A man in a pink polo and a black cap sits in a golf cart near the end of the new trailer, talking to someone just out of frame. He recites a comment he once found about himself online, which called him “the Amelia Earhart of golf,” a man who “took off with great expectations and suddenly disappeared over a water hazard,” and it is about as cruel as golf jokes get. That man is Pryce Cahill (Owen Wilson), and the joke is the whole second season of “Stick” in one line. Apple TV released the official season two trailer on October 8th. The 10 new episodes arrive on Wednesday, November 4th, with two at once and then one a week until December 30th. The trailer spends almost all of its two minutes on one question, which is whether Pryce vanished or was never really there to begin with.
Jason Keller created the show and still runs it. He executive produces with Wilson, Ben Silverman and Guymon Casady. In Apple’s synopsis, Santi (Peter Dager) takes the next step toward professional golf, “only to discover how quickly the game changes when talent becomes expectation.” Pryce, meanwhile, is urged on by his old rival Clark Ross (Timothy Olyphant) toward “an improbable comeback in hopes of becoming the oldest golfer ever to win a major.” He gets a new coach in Amanda (Rhea Seehorn), and he keeps his caddie Mitts (Marc Maron) at his side. Mariana Treviño, Lilli Kay and Judy Greer return, while John Higgins, Billy Zane, Rex Linn, Sasha Alexander and Missi Pyle join the cast. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for the first season of “Stick.”
The trailer spends almost all of its two minutes on one question, which is whether Pryce vanished or was never really there to begin with.”
It opens somewhere familiar, on a sunny driving range with yardage signs stuck in the grass, where Santi swings in a red striped T-shirt while Pryce, in aviators and a teal shirt, hits from the next bay. Then it cuts to night inside the RV, where the two of them sit at a lamp-lit table under a “No Bad Vibes” sign with a crystal first-place trophy between them. Santi asks whether he ever thinks about what would have happened if he had kept playing. Pryce grins and answers with the best line in the trailer, “Sometimes we set out to write a symphony, and we end up with a jingle instead,” and then a billboard reading “Greetings from Fort Wayne, Indiana” slides past, a nice reminder of how small his life had gotten before Santi showed up.
The pitch comes fast. Pryce tees off at the Dove Charity Pro/Am Invitational in front of a packed rail, with Clark in a cream jacket front and center. Then the two of them are at dinner in a dim restaurant, Clark leaning across the table with his hands going. He tells Pryce that the spark that made him special as a kid is “still there,” then asks how Pryce would like to become “the greatest comeback in sports history by becoming the oldest player to win the US Open.” Apple’s synopsis only says “a major,” so the trailer is more specific than the press release. A later low shot puts Pryce on a tee box under a camera tower wrapped in US Open branding. For scale, Golf.com lists Hale Irwin, who was 45 when he won in 1990, as the oldest US Open champion.
Seehorn arrives in a kitchen. Pryce, Clark and Mitts are gathered at the counter with groceries and beers. Somebody explains that Pryce “is going to make a run at the US Open,” and Amanda laughs out loud before asking, “Oh, wow. You’re serious?” The next time we see her she is bent over a course map with all three men, saying the team has to play to its strengths and then adding, dead flat, “However few they are.” She spent years sharpening that dry delivery on “Better Call Saul.” It lands even harder here, since every man around her plays it loose. Clark, meanwhile, spends at least one scene on a lounge chair in sunglasses, holding a drink with a paper umbrella in it.
There is a small studio story in how Apple bills her. The August release that set the premiere date called her an “Emmy Award nominee,” and the October one calls her an “Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner,” because in September she won the lead actress in a drama Emmy for “Pluribus”, which is also an Apple show. That is a streamer putting its newest trophy on the front of a comedy that needs a fresh face for year two, and it probably will not hurt. Olyphant and Greer were also bumped up to series regulars this season, according to Screen Rant, which says something about where the weight of the show now sits.
The best stretch of the trailer is the quiet one. After a golden-hour shot of two people collecting balls on an overgrown range, Amanda, in a plaid shirt outside a house, asks Pryce why he wants this so badly. He says people kept telling him he had a gift, and “I need to know if it was true or if it was all just smoke,” and the words play over what looks like a flashback, with a boy holding a golf club and a man in a plaid shirt kneeling to talk to him in a school office. Apple’s release says the closer Pryce gets to the golfer he used to be, the more he has to face “why he never fulfilled the promise everyone once saw in him.” Clark undercuts all of it in a crowded clubhouse. He claims he “wept inside” when Pryce left the game, then admits, once pressed, that he did not cry at all.
From there it turns into a montage, cut to title cards that read “this fall,” “when life goes off course” and “come back swinging.” Pryce takes a full swing against an open sky, the whole crew strolls away from the RV across a parking lot, Clark trades a high five with a woman in a marble lobby, and two people in white hotel robes jump on a bed. Santi gets one big moment, yelling and pointing at something off screen. Then Mitts, standing in a cluttered garage, settles the argument with “But it’s not stupid.” It all ends back in the golf cart with the Amelia Earhart line.
Our read is that this is a smart pivot with one obvious risk. The first season, which premiered in June of last year and was renewed the day its finale aired in July, was built around Santi as the prodigy and Pryce as the washed-up guy betting on him. Flipping that, so the teenager’s pro career becomes the B story and the older man chases the US Open, gives Wilson far more to play. Keller, who co-wrote “Ford v Ferrari”, knows how to make a stubborn veteran’s last shot feel like it matters. The catch is that a washed-up golfer making a run at the US Open is already a famous movie, and it was called “Tin Cup.” The trailer also gives Santi only a few seconds. That might just be marketing leaning on the bigger names, or it might be a sign of how the season is weighted.
Either way, the tone has not changed, and that is the part fans will care about most. It is still a show where the RV is home base, the found family travels together, and every serious moment gets a joke parked right behind it. Two episodes drop on November 4th. That should be enough to tell whether the comeback is a real swing or a jingle dressed up as a symphony.
What Do You Think? Do you want Pryce chasing the US Open, or should season two stay focused on Santi’s rise? Is Rhea Seehorn the right person to coach him, or is Clark the better partner for this comeback? And can “Stick” make the oldest-golfer-ever story feel fresh after “Tin Cup”?
See you on the next binge!
