Keegan Bradley’s snub from the 2023 U.S. Ryder team must still sting for him after winning twice last season and being skipped over for Justin Thomas. But Netflix executive producer Chad Mumm shared some details in a recent interview with Golfweek that makes receiving the dreaded phone call from U.S. Captain Zach Johnson on that fateful September day seem 10 times worse.
And spoiler alert: in my book, seeing the actual phone call is the most gut-wrenching moment of Netflix’s “Full Swing” Season 2, which debuts March 6.
But first, let’s back up for a moment. Bradley, who last played in the Ryder Cup in 2014 and has never been part of a victorious team – and hasn’t unpacked his suitcase from 2012 at Medinah when the U.S. blew a 10-6 lead – appeared on Barstool’s ForePlay podcast on Sept. 21, sharing the back story leading up to getting his heart broken yet again.
“I got a text from Zach, ‘Hey, guys, I’m going to be calling everybody tomorrow morning.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, I got another night now of sweating this out.’ I wake up, I’m very tired, and I get a call from Netflix and they say, ‘Keegan, we got a camera crew five minutes from your house.’ Why would they be sending a camera crew if I’m not going to get picked?” Bradley explained. “For the first time, I let my brain think I did it. Why would they be rushing a camera crew to my house?”
Natural reaction, right? But what Bradley left out was this incredible part of the story that Mumm shared publicly for the first time.
“He’d said from the beginning, ‘If I don’t make the team on my own,’ he was like, ‘I want the cameras there, yes or no.’ Day of the call we had cameras in Frisco from (PGA) HQ where (Zach) was doing the phone calls and we had several states and time zones in a 20-minute period having to coordinate getting crews at different houses and literally traveling from JT’s house to Rickie’s house and Zach’s going to call, and it’s like ‘Can you hold?’ because they’re not there yet.”
Why wasn’t the crew there yet? They went to the wrong address.
“I had to call him and be like, ‘Is this your address?’ and he’s like, ‘No, it’s one house over.’ We’d been there before, but it just got misprinted on the call sheet.”
Damn call sheets! That feels like a fireable offense. Really, that person had one job. And crazy to think that Johnson, who is dreading this moment of having to be the bearer of bad news and the worst part of his captaincy before getting romped in Rome, is in a holding pattern while the crew scrambles to Bradley’s pad in Jupiter, Florida.
“I think he thought because we were showing up that it was a yes,” Mumm mused, “and we get in there, put the camera down, he gets the phone call, and it’s a no.”
Behind the scenes may have been a bit of a hot mess but the payoff is having the cameras rolling to capture this moment. Even though you already know what is about to happen, it’s powerful stuff.
“As soon as I picked up the phone, it was like a ‘Hey, Keegan … ‘ And I look over at Jill a second into the call, and I go like, no,” Bradley recalled on ForePlay. “It was devastating.”
But also great TV and one of the signature moments of Season 2 of “Full Swing.”
“It’s crushing to see. But he handles it like such a pro,” Mumm said. “To be able to be that vulnerable in that moment but also super-human … I mean, he’s awesome. It’s so powerful.”
