There’s a no-nonsense golf shot late in the PGA Tour’s junior Players Championship Movie, Following Sundaythat exemplifies and encompasses its splendor.
The scene serves as a disjointed platform from a montage of last-round failure and self-flagellation by its four main characters. It’s a break from their collective downward slide; the play’s pace suddenly slows to allow one of its longest continuous scenes to play out.
A golf ball belonging to Akshay Bhatia lands on top of a ridge that bisects the par-3 13th green. It catches the right side of that ridge, picks up the slope, picks up speed, and rolls down toward the cup, just passing before landing in range.
Bhatia’s caddy, Joe Greiner – who is an absolute show-stealer from start to finish, in a good way – walks off the tee well ahead of his player, saying nothing but thrusting both hands in the air, a moment of pure joy amid the slow rollercoaster that is 72-hole golf. Behind him, Bhatia is stunned.
“How scary shotman. I mean, exactly how I saw it,” says Bhatia, running to catch up with his bag. “Like – absolute pageantry right there.”
“At this point, could you like golf anymore?” Greiner asks, practically floating. “That one second? After you’ve done something like that?”
Bhatia brings them back to earth. “Uh, yeah. I could have made it.”
In the context of who goes on to win the PGA Tour’s biggest event of the 2026 season, this moment of greatness is meaningless. But how is it presented? It feels raw, real and honest, a real turning point in Bhatia’s round, the first of three late birdies to help Bhatia secure a T13 finish. It’s a lucrative, impressive, and laudable position—it’s just not traditionally the focus of an hour-long movie.
“>
That’s the brilliance of playing on Sunday, though. His guiding principle seems to be FAITH. Trust that the golf will be enough, that the access will be enough, that with the right players and the right boxes plus about a thousand of the world’s greatest cameras, you can make the T13 interesting, and the T42, and the T50, and the T56. That’s where our four golfers end up – Bhatia, Rickie Fowler, Si Woo Kim and Chris Gotterup, respectively – but watching them get there is an absolute treat.
(One small point of objection, before I go any further: the title. “NO FILTER, MIC’D UP AT THE PLAYERS” in all caps sounds like the tournament yelling at the algorithm, asking for acceptance. Trust your best stuff! I realize we’re all yelling at the Great Algo in one way or another, but I thought it might have worked better here).
The little things are the big things. That’s the operating principle here, and that’s mostly what I mean by trust. What makes this behind-the-scenes film work is the belief that the thing at its core – golf – is something multidimensional and fundamentally interesting. The fact that this event is co-produced by NFL Films seems ironic; Did it take minds from another sport to convince the Tour that golf is interesting enough on its own? However they got there, I’m glad they did. It’s scary. It’s exactly what golf fans have been asking for for years, ever since the invention of the NFL’s microphone segments. And it’s a sign that the Tour wants to present golf in deeper, more interesting ways.
If I sound as giddy as Bhatia, it’s because I love seeing how this all works. Hell, me a show started just so i could ask these guys how it all works. But what I just saw is even better because they’re not being interviewed, they’re just being interviewed being. And so we get micro moments of micro tension. Bhatia’s wife has his sandwich somewhere in the crowd – will Greiner be able to track it down? Kim is looking to repair a ball mark on the boundary between the green and the edge; is it allowed to do this? There’s a restraint to it all, a minimalism, a sense that you’re seeing these guys as they really are, which makes this incredibly satisfying.
Why else does it work? “Real” in itself is no guarantee of success. Who and how is also of tremendous importance. The cast of characters is an important starting point; the ensemble of Bhatia-Fowler-Kim-Gotterup is a good mix of youth and power.
Boxes are also important connective tissue; Greiner and Ricky Romano (Fowler’s caddy) and Manny Villegas (Kim) and Brady Stockton (Gotterup) open up conversations, lighten the mood, help elicit feelings and goals and precise golf shots from their respective players. I found the whole thing to be a tremendous reinforcement of how important the right caddy can be – not because there’s a single correct way to be a good caddy (every player’s needs are different), nor because a caddy is there for every green read, but because that person serves as an extension of your brain, there to help and challenge you. This is a powerful position.
