The vision for an immersive series on the lives of professional golfers goes back half a decade, but it came to fruition at a 2021 dinner at Soho House in Los Angeles.
That’s where Chad Mumm met Paul Martin and James Gay-Rees for the first time. The latter co-founded Box to Box Films in 2016 – known for the highly touted Formula 1: Drive to Survive series – and listened to Mumm pitch his project.
“Five minutes into the dinner they’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re in. Let’s go,’” Mumm said of the meeting.
The immediate interest stemmed from a stereotypical perspective: people outside the game have a picture in their head of what pro golf is. The trio of producers were intrigued by the rare opportunity to totally subvert people’s expectations.
“You just don’t get those kinds of opportunities,” said Mumm.
The result? Full Swing, an eight-episode series that drops in its entirety Feb. 15 on Netflix. We caught up with Mumm to preview the show and explain just how they pulled it off (no spoilers, of course).
Reaction to the trailer
The Full Swing folks set social media ablaze when a universally embraced teaser trailer revealed a handful of clips and the long-awaited release date. The heat around the show was cranked up to an all-time high, we’re talking Buffalo in December, and set lofty expectations.
“The first emotion for me was relief and excitement. We finally got to share some of the stuff that we’ve gotten to do all year and the hardest thing when you’re doing stuff like this is just keeping it quiet,” said Mumm of the release. “I just want to shout it from the rooftops all the time about how much fun we’ve had and how cool it’s been. It’s just really exciting and validating to put in all that work and then to see people so excited.
“I think secondarily there’s so many expectations for this show, and that’s good. I’d rather it’d be that way than the other way and I think it really will live up to it. It’s nice to know we have the goods.”
It’s win or go home.
Full Swing — your new sports doc obsession from the creators of Drive to Survive — premieres February 15. pic.twitter.com/QEq7DlxXrx
— Netflix (@netflix) February 6, 2023
What should fans expect?
“Fans should be expecting to see pro golf like they’ve never seen it before,” said Mumm. “We were allowed to bring our cameras in to places no cameras have ever been allowed. Not just on the PGA Tour, but all the majors, inside player houses, caddie houses, hanging out with their kids, their families, we just had so much access.
“I give a ton of credit to the players themselves who really just understood what we were trying to do. Most of them jumped in feet first and said, ‘Hey, if we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this. So let’s go.’ It was really exciting and I can’t wait for fans to see a different side of professional golf that they don’t see on the broadcast.”
Following a traveling circus
Mumm likes to refer to professional golf as one big traveling circus: players, caddies, coaches, broadcasters and more who share a unique camaraderie and do the same thing in a different location week in, week out. But it’s not all fun and money games. Players have busy weeks with practice and workouts among corporate and media obligations, pro-ams, not to mention the every-shot-counts tournament itself.
“I do think it’s gonna bring a whole new appreciation to the game and the work ethic,” explained Mumm. “It’s just a long season and the fact that they can show up and still have lives outside of golf I think is super compelling, and I think people are gonna love to see it.”
Who will be the breakout stars?
“You got to think about outside of golf, right, like larger audiences,” said Mumm. “I think the breakout stars are gonna be Joel Dahmen, Tony Finau and Matt Fitzpatrick. I think those guys are probably not known to the general public and I think their stories are so powerful, so fun and so thrilling that I think they’re going to blow up. General fans are going to be obsessed with those guys and go to tournaments to watch them.”
Full Swing: Which PGA Tour, LIV Golf stars are involved in Netflix show?
“For golf fans, I think Sahith Theegala is a perfect example,” he continued. “If you follow the Tour regularly, I think you’re going to be in love with Sahith Theegala. He’s just so cool and he’s got so much game, it’s so fun to see the perspective of a rookie, showing up at (the Genesis Invitational) not knowing where to park. It’s all new and fresh and you’re seeing them process it all in real time.”
One player in particular, four-time major champion Brooks Koepka, blew Mumm away.
“The first time we sat down with him, I had a very fully formed impression of who I thought Brooks Koepka was,” said Mumm. “From the first second he sat down with us, showing up without an agent, the only player who came without an agent, drove himself over, sat down in the chair and said, ‘Let’s go,’ for like an hour and a half. We were jaws on the floor. This guy was so interesting and so different from what we thought. We had versions of that with almost everybody.
