Apple TV+’s Stick arrived in June 2025 with a deceptively simple pitch: a half-hour sports comedy about a once-great golfer who finds a second chance by mentoring a teenage phenom. Ten episodes later, the show had revealed itself as something more specific—a road-trip story about unfinished grief, makeshift family, and the stubborn belief that one pure swing can still change the shape of a life. For viewers who just finished Season 1 and are heading into Season 2, the first run lands as a complete, gently earned arc that sets up larger stakes without overplaying its hand.
Created by Jason Keller (Ford v Ferrari), the series stars Owen Wilson as Pryce Cahill, a former Tour player whose career collapsed roughly two decades earlier after a televised meltdown. In the years since, Pryce has settled into a shambolic existence in Indiana: selling clubs, running low-stakes hustles with his old caddie Mitts (Marc Maron), and lingering in the house he once shared with his ex-wife Amber-Linn (Judy Greer). The pilot finds him adrift until a chance encounter at a local range introduces Santi Wheeler (Peter Dager), a quiet 17-year-old who still possesses elite ball-striking talent but abandoned competitive golf after his father walked out. Pryce sees both a prodigy and a possible exit from the YouTube clip that has defined his public life. What follows is a ten-episode journey built around an RV, a series of amateur and professional events, and a rotating group that gradually becomes a found family.
The supporting cast is sharply drawn. Mariana Treviño plays Elena, Santi’s practical and protective mother. Lilli Kay is Zero, a sharp, environmentally minded bartender who becomes both Santi’s friend and, eventually, his caddie. Timothy Olyphant appears as Clark Ross, the smooth rival whose careless comment about Pryce’s late son Jett—who died of cancer at age four—triggered the punch that ended Pryce’s career. Mackenzie Astin turns up late as Gary, Santi’s estranged and manipulative father. The chemistry among Wilson, Maron, Treviño, and Kay keeps the tone warm even when the characters are working at cross-purposes. Wilson’s performance is the engine: he leans into Pryce’s flakiness and self-sabotage without letting the character become a cartoon, grounding the comedy in recognizable midlife damage.
Season 1 is structured as a series of escalating tests. Early episodes establish the road trip and the basic mentorship (“Grossweiner’s Law” is essentially a lesson about staying in the present shot). Tension arrives quickly when Pryce’s coaching style echoes the criticism Santi once received from his father. Zero becomes the person Santi actually listens to, leading Pryce to quietly pay her to caddy—an arrangement that later detonates when Santi discovers the truth. The middle stretch balances tournament play with quieter character work: Mitts and Elena circle each other, Pryce confronts alternate versions of the life he might have had with Jett, and the group’s fragile unity is repeatedly threatened by incomplete information and old habits. By the time they reach the Ready Safe Invitational, the show has made clear that golf is the least of the obstacles.
The finale (“Déjà Vu All Over Again”) brings the season’s central conflicts to the course. Santi, buoyed by his father’s sudden reappearance, puts Gary on the bag. The results are predictably damaging. Pryce, watching from the bar, eventually creates the opening for a caddie switch. With Pryce back, Santi steadies and produces the kind of creative, high-pressure shots that make him the most talked-about player of the week. He does not win—the trophy goes to Collin Morikawa—but the recovery matters more than the leaderboard position. In the quiet aftermath, alone on a practice ground, Santi pushes Pryce to swing again. The shot that follows is pure enough that Santi’s reaction says everything the camera deliberately withholds. The moment is the season’s clearest handoff to Season 2.
Critically, Stick landed in solidly favorable territory (81% on Rotten Tomatoes, 62 on Metacritic). Reviewers frequently noted its kinship with Ted Lasso and Shrinking—Apple’s other warm sports-and-therapy comedies—while observing that it is more modest in ambition and less relentlessly upbeat. Its strengths are consistent: Wilson’s charm, the ensemble’s ease, and a willingness to treat golf as a solitary mental exercise rather than pure spectacle. Its limitations are equally clear: the formula is familiar, some emotional beats are telegraphed, and the show is more interested in gentle recovery than in radical reinvention. For many viewers, those qualities are features rather than bugs. It is the rare sports comedy that works even if you have never watched a round of golf.
Season 2, which began streaming in early November 2026, picks up the threads the finale left deliberately loose. Santi continues deeper into the professional ranks while Pryce, with some prodding from Clark, begins an improbable comeback of his own. New characters (including Rhea Seehorn as a coach working with Pryce) expand the world without discarding the original group. The first season’s final swing was never meant as a tidy resolution; it was an invitation to watch both men compete at higher levels while still needing each other. For anyone who just finished the binge, the pleasure of Season 1 is how cleanly it earns that invitation.
All ten episodes of Stick Season 1 remain available on Apple TV+.
