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Golf’s resident villain, Brooks Koepka, is in a funk in Episode 2 of Full Swing (for the Episode 1 recap, head here). Koepka was the best there was in the sport from 2017 to 2019, winning tournament after tournament, rattling off four major wins in three years and grabbing a second-place Masters finish in there as well.
But now? The dyed-blond former star mopes around his Florida mansion, lamenting that he isn’t the same golfer he once was. Koepka has been plagued by injuries in the last several years, but it’s perhaps not the physical barriers stopping him so much as the mental ones. To be the best and then not be the best — or even all that close, in relative terms — is not an easy path to navigate.
“It’s interesting how mental it is. Golf’s a think where you overthink it,” Koepka tells his mother at one point in the episode. “Who’s the best right now? Scottie Scheffler. I guarantee if you ask him what he’s thinking about, he goes ‘nothing.’”
Full Swing then gives us a peek inside Scheffler’s mind. He is the best in the world right now, the World No. 1 who rose to fame quickly in early 2022 by rattling off three tournament wins and then earning the Green Jacket at the Masters. Koepka has a point: Scheffler talks about separating his work and home life, about working as hard as he can and leaving the rest to God (with a shot of him reading his Bible in there somewere).
Koepka, on the other hand, doubts himself. “I can’t compete with these guys, week in, week out,” he says at one point. And we all know how this ends — Koepka takes the offer from LIV. And now we understand why. He cannot get his mojo back and win tournaments again, and he felt like that was the end of what he wanted his career to be. LIV, for all its moral issues, takes the pressure off of him and gave him a whole lot of money. Is he a more sympathetic figure now? That’s for the viewer to decide.
Full Swing is available to watch on Netflix. All episodes are out now. Check out our Episode 3 recap here.