Patrick Reed “The PGA Tour discouraged me from doing a lot of things”

Patrick Reed

In an exclusive extract from his new book, LIV and Let Die, Alan Shipnuck explains why LIV Golf players don’t appear on the Golf Channel and why Patrick Reed only started filing lawsuits once he’d left the PGA Tour.

During these tumultuous times, no member of the media has provoked stronger feelings than Chamblee, the Golf Channel analyst. “He has to take Rory’s cock out of his mouth so he can suck off Tiger,” says Claude Harmon III, swing coach to Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, and Pat Perez. “And Jay Monahan is next in line.”

Chamblee is paid to provide opinion, and he has been withering about LIV Golf. “I see this as very black and white,” he said in an interview. “On one side there is a murderous regime that has repeatedly committed atrocities against its own people. And on that same side there is the narcissistic greed of Phil Mickelson and Greg Norman and the men who run LIV who are trying to destroy the PGA Tour. I don’t see another side to this. I think the LIV players are in a morally indefensible position, with a wilful blindness to the consequences of their action, making them complicit to the ongoing atrocities.”

Chamblee’s message has often been amplified by his friend and Golf Channel colleague Eamon Lynch, who has also regularly produced sneering columns about LIV for Golfweek. “They are state media,” says Harmon. “Golf Channel would go out of business without their quote, unquote broadcast partner, the PGA Tour. So Brandel and Eamon just repeat over and over the party line that LIV is bad for the game. Really, it’s just bad for the PGA Tour.”

Says Chamblee, “I laugh when people say I am a stooge or puppet of the PGA Tour. I disagree with, and take issue with, the PGA Tour all the time. The PGA Tour holds no power over me. My feelings about LIV have nothing to do with Golf Channel’s so-called alliance with the Tour and everything to do with human rights. In 2019, long before LIV, I spoke out when the European Tour added the Saudi International to the schedule. I felt they were making a very big mistake letting a snake into the garden, and I said that. My position has been consistent from the very beginning.” He adds, “No one at the PGA Tour or Golf Channel has ever told me what to say. That’s not the way it works. Never, ever, not even once have I worried about what the PGA Tour or Golf Channel thinks of my opinions.”

Says Harmon, “The most ridiculous part is that Golf Channel masquerades as a news organization but it never tries to tell the other side. It’s like Brandel’s opinions are gospel. Don’t they have an obligation to at least pretend to care about balance?”

Says Chamblee, “We’ve asked people from LIV to come on our set and provide balance. Every single one turns us down because they can’t defend their position and they know it. Phil, Westwood, Poulter— every single one of them has said no. That’s why you don’t hear their voice: They won’t fight for their side because deep down they know what they’re doing is indefensible.”

LIV has instead focused on planting interviews with Norman and select players on Fox News and other conservative media outlets. (Clay Travis, the founder of OutKick the Coverage, played in the Bedminster pro-am.) “We are not going to put our guys in situations that are hostile,” says a LIV executive. “Unfortunately, the way it’s played out, the more left-leaning outlets glom on to the Saudi/ Khashoggi narrative. They’re obsessed with that, and they don’t even mention the actual golf. The conservative platforms are a more friendly audience, and they’re willing to talk about golf and what we’re trying to accomplish.”

It was only after he arrived on LIV, with its anti-establishment pose, that Reed felt comfortable lashing out against the golf press. Did PGA Tour officials discourage him from filing lawsuits? “They discouraged me from doing a lot of things,” he says. “There were a lot of things that were said and done that are just not kosher.”

Another way of looking at it: the PGA Tour was trying to protect Reed from himself. One of his former Tour colleagues, Stewart Cink, says, “I like Patrick Reed. He’s fun to play with. But when you start suing everyone on the golf beat, that’s where I draw the line and say, ‘C’mon, man. Really?’”

Adds Tour player Tom Hoge, “It’s a weird strategy. When you’re in the public light, there is always going to be scrutiny. Are you going to sue everybody who says or writes something you don’t like? That creates a lot of bad energy. But he seems to thrive on that kind of attention.”

One of the reporters whom Reed is suing says, “I think Patrick and his crazy lawyer know they can’t win; they just want to make our lives uncomfortable. As bizarre as the lawsuits are, we still have to take them seriously. The point isn’t to win, it’s to create this chilling effect where people will temper their criticism of Reed’s antics just because they don’t want to get sued and have to hire lawyers to defend themselves.”

The stress Reed has injected into the pressroom was evident when I bumped into Lynch at a tournament; actually we were at neighbouring urinals, and to break the awkward silence I asked if there had been any new developments in the legal proceedings. Lynch shouted, “I am not going to answer any of your fucking questions about Patrick Reed!”

An unexpected twist to the LIV era was that legal briefs were coming as fast and furious as birdie putts. As the various cases dragged on—including the LIV players’ action against the European Tour being heard in the United Kingdom—only two things were certain: the gentleman’s game had reached unparalleled levels of acrimony, and the lawyers were getting paid.

LIV And Let Die by Alan Shipnuck, published by Simon & Schuster, is out now, priced at RRP £25.