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PGA Championship 2019: Brandel Chamblee on Brooks Koepka's opening 63: 'I felt like he was giving me the finger for 4 1/2 hours'
Mike Ehrmann
When you’re paid to analyze, not everyone is going to appreciate your analysis, notably the target of the analysis, as Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee knows all too well. But here's the thing: Chamblee can throw a punch, but he can take one, too, as he amusingly demonstrated on Thursday.
“It was incredible,” Chamblee said on Golf Channel in the wake of Brooks Koepka’s near-flawless 63 at Bethpage Black playing alongside Tiger Woods in the opening round of the PGA Championship. “I’ve been flipped off a few times in my life, probably not as often as you think. But I felt like he was giving me the finger for four-and-a-half hours out there today.”
He was smiling when he said it.
Recall that Chamblee was critical of Koepka’s dramatic and so far inexplicable weight loss, then questioned whether he was tough enough to win the Masters, notwithstanding Koepka’s three major championship victories.
Koepka’s response was to post on Twitter a photo of Chamblee with a clown nose.
A bogey-free seven-under par 63 at Bethpage Black perhaps was another rejoinder. Whatever it was, Chamblee was appreciative of it.
“I’ve got to tell you, I enjoyed it,” he said. “Outside of his immediate family, I can’t think of anybody who enjoyed that round more than I did.
“Tiger never really got his bell rung by a big-name player in a major championship when they were going head to head and they got the better of him,” he said. Woods shot a two-over par 72, nine back of Koepka. “I know this is the first round, but outside of golf that he’s offered, I think this is the best golf that Tiger Woods would have ever seen thrown at him.”