Brandel Chamblee Apologizes to Tiger Woods On-Air

From our collective keyboards to Golf Channel's collective ears, it would appear. Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee appeared on the network's flagship show, Golf Central, Wednesday evening for the first time since insinuating that Tiger Woods cheated on the PGA Tour in a Golf.com magazine article. During a two-and-a-half minute long interview with Rich Lerner, Chamblee offered further explanation regarding his now infamous comments and again extended an apology to Woods.

Here is a full transcript of the interview, as transcribed by Ryan Ballengee on GolfNewsNet.com:

In offering my assessment of Tiger’s year, and specifically looking at the incidents in Abu Dhabi, Augusta, Ponte Vedra and Chicago, I said Tiger Woods was ‘cavalier’ about the rules. And I should have stopped right there.

In comparing those incidents to my cheating episode in the fourth grade, I went too far. Cheating involves intent. Now I know what my intent was on that fourth-grade math test, but there was no way I could know with 100 percent certainty what Tiger Woods’ intent was in any of those situations. That was my mistake.

Asked if he has a “vendetta” against Tiger Woods: Of course not. My job as an analyst at Golf Channel requires me to analyze the golf and offer my opinions. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it. Tiger Woods is the best player in the game by miles, and maybe the best player of all-time. And over the years I have said a lot of positive things about Tiger’s golf game and his accomplishments. And at times I’ve been critical, but that’s my job and my obligation to the viewer to not only talk about when Tiger plays well but when he doesn’t play well and put it in perspective — as well as every other player. At times, I can be a bit forceful with my opinions, and some would say at times too forceful, too many times — fair enough. And that was obviously the case in this instance, so much so that my son chimed in on the issue.

Asked what his son had to say about the issue: Well, I have a 45 minute drive to and from school every day, so we had a lot of time to talk about this. He and his buddies had read almost all of this online. And at one point in one of those drives, he said, ‘Dad, if you had been more diplomatic in what you wrote, perhaps people would be talking more about the issue than your assessment.’ He’s a smart kid. And it wasn’t until after he said that that I offered my apology on Twitter. Maybe I should have let my son read this column before I hit “Send” on email.

Asked what is next for him moving on from this incident: Tiger and his camp, they’re upset at Golf Channel. They specifically called Golf Channel out. To me, they’re barking up the wrong tree. This column appeared on golf.com. Nobody here at Golf Channel knew anything about it. And my editor at golf.com asked me to rewrite the ending when I sent it in to him. I wish I would have listened to him. But all of this made me realize there is a conflict and a confusion when you write for one company and work for another company, so going forward, I’m not going to write for Golf Magazine. Beginning next year, I’ll be writing exclusively for GolfChannel.com, NBC.com, and that way, if Tiger and his camp have an issue with something I write, they’ll at least be yelling at the right people.