'Full Swing' Netflix golf doc comes from the mind of a former Dawg
‘Full Swing,’ the Netflix golf documentary taking the world by storm, comes from the mind of a Georgia Bulldog.
The series’s Executive Producer, Chad Mumm, graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Georgia’s Grady College in 2008.
Fifteen years later, eyeballs across the world find themselves trained on a project that refused to die.
Mumm’s ‘Full Swing’ tells the stories of professional golfers on both the PGA Tour and the upstart LIV Golf Tour.
As LIV Golfer Ian Poulter says to one of Chad Mumm’s cameras, “You picked a hell of a year to start following the PGA Tour.”
While Poulter isn’t wrong about it being a hell of a year for golf, he’s off by a few years on when Mumm ‘picked’ to do it.
Chad Mumm started working on this project nearly a decade ago
As Mumm told Grady College during an August 2022 ’40 under 40′ event, he really had to fight for this dream project.
“Personally, the project I am probably most proud of is this golf show that I’m doing for Netflix right now just because it was just sort of a six-year long development project that I never gave up on. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s an all- access documentary series following professional golfers…like the “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” series, but for golf,” Mumm said.
“I started working on it about six years ago and somehow was able to make it happen. It died 500 times in that six years and I just refused to let it go.”
How did he pull it off? Like Kirby Smart emphasizes in football recruiting, it’s all about relationships
According to a profile in Golf Digest, Mumm knew the right people. And more importantly, he had their trust.
Chad Mumm pitched his idea for an all-access golf documentary series during a round of golf at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas.
His playing partner that day was PGA TOUR Vice President of Media Business Development, Chris Wandell.
With streaming services already intrigued by the concept of behind-the-scenes sports doc series (hello, Drive to Survive and Hard Knocks), and the decision makers on the PGA Tour intrigued by it, Mumm had one major obstacle left:
The golfers themselves.
It reportedly took Mumm two years to convince players to be alright with the access, something that golfers rarely grant in a mostly individualized sport.
Perhaps even more impressively, Mumm also convinced each of golf’s four majors to give his crews access as well.
“It’s about the characters, not the tournaments,” Mumm told Golf Digest.
As you’ll see when you check out the series, the wait – and Mumm’s efforts to keep it alive and possible – were well worth it.
