BRANDEL CHAMBLEE: Well, I would say it is only looking out for yourself and not the betterment of the game. That’s what’s going on in a lot of corners in professional golf. Every generation made more money than the generation before them. There was not a lot of boohooing about woe is me. Relative to the rest of the world, golfers were pretty darned well paid, if you were one of the best.

They tried to behave in a certain way that maintained, I would say, the pretty clean image of professional golfers that were concerned with the traditions of the game, self-policing the game, being philanthropic and giving back to the game. When I say giving back, I’m talking about talking to the media, talking to the fans. You don’t just get to take the money and leave. There’s no better example than where we sit right now at Bay Hill and Arnold Palmer. Peter Jacobsen came along after Arnold Palmer, and he almost with a megaphone, every chance he got, talked about how everybody should emulate Arnold Palmer. Nobody could win like Arnold Palmer. Very few could. But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t behave like Arnold Palmer. You leave the game a little bit better than you found it. 

But I think what we’re seeing now because of obnoxious greed, we’re seeing players that are going to leave the game not a little bit worse but substantially worse than they found it.  

BC: Well, Phil. Hardly any of these other players had the popularity to make a difference to tilt the game one direction or another. Phil had the potential to do a lot of good in the game. Look, he could have sat in that chair as a commentator for the next 20, 30 years. I have no doubt that he’d have been good at it. By all accounts, he’s a pretty smart guy. By all accounts, he spent a lot of time thinking about some cool stuff in the game of golf, and I would have liked to have listened to him for 20 or 30 years. I’d liked to have heard what he had to say. The fans loved him. You know, within the small world of golf, there were a lot of people that didn’t particularly care for him, but I certainly enjoyed watching him play. I didn’t love the way he played. I heard him say somewhere along the line that he got criticized for his aggressive style of play. It’s like, who else out here besides Tiger has won more than me? Maybe some people should try to play more like me. If there’s one criticism I have of what’s going on out here outside of the LIV world, it’s that everybody is being coached in the same way. They know their dispersion rates. They know where to play and everybody is counting cards, so to speak.  

Phil wasn’t afraid to hit on 16, to make a gambling analogy, which may not be entirely fair to Phil, but as a gambler on the golf course, that’s what people pay to watch. Do something that’s a little bit risky, crazy – he did some things that were crazy on the golf course, like here on 16 out of the right trees. But he had a very high level of skill and a very high level of knowledge of what he was capable of, and it was fun to watch him. 

I’m disappointed in him because he could have left the game in a better place. People were, early in his career or most of his career, they were making the analogy that he had similarities to Palmer, go for broke, gave the fans what they wanted, and I think he turned his back on the game. I think he turned his back on the stage that made him who he was and all the people that came before him.  

I think that the players that have gone to LIV have done a disservice to the game of golf. It’s like they’re going to get theirs. It’s like they’re all pulling the ladders up. They had to climb up those ladders to get to where they were, and the people that had placed those ladders were the generations that came before them. But they got there, and they think, well, I did it all on my own, I’m going to get everything for me. I’m pulling the ladders up.

I think Phil could have done a lot of good for the game of golf. Instead he’s really hurt the game.  

BC: The invitation stands. He won’t do it. Mutual friends of ours have offered to get us together. He did not want to do that. He wanted to go on Piers Morgan the week of the U.S. Women’s Open when I was working. But I’m happy to sit down and talk with him. But there’s nothing he can say that’s going to change my mind. Nothing. The fact remains that he is playing for one of the worst people on Earth who does horrible things to a lot of people. What he’s doing is benefiting that regime, MBS. To me, that’s indefensible. You can call it whatever you want. There’s a sense that as it’s been around longer, people are getting more and more comfortable with that. I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that they’re playing for a dictatorial murderer. That’s who they’re playing golf for. They’re helping launder his reputation and try to diversify his economy. They’re directly helping MBS. I don’t think we should lose sight of that.  

BC: Well, we’re in the business of covering news. These golf tournaments, wherever they’re at, wasn’t our decision to go to Saudi Arabia. It wasn’t Golf Channel’s decision to have these events. Our business is to cover golf tournaments.  

I don’t think that Golf Channel was – you can check me on this, maybe they were involved, but I don’t think that they were involved in arranging Aramco as a sponsor. If we find out that they are, that would be surprising to me, but I don’t know that they were.  

But I voiced my dissatisfaction with events being played in Saudi Arabia from day one, the very first time the (DP World Tour’s Saudi International) was played. But again, we’re in the business of covering the news, and if the events are played there and we have contracts that say we have to cover them, we’re in the business of covering news. Should a news organization be agnostic about what they’re covering or should they be discerning? Is a news organization complicit in sportswashing by covering it? That’s the nature of what you’re getting at in your question.

