Brandel Chamblee isn’t one to be knocked off of his perch.
Following a rebuttal from his latest muse, Brooks Koepka, in which the three-time major champion expanded upon his feelings about the 56-year-old Golf Channel analyst, Chamblee joined Hank Haney Golf Radio on Tuesday to flesh out his reasoning for excluding Koepka from his two-person list of players who could challenge Tiger Woods.
Koepka Expands On Latest Beef With Chamblee
“I chose (Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy) for very specific reasons,” Chamblee told Haney. “They’re better drivers of the ball than Brooks, they’re better iron players than Brooks for the most part, and they’re better around the greens.”
“Since 2014, Rory hasn’t finished worse than sixth in scoring average. Dustin hasn’t finished worse than seventh. Brooks never finished better than ninth. Ninth is great, but it’s not as good as Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy. And it’s not as good as Tiger Woods.
“Would I put him right behind those players? Absolutely. Brooks is an amazing player. He’s just not in the class of (Tiger, DJ and Rory).”
“I think Brooks is a heck of a player…. He certainly wasn’t putting a clown nose on my face when I was lauding him all these years.” – @chambleebrandel joined Hank Haney Golf Radio to share his comments on @BKoepka pic.twitter.com/ibEj47IqUo
— SiriusXM PGA TOUR Radio (@SiriusXMPGATOUR) May 7, 2019
The latest row made headlines when Chamblee was talking with Jaime Diaz on their Masters recap podcast. The analyst was asked if Woods at his best is still the best player in the world, regardless of what the world rankings would say on the subject.
“In the aggregate, you’d have Dustin and Rory who are the likely two who could hang with him,” Chamblee said. “Jon Rahm’s still got a lot to learn. His iron play’s not as sharp as it needs to be to be the best player in the world, and it forces him to have to pitch the ball…his pitching, generally speaking, is not as good as it needs to be. And Spieth’s game has fallen off. So it’s really only two players who could challenge him.
“Irrespective of the world rankings, I think all of us know what we need to know without the world rankings telling us, and it’s Rory and it’s Dustin Johnson and it’s Tiger Woods, but Tiger’s simply not going to play enough to get the points that he needs to get.”
Koepka “Clowns” Chamblee Over Tiger Comments
Koepka didn’t take kindly to his omission and tweeted a photoshopped picture of Chamblee with a clown’s nose on his face.
RT @dylan_dethier: please, nobody tell Brooks Koepka https://t.co/bWkeoOlCXo pic.twitter.com/DJ7CYbZO8h
— Brooks Koepka (@BKoepka) May 4, 2019
“My coach (Claude Harmon) sent me the tweet, he sent it it me and said, ‘I think you should see it,’ so I saw it and I responded,” Koepka said. “Everybody on my team, everybody around me and close to me knows what’s going to get me fired up or what makes me pay attention a little more,” he said. “You tell me I can’t do something and I can’t wait to prove you wrong.
“(Chamblee has) done it a lot, he’s always got an opinion on something. And I don’t really respond too much. I know he said a bunch of things at Augusta and I never responded, that’s not really my style. But there comes a point where you just don’t care, and like I said, a picture’s worth more than a thousand words.”
