EXCLUSIVE: Keegan Bradley on giving Netflix access, the Ryder Cup, lobbying to be on Full Swing

ClutchPoints: At what point in the PGA Tour season did Netflix start following you around?

Keegan Bradley: Right from the West Coast Swing on. We did maybe hundreds of hours of filming. Hours and hours of filming. At my house, at tournaments. It was a lot.

CP: Did anything prompt them to start filming? Because it wasn’t really until the Travelers that your season really kicked into gear. You’re saying they were filming long before that.

KB: Yeah. I really lobbied to be on the show. I thought the first season was amazing. And, I was such a huge fan of Drive to Survive. I didn’t know a thing about F1 and then after watching it I followed F1 and I knew all the racers and all the drivers. And I thought, Jeez, what an incredible opportunity for us, that we would maybe get to do something like that and reach a bigger audience. And I really wanted to do it.

CP: Is that something you’ve personally thought about throughout your golf career? To showcase your personality, familiarize fans with you as a human.

KB: That’s 100% why I did it. I have a very hard time at tournaments to be relaxed and be myself. I’m a totally different person. I try not to be, but I’m a wound-up guy when I get on the golf course. And I haven’t ever really been able to show my true personality, and who I am. and I thought this gave me such an amazing platform to do that.

CP: Is there anything you wish was in the show that you know they had?

KB: Yeah, there was tons of stuff. I did some dinners that I thought were really fun. I did one with the guys from Bob Does Sports. They were there, I thought that was fun. You film all these hours, but it’s such a small window of the episode that they’re in. So I knew that was coming. But, I thought the stuff that they showed was really great. Maybe next year, if I’m lucky enough to be in it, it’ll be a little more in-depth. But I don’t know how to run a show, how to put one together. So, I trusted them to do just that.

CP: Was your family initially receptive to the idea of Netflix being around and you being in the show?

KB: That was the most nerve-wracking part of this, putting my family and my kids on there. It was something that my wife and I sat down and talked about in-depth. But we both were — after I won at Hartford, and that whole year, we kept saying how incredible is this going to be, to have this for the rest of our lives? This year of our life, it was being filmed. How fun that’s going to be to show [our kids] when they get older. We feel very lucky to have been on it.

CP: You come off well in the show, very classy, watching the Ryder Cup. Do you feel satisfied by the way you’re depicted?

KB: So I haven’t seen that episode. I’ve only seen the one with me and [Justin Thomas]. I’ve been hearing through people. I really was rooting for those guys. That was real. My wife and I — we both wanted them to win and do well. But, it was important, someday, for my kids to also realize, like, sometimes if you don’t get your way or what you want, you still have to do the right thing. And that’s what we wanted to do.

Full Swing Season 2 is on Netflix.