Brandel Chamblee will resign after insinuating Tiger Woods cheated

Golf commentator Brandel Chamblee will resign from his job writing columns for Golf.com, acknowledging that he made a “mistake” when he insinuated that Tiger Woods had cheated on the PGA Tour.

Chamblee addressed the issue during an interview on the Golf Channel, where he works as a television analyst.

“There’s no way that I could know with 100% certainty what Tiger’s intent was in any of those situations,” he said. “That was my mistake.”

In his column for Golf.com, which is operated by Sports Illustrated, Chamblee referred to penalties that Woods drew at the Masters, the BMW Championship and a tournament in Abu Dhabi. He compared the golfer’s actions to his own experience getting caught cheating in school.

“I went too far,” he said, later adding that “my editor at Golf.com asked me to rewrite the ending when I sent it in to him. I wished I would have listened to him.”

In the two weeks since the column appeared, Woods had called for Golf Channel to take action. Rory McIlroy made similar comments at the HSBC Champions in Shanghai on Thursday.

“I’ll let the Golf Channel executives think what the right way is. That’s not up to me,” McIlroy said. “But I just think that he was out of line and you know, something should be done about it.”

Chamblee defended the network.

“To me, they’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “This column appeared on Golf.com, nobody here at Golf Channel knew anything about it.”

Asked about his frequent criticism of Woods on air, Chamblee insisted that the did not have a vendetta.

“But 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,” he said. “So going forward, I’m not going to be writing for Golf Magazine beginning next year.

“I’ll be writing exclusively for GolfChannel.com [NBCSports.com],” he continued. “And you know, that way if Tiger and his camp have an issue with something I write, they will at least be yelling at the right people.”

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