Hank Haney Hank Haney.

Prominent golf instructor Hank Haney (known for work with Tiger Woods, Mark O’Meara and others) is a regular media figure these days, hosting The Haney Project on Golf Channel and hosting the daily Hank Haney Golf Radio show on Sirius XM’s PGA Tour Radio channel. Haney got himself into some hot water with comments Wednesday when discussing the 74th U.S. Women’s Open with co-host Steve Johnson. Here’s a transcription of what happened from ESPN’s Mark Schlabach:

When Haney’s co-host, Steve Johnson, asked him about the 74th U.S. Women’s Open being played at the Country Club of Charleston this week, Haney joked that he was going to predict that a Korean would win and added that he couldn’t name six players on the LPGA Tour, except for those with the last name Lee.

“I’m gonna predict a Korean,” Haney said.

“That’s a pretty safe bet,” Johnson replied

“That’s gonna be my prediction. I couldn’t name you, like, six players on the LPGA Tour,” Haney continued.

“Yeah,” Johnson said.

“Nah, maybe I could,” Haney said. “Well, I’d go with Lee. If I didn’t have to name a first name, I’d get a bunch of them right. I don’t know. … Lexi Thompson. … Michelle Wie’s hurt. I don’t know that many.”

This took a lot of criticism, including Wie blasting Haney on Twitter:

For the record, there are six players with the last name Lee in the field (four from South Korea, plus an Australian and an American). And there are 22 players from South Korea in the field, the second-most of any country (well behind the 54 from the U.S. and one from Puerto Rico, though). But yes, while there are a lot of players named Lee and a lot of players from South Korea, this was a pretty terrible way to reference that, and to show off how little Haney knows about who’s doing well in the women’s game. For what it’s worth, he did later apologize on Twitter:

But there are still people calling for his firing, including USA Today‘s Christine Brennan. That seems pretty unlikely, but you never know, and it’s certainly possible there could be some kind of disciplinary action against Haney from SiriusXM management. We’ll see where this goes from here. At any rate, Haney’s certainly shown people how not to talk about women’s golf.

[ESPN; Haney photo from NBC Sports Group Press Box]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.