PGA Tour commentator Brandel Chamblee has wound up in the middle of quite a few dustups with players over the years, especially with those who have chosen to go to Saudi-backed LIV Golf. His latest is with Anthony Kim. And it’s seen massive shots fired on both sides.
Kim played on the PGA Tour from 2006-2012, notching three wins there (and a Kiwi Challenge win), posting two top-five finishes in majors, and playing in one Ryder Cup and one President’s Cup. But he left golf amidst major injuries in 2013, then made a comeback with LIV Golf this March.
Since then, Kim has gotten into several feuds with Chamblee (who regularly works for Golf Channel, and will also be part of NBC’s U.S. Open booth this coming week). The latest involves an X/Twitter post from Chamblee around midnight Sunday.
There, Chamblee responded to Kim’s recent criticism of his own playing career, saying he played on the Tour for a decade longer and had more top-ten finishes than Kim. But he went on from there to suggest Kim left golf over insurance money, then abandoned that to join LIV Golf “for the convenience of a dictatorial murderer who would pay him to help hide his atrocities.” Here’s that post:
Less his banal drivel gets distorted into relevancy and just for context, I played the tour for about a decade longer than @AnthonyKim_Golf and had more top tens than he did in his career. And while I understand his failures and sympathize with them, his absurd computations seem… https://t.co/qfUS2bY9yf
— Brandel Chamblee (@chambleebrandel) June 9, 2024
Here’s the full text of that post:
Less his banal drivel gets distorted into relevancy and just for context, I played the tour for about a decade longer than @AnthonyKim_Golf and had more top tens than he did in his career. And while I understand his failures and sympathize with them, his absurd computations seem oblivious to the fact that he was willing to trade his talent for the convenience of insurance payments and then willing to betray those payments for the convenience of a dictatorial murderer who would pay him to help hide his atrocities. I wish Anthony well but let’s not pretend he knows north from south or disability payments from obfuscation payments or for that matter that he has ever heard of Jamal Khashoggi.
The @NUCLRGOLF tweet Chamblee is responding to here has a clip that comes from Kim’s recent appearance on the Country Club Adjacent podcast with comedians Aristotle Georgeson (Blake Webber) Jake Adams, Griff Pippin & Mark Smalls. Here’s what Kim said there in reference to a Golf Channel segment with Chamblee and David Duval, as transcribed by Justin Tasch of The New York Post:
“How the f–k would you know? Here’s David Duval, who was No. 1 in the world and played on multiple Ryder Cup teams, has all these sorts of records, won a million times — you’re over-talking him about what it’s like and what they’re feeling?” Kim said of Chamblee. “If we were talking about, like, what it’s like to drive to a Korn Ferry event and miss the cut, we would call you, Brandel. But we don’t do that.”
Before that, Chamblee (a long-time critic of LIV Golf and players who head there) spoke in favor of the two sides coming to a deal as they’d initially talked about on an early-May Golf Channel broadcast, and Kim lit him up on X/Twitter. That led to a whole further back and forth:
Ramble Chamblee @chambleebrandel ur such a pussy 4 beating on ur chest & basically saying never retreat & hypocritically retreat. It is well known this talentless fool is disliked by most people in the golf world. U still gonna cover golf if @livgolf_league is involved?🤡 😂
— Anthony Kim (@AnthonyKim_Golf) May 10, 2024
Again an inaccurate statement by someone who would know about hangin around ball pits when he left his family and four kids for someone half his age @GolfChannel. Very unprofessional.😉 also I’m not for sale I chose to play @livgolf_league bcuz it was best for me and my family.🫡 https://t.co/15K51C8hMM
— Anthony Kim (@AnthonyKim_Golf) May 15, 2024
At this point, both of these guys have made this quite personal, so Chamblee’s comments on Kim are certainly not an unprovoked attack. But there are some nasty implications there, especially around “willing to trade his talent for the convenience of insurance payments,” which appears to imply that Kim committed insurance fraud by overstating the injuries that led to him leaving the PGA Tour.
This is not the first time a discussion along those lines has come up. Around his return this spring, Kim did note in an interview with David Feherty for LIV Golf Plus that he did collect something from a career-ending insurance policy. But he did not specify what that settlement was, and he insisted that his injuries were legitimate. Here’s more on that, from an April 2 piece from ESPN’s Mark Schlabach:
Kim told Feherty that he later had surgeries on his hand and shoulder and a spinal fusion procedure, which Tiger Woods had in 2017. Kim said he didn’t leave his house much and had six dogs and two monkeys living with him at one point.
After the Achilles tendon injury, Kim collected at least part of a disability insurance policy that was reportedly worth $10 million to $20 million. He didn’t provide Feherty with details of the settlement. Kim said he is participating in a documentary about his life.
“I know public perception is that I took this money and ran and decided I was just going to hang out,” Kim said. “That wasn’t the case at all. I had multiple, multiple surgeries in a few years. And my body is still not what it used to be.”
The rest of this is notable as well, of course. Kim’s past shots at Chamblee’s personal relationships stand out, as do Chamblee’s claims on Kim and Saudi Arabia. There, he accuses Kim of being willing to “betray those payments for the convenience of a dictatorial murderer who would pay him to help hide his atrocities.” He also drops a notable line of “let’s not pretend he knows north from south or disability payments from obfuscation payments or for that matter that he has ever heard of Jamal Khashoggi.”
But while those are spicy comments on Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (presumably who Chamblee is referencing here around accusations of his involvement in ordering the execution and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Khashoggi), they’re not that different from other things Chamblee has said about the Saudis and LIV. The insurance discussion is more specific to Kim. And while there’s been some talk there, the apparent fraud suggestions from Chamblee’s comments do seem like something that could be pushed back on, maybe even with a defamation lawsuit. (Then again, Chamblee is a veteran of those, so he may know exactly how far he can and cannot go in this situation.)
The overall takeaway from this may be how ugly some of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf divide remains. That’s certainly been seen elsewhere as well, and that’s part of why those sides have yet proven unable to convert the framework agreement from last June (which took its own heat then) into an actual merger. But the Chamblee-Kim fight perhaps stands out for how personal it’s become. And it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
