Netflix star role has brought ‘great things’

At the Corales Puntacana Championship, NCG’s Matt Chivers spoke to Joel Dahmen about his most recent appearance in Full Swing on Netflix…

Joel Dahmen’s life has significantly changed in the last 14 months.

Golf fans who follow the PGA Tour week in and week out have always known and enjoyed the American’s character and personality before the release of Full Swing on Netflix in February 2023.

But the docu-series that started by following stars of the circuit in 2022 presented the often-moustached Scottsdale native to a wider audience that wouldn’t have otherwise discovered him.

Series one saw Dahmen talk about his battle with testicular cancer and how his mother lost her battle with pancreatic cancer when he was in high school. This endearing episode named ‘Imposter Syndrome’ also documented his outstanding play at the 2022 US Open which earned him his second top-10 finish at a major championship.

Dahmen returned in the second series of Full Swing on March 6 this year. His dedicated episode ‘Mind Game’ painted a similar contrast of highs and lows, with the highs being his newfound stardom and elevated profile, but the lows of new distractions off the course that negatively affected his form on it.

But while speaking in the Dominican Republic ahead of the Corales Puntacana Championship which he won in 2021, Dahmen appeared grateful for the exposure and emphasised the drastic alterations to his life that have come from starring on Netflix.

“Netflix has changed a lot,” Dahmen said to NCG. “I would say I have more distractions or responsibilities or opportunities, I don’t really know what to call them.

“They’re all those things at the same time, so time management, I’m very bad at time management, I always have been.

“So, then you add a kid into it then try to manage that as well with the other things I’m doing off the golf course now and some opportunities, so just trying to manage that all.

“There are great things that have come from it and some of it is just feeling that there’s more things to do. There’s a little added pressure but there’s downtime I would say, but mostly great things.”

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Netflix Full Swing: Joel Dahmen amazed that people are interested in him

The caddie’s role is often overlooked in professional golf as the players make the ultimate decisions and quite literally call the shots. But Dahmen doesn’t see his caddie Geno Bonnalie as an employee. They are not a pair that treats a day on the golf course like a day in the office.

Bonnalie features heavily in both series of Full Swing. He and Dahmen are best friends and Bonnalie’s role as counsel, picking him up when he is down, is even more clear to see in season two when he implores Dahmen to visit a sports psychologist as a strategy to rediscover his best form.

Dahmen has since revealed he doesn’t see a psychologist but a performance coach named Chris Bertram who also works for the Canadian National Snowboarding team.

One scene sees Bonnalie almost threaten to quit carrying for Dahmen in a conversation on a plane if he refused to seek help which led to an emotional embrace and intriguing viewing.

When NCG asked Dahmen about this scene and the general feeling of allowing cameras of a streaming giant into his life, he admitted it is hard to act natural but in his typically self-deprecating style (an imposter you might say), he also described he and Bonnalie as “normal dudes who happen to play on the PGA Tour,” and is somewhat bewildered as to why his popularity has exploded since.

“It’s something you get used to,” he said. “You try to watch what you say when there’s a microphone but a lot of the time after a while, you just let it go, it is different but at the same time, we agreed to do all of it.

“I find it amazing that people are interested – I still think of myself as a ‘Joe Shmo’ who just happens to play golf. We do the same things that every other family does, and I obviously have a great relationship with Geno.

“He is hilarious and he’s a great guy to be around, but we’re just normal dudes who happen to play on the PGA Tour and I find it fascinating that so many people are invested and care about it.”

“It’s one of those moments (the plane scene with Geno) – they’re around quite a bit. The conversations come up naturally and we have a lot of deeper conversations than other players and their caddies do, and we’re not just a player and a caddie, we’re best friends and he cares about me.

“So he’s going to bring up those questions when they arise and it happened to be on a plane with some cameras around.”

Dahmen should be full of confidence in the Caribbean this week as a past champion despite missing his last two cuts. Perhaps these results don’t reflect his general play as last month, he finished tied for 11th at The Players Championship, golf’s fifth major.

But consistency is key on the PGA Tour, or any tour, and the World No.163 is looking to string a run of performances together which could take him towards a second career title on the tour at some point in 2024.

“I like to think that I rise to the occasion when it comes to that. The Players is the fifth major,” he added. “It’s our biggest purse out there, it’s a great golf course, so I knew my game was trending that way – being focused for 72 holes is a huge key for me.

“If I can keep that up to 72 holes, I just like that event. I like everything about it and I hit it really well that week and I have the same feels in the golf swing, so hopefully we’ll keep going week after week instead of one week.”

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