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Whatever importance gets assigned to the major championships or the annual PGA Tour schedule, there is one event that truly has the juice: the Ryder Cup. Or at least that’s the thesis of season 4 of Full Swing, the annual Netflix docuseries that probes the year that was in professional golf.
In a truncated format, released more than a month deeper into the year than its predecessors, the show looks back on 2025 almost entirely through the lens of the tense, at times controversial three-day match between Team USA and Team Europe that unfolded at Bethpage Black in the shadow of New York City. What feels like an over-correction at times relative to occasionally scatterbrained prior seasons ends up proving a strong reminder of one of the biggest golf weekends of the decade so far.
Where seasons 1 through 3 weighed in at eight, eight and seven episodes, respectively, season 4 is a four-parter, with runtimes ranging from the premiere’s 39 minutes to almost exactly an hour for the finale. Where previous seasons sometimes bopped back and forth between different events, sometimes arcing back to several perspectives on the same event from multiple episodes, this season treats 2025 in much more linear fashion, with the first episode touching on Rory McIlroy’s long-in-the-making 2025 Masters victory, vaulting him into rarefied air as one of only six career grand slam champions.
But from the outset, the 2025 Ryder Cup looms over everything. Full Swing treats the Masters, the PGA Championship and the U.S. Open primarily as barometers for various players’ fitness for the biennial event, which is placed on as high a pedestal as possible. Early on, the cameras fix their gaze on surprise Team USA captain Keegan Bradley as he and wife Jillian grapple with the weight of responsibility for selecting the team and planning the festivities on top of maintaining the life and schedule of an active PGA Tour player still in his prime, and good enough to potentially play on his own team. The show’s access to the Bradleys is the strongest through-line of the season, granting moments of genuine insight into Captain Keegan's state of mind before and after his team’s defeat to Team Europe at Bethpage. Bradley’s frankness with his feelings after the matches delivers exactly the sort of veil-shedding moments viewers of this sort of series demand.
The season’s shorter runtime still allows room to introduce the viewer to some of the 2025 season’s breakout performers, albeit almost entirely in the context of their Ryder Cup aspirations. The show spends enough time with eventual Team USA rookies Ben Griffin, J.J. Spaun and Cameron Young to highlight distinct differences in their personalities: Young’s brooding intelligence, Spaun’s SoCal chill cut with genuine earnestness and Griffin’s good cheer colored by gratitude at overcoming past career hardships. Even Maverick McNealy and Chris Gotterup, two hopefuls who ultimately miss the team, get enough of a look to give fans a rooting interest in their future success.
By contrast, Team Europe is reintroduced through its most seasoned Ryder Cup veterans, particularly Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood and Shane Lowry, as well as captain Luke Donald. Their interviews, thoughtful as always, serve to solidify one’s image of the Euros as a well-oiled machine who are miles ahead of the Yanks when it comes to wringing the most out of their players in the Ryder Cup.
This steady coverage of the lead-up to the 2025 Ryder Cup leads to an hour-long final episode that looks back at the Bethpage affair, starting with various behind-the-scenes moments before tracking the three days of competition – boorish home fan behavior included – and alighting on some brief post-mortems by voices from both sides.
Here is where some of Full Swing’s past faults bubble back up. Although the Netflix crew received a good amount of access, there are some critical moments where things feel a bit safe, pulled back from engaging in real, tantalizing scrutiny. The second-day dustup between Justin Rose, Bryson DeChambeau and DeChambeau’s caddie felt like a missed opportunity; there was very close-in video of the tense walk from Bethpage’s 15th green to 16th tee, but any dialogue is washed over by music. Even more so than in other seasons, Full Swing’s rotating cast of commentators feels too large and often superfluous, telling us about what’s going on at times when the editing and footage have already shown things clearly. Perhaps this is the show’s cross to bear, a function of an alleged Netflix policy (which the streamer has denied) to restate important plot points of movies and shows multiple times in order to account for phone-distracted viewers.
Overall, Full Swing season 4 shows some growth on the part of its producers, who manage to follow a strong thread to a satisfying conclusion. While it falls short of fully recapping the year 2025 in professional golf for posterity, it mostly succeeds as a four-part documentary of the year’s frothiest event.
Netflix
Produced by: Vox Media Studios, Box to Box Films
4 episodes; all screened for review.
Premiere: April 17, 2026.
Rotten Tomatoes | Full Swing: Season 4
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