PGA Tour Radio’s Mark Lye on watching women’s sports: “Is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself.”

It’s the weekend of one of the PGA Tour’s premier events, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which means the PGA Tour is probably hoping for headlines more focused on what’s happening on the course.

But while Jordan Spieth was electrifying on Saturday, putting himself in position to contend on Sunday thanks to shots like this one from the literal edge of a cliff, a clip from the PGA Tour’s branded radio network on SiriusXM made the rounds on Twitter.

Quality drone work here from CBS to show how close Jordan Spieth was to the edge of a Pebble Beach cliff. pic.twitter.com/25mkmjc3GX

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 5, 2022

Appearing on The Scorecard ahead of the third round, longtime golf analyst, PGA Tour Radio host, and former pro Mark Lye brought up women’s sports with all the respect you’re probably expecting to get from a male 69-year-old former professional golfer.

https://twitter.com/Jalawsons/status/1490032386368843777

A transcript:

“You know, the LPGA Tour to me is a completely different tour than it was ten years ago…you couldn’t pay me to watch. I couldn’t relate, at all. It’s kind of like if you’re a basketball player, and I’m not trashing anybody. Please, don’t take it the wrong way. But I saw some highlights of ladies basketball. Man. Is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself (rather than) watch that. You know I love watching the men’s basketball, I love watching the men’s golf, I never used to like watching ladies golf.”

Perhaps the strangest part of the entire thing is that Lye is seemingly trying to sincerely compliment the state of women’s professional golf. Which he should! There are a ton of top talents, and thanks to various equipment changes the women’s game is a much more diverse array of skills and strategies. Especially compared to the top of the PGA Tour, which tends to be much more of a putting contest between a group of indistinguishable long hitters.

But despite Lye’s little preface (an aside: declaring “I’m not trashing anybody…” before trashing people isn’t absolving), it’s abhorrent to say that you’d rather shoot yourself than watch women’s basketball now, while comparing that feeling to how you felt about women’s golf in the very recent past. That’s impossibly gross on so many levels.

Hearing those views espoused on the PGA Tour’s branded network is jarring, and it comes on the heels of moments like PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan claiming in a deposition that he couldn’t name any top LPGA players. (Ironically, that deposition came as part of Hank Haney’s lawsuit against the PGA Tour after he lost his radio show for on-air comments about LPGA players from South Korea.)

So this is a bad look for just about everyone involved here. Crucially, though: it’s especially bad for Mark Lye, who was exposed not only as a misogynist, but as one dumb enough to say offensive shit on the air.

[image via YouTube]