BC: I would rather not see it, I’d rather not cover it but I don’t think it’s completely analogous to the Saudis buying golf. But I do think they are doing it to sportswash.

BC: I was asked a question about China all the time. I have no problem with PGA Tour China. I have no problem with trying to grow the game in Jeddah or Riyadh or Mecca or Medina. I have no problem with trying to grow the game. The problem I have is with somebody trying to buy the game and run tournaments to obfuscate their atrocities. I don’t have any problem with the PGA Tour or any other golf league going to play at the four corners of the world to grow the game.  

PGA Tour China was about trying to promote golf in China. It wasn’t owned by the Chinese – far as I know, it was run by the PGA Tour reaching out to grow the game of golf. The players that went over and played there were not playing for Xi. They were playing for avenues on to the PGA Tour or the DP World Tour or wherever in the world they wanted to play.  

The LIV Tour is about distracting from Saudi Arabia’s atrocities. Give the masses bread and circuses and they will forget. The whole idea of sportswashing is nothing new. It goes back to Roman times. That’s what the gladiator games were all about.

The money from Saudi Arabia is everywhere. It’s everywhere because publicly traded companies don’t get to control who invests in them. They have no recourse to stop a foreign investment. But golfers do.  

BC: Well, I felt like Rory didn’t get the support that he needed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that players were selfish. But I felt like Rory was out there and was a force against the source of the money for LIV, and he was a formidable source for the PGA Tour, and he didn’t get the support from any of the players. I didn’t hear Jordan Spieth being vocal in support of him. I didn’t hear Justin Thomas. I didn’t hear Scottie Scheffler. I didn’t hear Xander Schauffele. I didn’t hear any of them as forcefully as Rory was speaking out on the issue. It was like he was taking most of the heat if not all of the heat, and I think after a while, I don’t know it to be the case, I haven’t talked to Rory, but I think after a while, it was listen, I’ve done everything I can do and I’m not getting any support, so I’m going to bow out. Why is it up to me to fight this whole battle myself?

I would have loved to see more players come out and speak on behalf of the PGA Tour or just the traditions of the game and the foundation of the game and talk about how where the game has gone over the last couple years has been bad for professional golf. It’s been great for them from a financial standpoint, but they’re alienating the biggest stakeholder in the game of golf, which is the core fan.  

BC: No, I don’t think so at all. I believe they already have been. I think the money has already been distributed. But I certainly didn’t agree with that. Doing the right thing is in and of itself a reward. They did the right thing, those that stayed. I think the reward is there, and for them to be compensated ignores the generations that came before them and the generations that would come after them.  

Again, this is a place in time where these players occupy a spot in the game of golf, but it’s a very short window. Most of them are going to play for 15 years, 10 to 20 years. It’s a pretty short window. There will be players that come after them. Should they be compensated? Should the players before them be compensated? If you’re going to compensate current players, you’re ignoring past generations that bequeathed to them the foundation of the PGA Tour. So no, I disagree with it. I’m happy enough to listen to people argue the other side of it, and I have listened to them that you need to, as best you can, stop the threat of LIV poaching the best players and try as best you can to make players understand that if they stay loyal to the PGA Tour, the financial benefits will be tremendous, which they are. I understand it. I just don’t condone it.

BC: I turn on the broadcast and look at the leaderboard and there are 10-15 names I’ve never heard of. The fields suck. They’re small fields. People want to make it out like Joaquin Niemann is a great player. Did you miss the part where he played for 3-4 years and never had a top-10 in a major championship? Yeah, he was a good player, he was on his way, maybe he was going to be a great player but what is he forced to do because he went to LIV? He’s forced to go play wherever he can to get world ranking points. Give him credit, he’s willing to do all that but in the meantime he’s whining that he doesn’t get world ranking points knowing full well he joined a tour that didn’t qualify for world ranking points.

All these guys that go to LIV, it’s amazing, take the money and shut up. Why are you whining? You all knew the consequences of your actions, all of you. You all knew you were playing a tour with no ranking points for very explicit and defined reasons. Shut up! Take the money and by the way, don’t think that you’re a top-10 player in the world because you beat 12 guys. That’s who you’re beating.

HE (His Excellency) was their player of the year. If Talor Gooch is your player of the year that should have an asterisk. Talor Gooch? I’m not saying that he’s not a good player but have you looked at his major record? There are no yellow marks if you look up his major record. Same with Niemann.

BC: Poor, unfortunately. I think Jay is a sharp guy and I hear nothing but great things about him. When I go up to TPC Sawgrass, I go up there once or twice during a year and take groups up there and play golf, and I go in and have dinner, and unprompted they tell me the nicest things about Jay Monahan, that he’s one of the greatest guys you’ll ever meet. I hardly know Jay. I’ve probably sat in his presence two or three times and talked to him two or three times in my life, and that’s about it. By all accounts, he’s the greatest guy.