There are elements of hope and luck in choosing four players to take the spotlight from a field of 123. In a way, the makers were unlucky not to have their marquee players in the mix on Sunday; you can imagine the drama of Ludvig Aberg being mic’d up as he hit back-to-back water balls to take the lead in the final round, for example, or Cameron Young and Matthew Fitzpatrick getting up on the mic as they dueled down the stretch.
But in other ways they lucked out, especially with their weekend pairings; we got second-hand access to the tour’s biggest stars and defining moments.
Take Kim, for example. For the first two rounds, he was paired with Aberg and world No. 4 Collin Morikawa, whose WD back injury was perhaps Thursday’s biggest story; we can see the whole scene unfolding, painful and then unpleasant.
“It’s kind of awkward. I don’t know what to say,” Aberg says as Morikawa climbs into a cart to officially announce that his round is only twice over.
Kim also pairs up with Scottie Scheffler on Saturday; the two are frequent partners at home in dallas, so this is a good chance to get some of the world number 1 away from a press conference environment.
“Are you the best guys?” asks Scheffler’s caddy, Ted Scott.
“He doesn’t accept it,” Kim says annoyed.
Fowler is paired with Jordan Spieth, meaning he can walk along as Spieth monologues on the virtues of the little driver as THE the perfect club to hit the 18th ball. This show does not shy away from rotation rates.
And then there’s the revelation of the show, as Bhatia realizes in real time that Brooks Koepka, five-time major champion and returning peer on the PGA Tour, doesn’t use a kindergarten book at all. He’s eager to share that bit of news with Greiner.
“Do you know another player who doesn’t carry an old book?”
Of course, says Greiner. JT Poston. But as he says he realizes Bhatia is being literal, which leads to this.
Greiner: “Oh, he doesn’t even have the book.”
Bhatia: “He doesn’t even have it.”
Greiner: “I like it. That’s how I think I’d play better. (Pause.) Neither HAVE one.”
Bhatia: “I said, ‘You don’t even carry a book?’ He goes, ‘Nah.’
Greiner: “That’s it outstanding.”
And in the next scene, Greiner stands alongside Koepka’s caddy, Ricky Elliott. Greiner is diligent and curious and extremely engaged; he’s a fun guy to talk to, so he’s a great guy.
Greiner: “So he never keeps a yard book?”
Elliott: “No. It never has.”
Greiner: “So what’s he looking for? In this hole, is he just like ‘Driver?’ And you just say yes?”
Elliott: “I tell him, ‘You’re like a driver up there, aren’t you?’ He goes, ‘Yeah.’
That’s the beauty of watching golfers talk about golf and about other golfers. We see in real time: there is more than one way to do it.
But it’s not all machismo and courtship books. There are moments of genuine vulnerability sprinkled in.
“God, I’m so bad. I’m the worst player in the world,” Kim says at one point. And golfers will recognize themselves in Chris Gotterup’s self-talking style, which is approachable and affable but borders on desperate.
“I’m just having a hard time,” he tells Stockton calmly at one point. “Everything is just felt turned off. I’m trying to make a strong draw, he cuts. (Pause.) All right. Up and down.”
It’s that last four-word reset that makes him a pro.
So let’s do this every week, shall we?
Maybe not. None of this happens by accident, especially in this timeline; The release of the video on Tuesday at 9pm ET meant just over 48 hours from the end of the tournament to be released. There is an unimaginably large team involved in making things happen. I scanned the closing credits and counted 265 names – two hundred and sixty-five! — involved in its production. The fact that so many people were involved and somehow no one went too far to dismiss it all is remarkable and encouraging.
There’s a reason this looks bigger than just a video. New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp has been eager to push the envelope, to reshape the schedule, to make every event the Tour plays feel bigger. But if this video is any indication, he wants to do it by doubling down on golf and players. There isn’t an influencer to be found, the action barely spills off the ropes, and they only address the actual outcome of the tournament in the final minutes.
They believe that golf is enough. They treat it like a big deal. They also treat the details about it like a big deal. And because they do, we are more likely to do the same.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
“>
