Zach Johnson’s Ryder Cup phone call to break the news to Keegan Bradley that he didn’t make Team USA is everything I hoped it would be and then some. You’ll have to wade through the first six episodes of Season 2 of “Full Swing,” but the wait is worth it.
The call is incredibly awkward, filled with nerves on both ends, Johnson telling Bradley “he’s amazing” as he goes full tilt into it’s not you, it’s me mode. It’s both heart-breaking and riveting TV to watch and the topper is Bradley’s classy response as he takes the news like a man. Bravo to “Full Swing” for giving the viewer this fly-on-the-wall, never-before-seen treat and the payoff is to see both Johnson and Bradley consoled in different ways by their spouses.
Earlier in Episode 6, after Bradley has won the Travelers Championship in June, the closest thing he has to a hometown event, the cameras capture Bradley, running on the highest of highs, whispering something into his wife’s ear. Wife Jillian fills us in that he said, “Do you want to go to Rome?” At that point it seemed very doable that Bradley will make the team but now in the finality that he’ll have to wait two more years and may never get a better chance to play in a Ryder Cup again, she tells their son, “Give your dad a squeeze.”
“Why?” he asks. “Because he needs it,” Jillian says.
It is raw and real and in the moment and if you’re a halfway decent human being you’ll start rooting for Bradley to make the next U.S. team. It is moments like this that make Season 2 better than Season 1. But then when the storyline turns to European captain Luke Donald’s picks we see him make the congratulatory calls to among others Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and to Justin Rose, who waits patiently kicking a soccer ball in his backyard with his son. After Donald hangs up, he says, “What a day!” That is it. No mention of who he overlooked. To not have Donald’s call to break the news to Adrian Meronk that he’s not going to Rome either was a major whiff, and it looks even worse when Meronk has gone on to admit that being passed over for the Ryder Cup is a main reason he jumped to LIV. I tabbed Season 1 as “good not great,” and Season 2 is better than good but still fell short of what it could be.
Season 2 follows a very similar story arc. The first season begins with the famous video of young Rory chipping balls into the washing machine and despite a turbulent year where he becomes the…
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