The Hawk (2026) Series: When Every Golf Joke Comes with a Bathroom Key
- Dan Brooks
- 20 hours ago
- 4 min read
Follows Lonnie Hawkins, 2004's top golfer, as he struggles to recapture his magic late in his career, refusing to believe he's anything other than one stroke away from golf's greatest comeback.
At some point, Will Ferrell must have wandered into a sporting-goods store, stared deeply into a display of discounted athletic equipment, and heard destiny whisper, “You must play every sport known to man.”
Race-car driver? Done. Figure skater? Done. Basketball player? Done. Soccer coach? Done. Baseball manager? Done. Now Ferrell has marched onto the golf course wearing enough colourful clothing to make a box of crayons file a copyright complaint.
In Netflix’s The Hawk, Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, the top golfer of 2004 and a man who still carries himself as though Sports Illustrated has reserved its next twelve covers for him. Unfortunately, time has moved forward, his career has moved backward, and reality is standing beside the eighteenth green waving one of those giant airport landing flashlights.
Lonnie refuses to accept that his best days might be behind him. In his mind, he isn’t washed up. He’s merely one perfect stroke away from the greatest comeback golf has ever seen.
I can understand that kind of thinking. Every time I order fries, I tell myself I am one salad away from becoming a fitness influencer.
The premise gives Ferrell plenty of familiar territory. Lonnie is loud, confident, flamboyant, delusional, selfish, strangely charming, and built from the same comedic DNA as several of Ferrell’s previous sports characters. If Ricky Bobby and Jackie Moon had a baby during a PGA tournament sponsored by bourbon, the result might be Lonnie Hawkins.
Ferrell still knows how to squeeze a laugh out of absolute nonsense. There are moments in The Hawk that genuinely made me laugh out loud. Not the polite little nose exhale we now call laughter online. I mean actual laughter - the kind where somebody in another room asks what happened.
Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between. The show often approaches a genuinely funny idea, sets up over the ball, checks the wind, adjusts its stance - and then smashes the joke directly into the portable toilet beside the concession stand.
That brings me to the show’s inexplicable fascination with penis jokes.
There are so many that I began wondering whether Netflix had signed an exclusive distribution agreement with the little blue pill. Every few minutes, another crude joke comes wandering out of the clubhouse wearing golf shoes and no pants. Potty humour can work in small doses, but The Hawk pours it over the series like gravy at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
I am not opposed to lowbrow comedy. Sometimes lowbrow comedy is exactly what the doctor ordered, especially if your doctor is twelve years old and has just discovered whoopee cushions. But repetition is not the same thing as escalation. Saying essentially the same crude thing louder does not make it funnier. Eventually, it just makes me wonder if the writers’ room had a swear jar that paid money out.
Molly Shannon plays Stacy, Lonnie’s ex-wife, and her history with Ferrell gives their scenes a comfortable, slightly unhinged rhythm. They have been working together since their Saturday Night Live days, and you can feel that familiarity. Shannon knows precisely how to react to Ferrell’s lunacy without disappearing beneath it. She can communicate disbelief, frustration, affection, and the desire to strike someone with a nine iron using a single facial expression.
Jimmy Tatro plays Lance, Lonnie’s son and a rising golfer with his own ambitions. Tatro has a naturally laid-back comedic delivery that works well against Ferrell’s human-air-horn performance. Fortune Feimster, as Lonnie’s new caddie Sam, also provides some needed balance. She has enough comedic personality to stand beside Ferrell without becoming decorative lawn furniture.
Luke Wilson, Chris Parnell, Katelyn Tarver, and David Hornsby help fill out a cast with more comedy experience than most countries have strategic oil reserves. That makes the uneven writing even more frustrating. There is enough talent here to build a comedy powerhouse, but the show too often hands them a collection of body-part jokes and asks them to behave as if somebody just discovered fire.
Another problem is the treatment of the male characters. Nearly every man is portrayed as an absolute moron. I understand that this is a comedy and exaggeration is part of the deal. Nobody watches Will Ferrell expecting a sober documentary about quiet competence. But when every man appears to have misplaced his final brain cell in the pro-shop ball washer, the joke stops feeling playful and starts feeling lazy.
Come on, Hollywood. Men are capable of tying their own shoes, preparing meals, raising children, making difficult decisions, and occasionally locating an item in the refrigerator without asking their wives where it is. That last one may still be under scientific review, but hope remains.
A foolish character can be hilarious. An entire gender reduced to blundering idiots is just a creative shortcut. Comedy works best when people are recognizably human. If everybody is a caricature, nobody has enough substance to surprise us.
The show also finds room for the familiar ideological checklist. You can almost hear somebody behind the scenes tapping a clipboard and announcing, “Excellent, that box is handled. Proceed with the genital jokes.”
Messages do not automatically ruin entertainment. Some of the greatest stories ever told have strong moral, cultural, or political ideas underneath them. The difference is that good storytelling weaves its ideas naturally into the characters. When I can see the checklist through the dialogue, I stop watching a story and start watching a corporate seminar wearing plaid pants.
The brightest surprise is the music. The soundtrack is genuinely good and frequently supplies the energy that the comedy cannot. The song choices give The Hawk swagger, nostalgia, momentum, and occasional emotional texture. There were stretches where the music department appeared to be the only group consistently shooting under par.
Final ranking: The Hawk earns a 6.0/10. It delivers a handful of authentic laughs, a terrific soundtrack, and a cast talented enough to rescue several shaky scenes. But the exhausting potty humour, relentless penis jokes, dim-witted male characters, and visible ideological box-checking keep this comeback story from completing its own Grand Slam. It isn’t a total shank, but nobody will be mounting this scorecard over the fireplace.
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