It’s no secret that Brandel Chamblee is not a fan of LIV Golf. The Golf Channel analyst has been a regular critic of the big-money circuit since its inception, and now he has taken aim at its format.
Chamblee was interviewed on the No Laying Podcast, where he insisted that, considering the money invested by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, it hasn’t offered a worthwhile return. He began: "If we just look at the product that they put out there, to think about the billions of dollars they spent and the time and the energy and that’s the product, you know?”
He then drilled down into what he sees as the product’s inadequacies, adding: “They’re are out there playing music and they’re taking pictures in the individual competition is not as important as the team competition.
"So you come to the last hole and you need to birdie to win the individual competition but a par to win the team, are you really trying to make a birdie because if you take the risk and the team loses there’s hell to pay, so I think it’s an insult to the integrity of competition.”
Chamblee then turned to the shotgun start element of the format, which sees all 54 players beginning their rounds at the same time from different holes. That means that, very often, the winning putt comes on a hole other than the 18th, and Chamblee thinks that disregards the expertise that goes into golf course design.
He explained: “You’re not meant to win golf tournaments on the third hole or the fourth hole.
"There’s a reason you pay architects to build a crescendo of drama and they give great thought to how they want a championship or day of a round to play out and the highest drama is usually not going to be on the second or third or the fourth hole. It’s going to build and you’re meant to have a sequence of order in championships.”
Chamblee has previously been critical of the source of LIV Golf’s investment given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, and he was again scathing of that, before further dismissing the product on offer.
He said: “Set aside where the money comes from and that devious and demented, but let’s just look at the competition - it’s laughable.”
Chamblee also insisted that if he was offered the kind of figures that have lured some of the world’s best players to LIV Golf, he wouldn’t take it. He said: “It’s a fair enough assumption of anyone to say you would take, but I’d like to think I wouldn’t take it.
“Does money make some things easier, that kind of money? Yeah, it does. It’s easy to say I wouldn’t take the money but when you start to think of the corruption of that kind of money and the impetus to your kids to go out and hustle to make money. I wake up in the morning and I don’t think of the money.”
Chamblee's comments echo those he made in May in an interview with Golf WRX, where he said: "The format for LIV is just stupid. There’s no other word for it. 54 holes, 54 players start. Willy nilly here and there. Nobody winning a golf tournament should finish on the third hole on some par three while his closest competitors finish on the 17th hole or the 18th hole."
“It’s just a laughable concept. There’s no way to judge the talents of these players out there."
