Q&A: We spent two full hours talking with Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee. He had plenty to say

BC: I think Mark Steinberg. I don’t know that he really gets his due. None of his players went. He fired Thomas Pieters (when he jumped to LIV).

I think some of the players in this that facilitated it, the ones who haven’t gotten a share of derision are agents pushing their players towards these large payouts, of which they get 8, 10, 15 percent, which who knows how much money they get, which is not in the best interest of the player but it’s in their best interest. So I think agents haven’t gotten enough derision in this mix, but well-known within the golf community is just how greedy they have been pushing their players towards these deals. 

But to see agents fight and I think properly inform their players of how poor this decision is from a career standpoint, like Steinberg, I haven’t run into Mark, I haven’t seen him, but I would certainly thank him. That’s one who certainly comes to mind.  

Even though I wish the players had been more vocal out here, some of the leading players, dozens of them, were offered mind-blowing sums of money and turned it down. One of them was Will Zalatoris. I don’t think he gets enough credit for what he did. He was on the range injured, just beginning his career, wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to continue, wasn’t sure he was going to be able to work his way back from the back injury, gets a call, they offered him $100 million. He’s on the range with one of his coaches, Josh Gregory. He says, ‘I’ve got to take this call.’ He turned them down. They then offered him $140 million. He turned them down. I don’t think he gets enough credit for the character and the sort of, from an ethical standpoint, having his north star just bright as it could be.  

GWK: Not that they were the only ones, but I think of Parker and Pierceson Coody as two young golfers trying to make the leap from college/amateur golf to the pro ranks and turned down the easy path too.

BC: Both of them turned down millions of dollars before they even turned pro. I certainly try to sing their praises every chance I get because these are tough decisions to make. You know that ending scene in ‘Moneyball’ where Billy Bean is — obviously played by Brad Pitt, but when Billy Bean gets that offer from the Boston Red Sox, $11 million or $12 million, which would have made him the highest-paid general manager in all of sports at the time, and at the end he said, I made one decision in my life for money, and that was to turn pro over going to Stanford, and he said, I swore that I would never do it again. I think that’s a very powerful end to that movie because that movie is all about doing things based upon data to make money. He did things based upon data, not to make money. He did them to win.

So the beauty of that movie, everybody thinks it’s the data, and certainly that is, but the beauty of that movie is the whole movie is about doing things for data to make money, and he was just doing it for the pure love of the sport. He turned down the money.  

The guys who took the money, I understand it the same way I understand infidelity. I understand the natural impulses people have and the poor decisions we all make but I don’t think we should be celebrating them. Doing the right thing when it’s not convenient, that’s impressive. Taking the money is the easy thing. I understand, I just don’t condone it and I don’t think we should applaud it.

So when you look at what Parker and Pierceson did and you look at what Will Zalatoris did and you look at what Mark Steinberg has done, yeah, I don’t think they get enough credit for the good that they’ve done for the game, to help preserve the integrity of this game.