Brandel Chamblee, who dumped his first wife for a Golf Channel co-worker young enough to be his daughter, questioned Bryson DeChambeau’s Christianity, and in effect any golfer who tees it up on the LIV Golf tour.
“More recently, he’s been talking about how he’s found God and become a Christian and I just wonder how he squares accepting money from a regime that is anti-Christian,” said Chamblee last week in Brookline at the U.S. Open.
“You can’t pull a Bible out in Riyadh without going to jail. They are misogynistic, they are anti-Semitic, there’s no freedom of speech. He talks about his charities, about going home to do things, but meanwhile he’s taking money from people who oppress the things he purports to stand for, which is philanthropic enterprises. That’s where the money is coming from.
“He says he’ll have a new legacy. He absolutely will have a new legacy, and it will be tarnished as a 100-year-old silver trophy that has been untouched up in a closet.”
He continued, “I’d like to think there are plenty of people with enough money to say no. There are loads of people who have said no. … Rory (McIlroy) has said no. Justin Thomas has said no. I don’t believe $200 million, I don’t think $500 million, I don’t believe a billion dollars would get Rory to say yes. I don’t think he will.
“Have they exposed a weakness? Yeah, OK. A lot of people can be paid enough money to not care about how their wives would be treated in Saudi Arabia, to not care how women are treated in Saudi Arabia, to not care about how gays are treated, to not care about people with no freedom of expression and no real freedom at all.
“There are people that will take enough money to turn a blind eye to that. But there are plenty of people I believe who say hold on a second, if you want to run this tour let’s see real reform, let’s see real measured reform, let’s hear from the women of Saudi Arabia, let’s see pictures of them actually out in Riyadh without a burkha on, let me see them driving, let’s see them going out on a date, let’s see them out playing golf. Let me see real measured reform. Let me see freedom of expression.
“It’s never going to happen there. Not certainly under the rule of MBS, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. He couldn’t be more oppressive. He couldn’t be more in favor of centralizing power within himself to an extent that has never happened in Saudi Arabia. There’s no evidence of reform in that country. Zero, other than his words, which were about as empty as Phil’s were in his press conference.”
Chamblee did not respond to questions concerning hypocrisy and double talk regarding NBC, the PGA Tour and China.
Hey Ned. Thanks for reading.
Just as an FYI: Brandel Chamblee’s hypocrisy has nothing to do with dumping his then 50-year-old wife for a 24-year-old co-worker. It has everything to do with being silent while his employer (NBC) allowed China to “sportswash” its image with the recent winter Olympics, aka the Genocide Games – while also remaining silent as the PGA Tour partnered with the mass-murdering communist regime, pimping the annual WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai and launching the China PGA Tour.
Need more sportswashing examples? The European Tour changed its name to the DP World Tour (it already titled its season-long points race to the Race to Dubai).
In case you’re unaware, DP World is a shipping and logistics company owned by the United Arab Emirates, who are basically a mini-me of the Saudis, i.e. homosexuality is punishable by death.
Yet, Chamblee and company broadcast the DP World Tour events and have never said a word about “human rights abuses” or called it “blood money” despite the European Tour selling its entire tour title to the authoritarian UAE.
Per Human Rights Watch:
I could go on and on with examples of duplicity…
-Jeff