team. It’s even worse when you learn that Bradley thought the presence of Netflix cameras at his house meant he was getting picked. 

There is some raw emotion from Bradley in that scene and throughout the series. The fact he is thinking about the Ryder Cup moments after winning a PGA Tour event shows how deeply he wanted to make the team. 

No. 1 — Rory McIlroy: “My technique is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I almost feel like I want to do a complete reboot. It’s the only way I feel like I’m going to break through. It feels so far away. I’m not at the stage in my life where I feel like I can do these two-week boot camps. I feel good enough to f—— top 10 in my head but I’m not good enough to win. Like pull away. Like winning f—— majors.”

This McIlroy rant (edited together for clarity) after the PGA Championship takes the top spot for me. There are multiple levels to this that I find fascinating. 

First is the mental and emotional strain on McIlroy. He was a leading voice in directing golf’s future before starting to take a back seat toward the end of last year. 

Somehow he was still able to play solid golf throughout much of that time, including a near-miss at the U.S. Open a month after this quote was uttered. 

There is no doubt, however, that the burden of his role in golf was affecting his performance physically and mentally. 

Another level to this is that he cares deeply about majors—to a fault. It’s captivating, even if that is at a detriment to him. As McIlroy is scratching and clawing for confidence in majors, Koepka is able to peak for them. McIlroy wishes he had Koepka’s mental game in majors. 

There is yet another layer to this. 

How many players do you think would be comfortable with this type of sentiment being shared on a documentary? Not many, I would guess. 

It makes the fan experience more interesting but I could see why players might be hesitant to be involved in “Full Swing” moving forward. 

The show appears to be on solid footing to release a third season, although we don’t have official word yet.