But I think if he had the chance to do it over again, he would have done it differently. He would have kept more players in the loop, done the best he could to ameliorate the difficulties of that scenario knowing players were in the loop and it may change the deal.

But he was in a really tough spot. The derision that is directed at Jay Monahan I think is misdirected. How could you, in running a business, have anticipated an irrational economic actor? How could anybody in any business anticipate their competition essentially giving away a product for free, and then being held accountable for the loss of market share? How could you as a CEO of a company – let’s say you make TVs and Sony and Samsung starts giving them away for free. How could you have anticipated that? How could you react to that? How do you respond to that? That’s economic suicide, but they don’t care on the other side because it’s not about selling the TV, it’s about obfuscating something else.  

So the derision that’s directed at Jay and Jimmy Dunne and Ed Herlihy, look, these are terrible unprecedented business problems that they’re having, somebody coming in and essentially giving away the product for free, willing to lose billions of dollars.  

The PGA Tour has always been about running the best professional events, providing different avenues to the PGA Tour, and giving the rest of the money away.  

BC: Right, if the charity aspect of the PGA Tour dies, the autopsy should read: Killed by LIV.  

You think about all the different charitable entities that the PGA Tour has touched for its history, think about the people, the disenfranchised children, the handicapped, the poor, the abused. In every community there are people that are touched in measurable ways by PGA Tour events, and immeasurable ways. If all that goes away because they’re competing with an economic actor, is that good for sport? No, it’s not good for golf. It’s not good for the communities.  

Everybody wants to jump on Jay, criticize Jay, and I admit his communication could have been better, no doubt about that. He would admit that. Again, he’s not without fault. He could have done his job better in my view. But he’s dealing with an unprecedented issue in the history of golf, and the very nature of unprecedented events is that there’s no playbook for them. They’re making it up on the fly. It’s like, how do you compete with an irrational economic player. The derision should be directed at the people that tilted the game in this direction, and that’s Greg Norman and that’s Phil Mickelson. I’m not saying Greg Norman is a terrible guy or Phil is a terrible guy. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying in my opinion they’ve made poor decisions, and it’s hurt the game. They’ve gotten richer, but the game has gotten poorer.  

It works great if you get richer and the game gets richer in concert. That works great. That’s what every single player that’s come along has tried to do with the game of golf. Make the game richer, they get richer, either monetarily or in spirit. But they get richer. The game has gotten poorer, but Norman has gotten richer, Phil has gotten richer, Rahm has gotten richer, but because of their decisions, the game has gotten poorer.

BC: Oh, I don’t know. We live in a pretty forgiving world. I think people are very quick to forgive and forget if people get a sense of sincere contrition.  

I’m not saying there’s no way back for these guys. I’d personally like to see them come back. If I could wave a magic wand, I’d love to see LIV go away.

BC: As I said before, I think Phil tilted the game towards incorrigible greed, irreparable harm. Phil personally could have made a difference. He could have said no, and it likely would have died. Jerry Foltz and David Feherty were not in a position to have that kind of impact. I understand why they took the money. I don’t condone it, and I don’t agree with it.

I’m sure they don’t care one way or another, but it disappoints me because I certainly enjoyed David Feherty as a broadcaster, and I certainly enjoyed Jerry Foltz as a broadcaster. But it disappoints me that they’re no longer around, and I don’t see them and I don’t get to work with them because I enjoy both of them.  

BC: Well, because the last I checked, Dubai is not trying to buy golf. I think people can see through what MBS is trying to do.  

Dubai has got atrocious records on a lot of different human rights issues, as well, but I think coming on the heels of what MBS and Saudi were trying to do, coming on the heels of the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, it was just so fresh on everybody’s mind so again, I think it’s because it’s pretty transparent what the Saudis are trying to do or what MBS and PIF is pretty transparent. I think that’s why.

BC: For a start, they should get rid of the male guardianship law — well, a rule which they codified into law in 2022. That’s essentially medieval. It’s just medieval treatment of women. That would be a start, to show real positive change in human rights issues.  

I think if Phil wanted to be a mouthpiece for LIV, I think he had enough power to say how about showing us some substantive improvements on different human rights issues, document them. Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert recently wrote a column imploring tennis to investigate the idea that they’re making changes, positive changes regarding human rights in Saudi Arabia. It was a wonderfully written column by Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, and Phil could have done something similar.

BC: I think Mark Steinberg. I don’t know that he really gets his due. None of his players went. He fired Thomas Pieters (when he jumped to LIV).

I think some of the players in this that facilitated it, the ones who haven’t gotten a share of derision are agents pushing their players towards these large payouts, of which they get 8, 10, 15 percent, which who knows how much money they get, which is not in the best interest of the player but it’s in their best interest. So I think agents haven’t gotten enough derision in this mix, but well-known within the golf community is just how greedy they have been pushing their players towards these deals. 

