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Brandel Chamblee took the hot seat on Wednesday evening on Golf Channel to discuss his ongoing rift with Tiger Woods.
Chamblee insinuated a few weeks ago that Woods was a cheater and gave him a grade of "F" for the season for "being cavalier with the rules" -- a reference to Woods' questionable treatment of the rules at the Abu Dhabi Championship, Masters, and BMW Championship in 2013.
Woods called out Golf Channel on Monday during his one-on-one match with Rory McIlroy in China even though Chamblee wrote the column for Golf.com, a Sports Illustrated entity.
"So the ball really is in the court of the Golf Channel and what they are prepared to do," said Woods.
What that really meant, as Gregg Doyel pointed out, was that Tiger Woods wanted Golf Channel to fire Chamblee.
A couple of different conversations too place between Rich Lerner and Chamblee on Golf Channel on Wednesday night. The first was a sort of apology from Chamblee to Woods.
"I went too far. Cheating involves intent," Chamblee said. "There’s no way that I could know with 100 percent certainty what Tiger’s intent was in any of those situations. That was my mistake."
Yeah, and it was a big mistake. Chamblee went on to say that it was his son who really got the ball rolling on him admitting he made a mistake.
"He said, 'Dad, if you’d been more diplomatic in what you wrote, perhaps people would be talking more about the issue than your assessment.'"
His son wasn't the only one. Chamblee's Golf.com editor also asked him to re-write the piece but Chamblee said no.
Because of that and because there was a lot of confusion in Woods calling out Golf Channel when the piece actually appeared on Golf.com, Chamblee said he will only be writing for Golfchannel.com in the future.
"This column appeared at Golf.com. Nobody here at Golf Channel knew anything about it," Chamblee said. "All of this has made me realize that there is a conflict and a confusion when you work for one company and write for another company.
"Going forward, I’m not going to be writing for Golf Magazine beginning next year. I’ll be writing exclusively for GolfChannel.com and (NBCSports.com). That way, if Tiger and his camp have an issue with something I write, they will at least be yelling at the right people."
I'm not totally sure what he said other than "I should have been more diplomatic, you're getting mad at the wrong people, Tiger" but I think I'm glad he said it.
Although what does "more diplomatic" actually mean? He didn't even outright call him a cheater. Should he have insinuated the insinuation?
It felt like an uneven ending to a strange couple of weeks but I guess that's all for now.
Until Woods or his agent (or Rory McIlroy!) stirs the pot again.
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