Q&A: Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee

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…