But to see agents fight and I think properly inform their players of how poor this decision is from a career standpoint, like Steinberg, I haven’t run into Mark, I haven’t seen him, but I would certainly thank him. That’s one who certainly comes to mind.  

Even though I wish the players had been more vocal out here, some of the leading players, dozens of them, were offered mind-blowing sums of money and turned it down. One of them was Will Zalatoris. I don’t think he gets enough credit for what he did. He was on the range injured, just beginning his career, wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to continue, wasn’t sure he was going to be able to work his way back from the back injury, gets a call, they offered him $100 million. He’s on the range with one of his coaches, Josh Gregory. He says, ‘I’ve got to take this call.’ He turned them down. They then offered him $140 million. He turned them down. I don’t think he gets enough credit for the character and the sort of, from an ethical standpoint, having his north star just bright as it could be.  

GWK: Not that they were the only ones, but I think of Parker and Pierceson Coody as two young golfers trying to make the leap from college/amateur golf to the pro ranks and turned down the easy path too.

BC: Both of them turned down millions of dollars before they even turned pro. I certainly try to sing their praises every chance I get because these are tough decisions to make. You know that ending scene in ‘Moneyball’ where Billy Bean is – obviously played by Brad Pitt, but when Billy Bean gets that offer from the Boston Red Sox, $11 million or $12 million, which would have made him the highest-paid general manager in all of sports at the time, and at the end he said, I made one decision in my life for money, and that was to turn pro over going to Stanford, and he said, I swore that I would never do it again. I think that’s a very powerful end to that movie because that movie is all about doing things based upon data to make money. He did things based upon data, not to make money. He did them to win.

So the beauty of that movie, everybody thinks it’s the data, and certainly that is, but the beauty of that movie is the whole movie is about doing things for data to make money, and he was just doing it for the pure love of the sport. He turned down the money.  

The guys who took the money, I understand it the same way I understand infidelity. I understand the natural impulses people have and the poor decisions we all make but I don’t think we should be celebrating them. Doing the right thing when it’s not convenient, that’s impressive. Taking the money is the easy thing. I understand, I just don’t condone it and I don’t think we should applaud it.

So when you look at what Parker and Pierceson did and you look at what Will Zalatoris did and you look at what Mark Steinberg has done, yeah, I don’t think they get enough credit for the good that they’ve done for the game, to help preserve the integrity of this game.

BC: None. I get a lot of stuff on Twitter. But again, those are mostly bots or people that have been bought. But when I am out running around at golf tournaments, which I have been for years now, and running around cities, I have conversations every single day with people about LIV. Only once has a guy gotten his eyebrow raised a little bit. It was in the middle of New York City. He had his computer out, had my quotes and wanted to go through it line by line. I was like, ‘Why are you carrying that computer around?’  He’s like, ‘I’m going to a meeting, but I documented your stuff’ and he wanted to have a little back and forth. It was applicable. He was a smart guy, and I enjoyed it.  

But mostly when I run into the core golf audience, our core golf audience, they understand what the PGA Tour is about.  

BC: Well, I choose to reply to the ones that are mostly civil, and I do it every now and then to try to get a better sense of where they’re coming from, and I try to give them a sense of where I’m coming from.  

When I’m talking about why I don’t like LIV Golf, people will say, oh, you’re just jealous, it’s the money. I just want to make it explicit that I don’t like LIV Golf because I don’t like where the money is coming from, and I don’t like golf being in business with people who don’t find fault with killing a journalist and chopping him up because they disagree with what he said. I don’t like golf being in business with or owned by people who put homosexuals in bags and beat them with bats and throw them off buildings for sport, treat women as slaves. I don’t like that. I don’t like golf being bought by those people. That’s where my disagreement with LIV is. A rival Tour? I’m all for a rival Tour. I’ve got no problem if golf goes to the far reaches of the Earth if the market dictates that it needs to travel the Earth, more power to them.

The arguments get thrown in my face about gas, you know, you’re supporting the Saudis. These are free market principles at work. Nobody gets to control whether money gets invested into these companies. We don’t have a say in them. But they don’t own all of Uber, they own 10 percent of Uber. That is the big question. If the Saudis interest in golf would get diluted down, what percentage would it be OK? Well, not 90 percent, not 80 percent, but if it got diluted down to 10 percent, OK, at least they don’t have a majority say in the game, but it’s really hard because the Saudi money is everywhere, to keep it coming from golf.

I don’t know that golf will be successful in keeping it coming full circle, penetrating, permeating all avenues of professional golf. I don’t know that it will be successful. But I think some really smart people with a lot of money with the best interests of the game are inclined to see what they can do about that.