Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee has long spoken his mind about Phil Mickelson.
But how does Mickelson feel about Chamblee?
“He and I don’t see eye to eye on anything,” Mickelson said in a profile in the August issue of GOLF.
Asked if there was history between the two, the five-time major winner told GOLF’s Alan Shipnuck, “I just like people who build up the game. I view this as we’re all in the game of golf together. We all want to grow the game. We all want to make it better. And I feel like he’s made his commentating career on denigrating others. And I don’t care for that. I like people who help build the sport up and promote it for what it is, rather than tearing down and ridiculing others.”
Mickelson has landed in Chamblee’s crosshairs on several notable occasions. In 2014, after Mickelson used the occasion of the U.S. Ryder Cup team’s loser’s press conference to call out the U.S. captain, Tom Watson, Chamblee lambasted Mickelson’s tirade, calling it “as close to a one-man mutiny that I’ve ever seen.”
“If you’re looking for a reason why the United States continues to lose, you just saw it in one man: Phil Mickelson,” Chamblee said on the air. “Phil Mickelson, along with the best players of that era, have so corrupted the experience of the Ryder Cup for their fellow competitors by not having records anywhere near what they should, given their rank in the game.”
The following year Chamblee said that Mickelson didn’t deserve to be a Ryder Cup captain because he didn’t exhibit enough passion for the event.
Just last month Chamblee again tweaked Mickelson, calling his rules infraction at the U.S. Open “really distracting,” adding that Mickelson should have been disqualified.
Mickelson isn’t the first player to fire back at the game’s most outspoken commentator. Billy Horschel called Chamblee a “ghost on the range” last November, which ignited a Twitter feud. Rory McIlroy has also used Twitter to dispute some of Chamblee’s takes.
In the GOLF interview, Mickelson had kinder things to say about the commentary style of his former caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, who is now an on-course reporter for the Golf Channel.
“I haven’t really had a chance to listen to him ’cause I’m usually playing,” Mickelson said. “But from what I’ve heard, he’s really good. And people like that different perspective. And he seems like he’s really happy.”
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