Every Monday Alex Miceli will share what he learned from the previous week in golf.
You always learn something new at the Players Championship. So I wasn’t surprised when I talked to Joel Dahmen and he had a bone to pick with Netflix over his appearance in Full Swing Season 2.
The 36-year-old was one of the cult heroes in Season 1 of the hit golf docudrama, when he made a run at the 2022 U.S. Open at The Country Club eventually finishing T10.
Dahmen, with his floppy hat and his sidekick/caddie Geno Bonnalie, made for good television and it brought a ton of recognition.
Joel Dahmen finished T11 at the Players, a better finish than any events he was covered in during Season 2 of “Full Swing.”
Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
In Season 2, Dahmen was in the spotlight again, specifically in Episode 3, titled “Mind Games.” Now, he and his wife were parents, and the doc’s focus was on the family and a golf game that appeared to be in a freefall.
Dahmen didn’t like how producers handled his story, which focused on a six-week stretch when he was playing at his worst.
“Netflix has done a lot for me, and Gino and my wife had a lot of great opportunities,” Dahmen said. “A lot of things that I wouldn’t normally do to get random journeymen out of the middle of the pack and make them somewhat famous. The financial opportunities from that have been excellent and I met a lot of amazing people.
“I didn’t love necessarily how Season 2 was portrayed.”
Dahmen admitted he was struggling during the six weeks the cameras were on him, starting when he missed the cut at the Memorial and continuing with missed cuts over the next four weeks, including the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.
Dahmen feels it was an adequate depiction of those six weeks—but not his entire season.
After that stretch, Dahmen finished T10 at the Barracuda Championship, T13 at the Sanderson Farms Championship, T7 at the Shriners. Last week he finished T11 at the Players, earning $606,250.
“It happens,” Dahmen said. “I was struggling with golf. I was struggling with Netflix fame; I was trying to navigate life on Tour with a new kid. I’m not the first one to ever do that and I won’t be the last.”
What Dahmen learned and wished was that Netflix would have updated his summer struggle with his success in the fall, to explain that this stuff happens and that players get back off the mat and figure it out.
Instead, he looked a little pathetic—my words, not Dahmen’s—and now he has learned a valuable lesson.
Dahmen is apprehensive to do more with Netflix in the future.
“Looking back like what came out of Geno and I in Season 1, you couldn’t top it,” he said. “Like you can only go downhill from there no matter what it was, unless I was literally winning majors. I think in hindsight, maybe leave when you’re on top.”
A valuable lesson for the future.