“What I’ve been telling people is if you have an opinion of a player, I don’t know if it’s gonna change your opinion, but it’s just gonna make it stronger. You’re just gonna see him in a whole new light. You’re gonna appreciate what they do in a different way and you’re gonna really get in their head, which is a cool place to be.”
‘We had to finish their stories’
The trailer featured a clip of Ian Poulter, who left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf, saying “you picked a hell of a year to start following the PGA Tour” and boy was he right.
“We had no idea that it was coming and we had no idea of the scale of disruption. From a storytelling perspective, it gave us so many new angles into the sport,” said Mumm of the opportunities provided by the emergence of LIV. “It’s not like everybody is best friends, but there’s certainly a camaraderie out there. When the schism happened, it just totally flipped.
“All of a sudden you have these golfers who are not known for having really strong opinions, and then the foundation of why they’re out there and what they’re playing for was called in to question. Both sides of that argument we got a ton of perspective on from the players themselves. ‘Are you playing for money? Is this a job? Or are you here for legacy? What does this mean to you?’ It was just fascinating to see it play out in real time.
“We just kept going, we just kept filming with everybody. When Brooks left, when Ian left, we didn’t stop filming them, we had to finish their stories.”
How Rory McIlroy got involved
Getting some players to sign up was easier than others. The big surprise in the teaser trailer was the presence of Rory McIlroy, who wasn’t included in the initial list of confirmed players.
“Rory was always – we’re making a show about pro golf, you’ve got to get Rory. We had been working with him, trying to get him into the show all season long, but he was very focused on his game and limiting distractions,” said Mumm. “But after the Open Championship, I had a chance to sit down with him and just sort of say, ‘Look, we may never get another shot at this, and your voice matters. This is a chance to tell a side of your story that they’re not getting in the press, they’re not getting on social media.
“It was like a five-minute conversation and he was like, ‘Yep, I’m in.’ From that moment forward he probably gave us more access than like any other player all year. Rory only knows one way, and that’s all in. I think people are gonna be blown away by just how deep we were with him, particularly at the end of the year.”
How did Full Swing get access to all four majors?
Mumm will be the first to tell you his fan experience at a major has been personally forever ruined due to the amount of access the crew had, noting how they were in rooms with cameras rolling in places that nobody has ever seen before.
“Our approach to the majors was always, ‘Hey, we’re not here to tell a documentary about your tournament, we’re here to tell the story of what it’s like to compete in it, and it’s always going to be from the player point of view,’” Mumm said. “We’re not going to do a doc on St. Andrews, we’re here to tell the story of what it’s like competing in the Open Championship. It just meant that we were able to really get inside the players’ heads about what felt different about the majors.”
How were you able to get players to open up?
A few drivers have been critical over the last few years how some parts of the Formula 1: Drive to Survive series were edited to fit a narrative. To keep that from happening with the golf series, Mumm leaned in on one word: Trust.
“It was about building that trust. Any time you’re doing a documentary, the show is about access,” explained Mumm. “You’ve got to have your sources trust you and forget the cameras are there. The show starts when they forget that the cameras are rolling and they just start being themselves. That’s a process that takes time.
“It’s like everything, you just tell people you’re gonna show up, you show up on time, and leave when you say you’re gonna leave, and you just start to become part of the fabric of that community out there on Tour.
“The goal is just get the camera to disappear, fade away. We didn’t show up with giant movie cameras and 15 lighting packages and a huge sound truck. We tried to keep it super small and intimate,” he continued. “We never produced the scene. It’s never like, ‘Hey, let’s go for a run on the beach at sunrise.’ It’s like, ‘You’re gonna have dinner with your friends? We’ll just come, put some mics on you and 30 minutes later you forget you’re wearing them and we’re over on the other side of the room shoot with a long lens.’
“What I said to all the players and their agents was the guys that really lean in, they’re the ones who are gonna get the most out of it. That really held true,” he said. “The guys that committed to it, whether they were comfortable or not, just leaning in and saying, ‘Okay, we’re just going to open ourselves up,’ they’re the ones that really, I think, are gonna get the most out of this.”
