In an highly-explosive and recently released book, former Golf Channel announcer Lisa Cornwell has slammed the misogynistic practices at the dedicated golf-only channel.
Though Cornwell has saved her harshest words for Brandel Chamblee, who she admits clearly wanted her sacked from the day she began working at The Golf Channel.
Indeed, Cornwell devotes an entire chapter in her book to Chamblee, the one-time PGA Tour winner who has got up the nose of many, including more-recently Phil Mickelson, and with Chamblee this year celebrating 20-years behind the microphone.
With a powerful foreword from Hillary Rodham Clinton, Cornewell’s tell-all book Troublemaker: A Memoir of Sexism, Retaliation, and the Fight They Didn’t See Coming takes readers, and what Sports Illustrated says, is deep inside the boys’ club of sports media and reveals the way powerful corporations cover up wrongdoings.
For Cornwell what began with sexism and retaliation exploded into a public smear campaign and, ultimately, her dismissal.
“There are many references to golf because that was my job, and it’s been a huge part of my life since I was a little girl,” Cornwell writes in Troublemaker.
“But the heart and soul of this book is addressing the real-life struggles women continue to face in the workplace—and that workplace can be in any industry, not just sports—and it must change.”
Growing up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and as a cousin of Bill Clinton, it was his former US Secretary of State wife, Hillary who wrote the foreword to the book, and with Cornwell seeing up close how power works on both a local and national level.
In the book, over and over she points to the imperfections of the culture at Golf Channel and the failure of the human resources to reel it in.
“I think it’s like any office job,” she said to SI. “You have in-office personality clashes. But it was pretty clear from early on for me at the network that the culture just wasn’t what it should be in the day and time that we live in.”
Cornwell, who filed two EEOC claims against Golf Channel, could have chosen to sue the network for discrimination and retaliation but instead wrote this book, and has what she’s written stirred a hornet’s nest.
With her co-author, Tucker Booth, she faces down some of the most prominent personalities and executives in the world of golf television.
One huge fight with one of her bosses surrounds Cornwell’s supposed failure to adequately get both sides of a story about an LPGA player’s request from a major equipment manufacturer. Things go sour between Cornwell and Chamblee after he point-blankly embarrasses her on live TV and then explains his actions by suggesting that things might have gone differently had she been better prepared.
Cornwell has also a fight with Matt Ginella over a Twitter about John Daly using a cart in a major championship.
However, it is Chamblee, as a more-often than not an opinionated commentator on everything from the nuances of the golf swing to LIV Golf that Cornwell takes aim with both barrels.
In Cornwell’s telling, Chamblee was a man determined to get her fired from the network. “I never thought that Brandel controlled my job,” Cornwell says. “I never thought that he had any influence on whether I remained at the network. But when I found out that he had orchestrated this campaign to get rid of me, just on the heels after I’ve been demoted from being a full-time employee to a freelance reporter, that’s when I thought, O.K., this whole retaliation aspect is very real. I know Brandel is very well known. He’s very controversial. I always said that he thought that he had a lot of power, and then that move proved just how much power that he did have at the network—and he used it.”
She commented on the somewhat heated argument between Chamblee and Brad Faxon, centered on whether newly crowned PGA Championship winner, Brooks Koepka, should play at the Ryder Cup in September.
“He’s [Chamblee] a bully, plain and simple. I mean those of us who have worked closely with him and dealt with his tirades understand it. I mean, I watched it too.”
When the Golf Channel was asked about the book, it’s reported a Golf Channel spokesman told Sports Illustrated that “Brandel has not read it and has no comment.”
Chamblee’s allies in this effort to derail her career at the network, according to Cornwell, included the husband-and-wife team of Geoff Russell and Molly Solomon, both executives at the time she worked at the network, and Ginella, who was then a roving travel reporter.
Booth does his own reporting, vetting Cornwell’s recollections and speaking to contacts at the Golf Channel.
Reviews state the book reads as much like a legal brief as it does one woman’s effort to set the record straight about her demotion and later separation from the network when her contract was not renewed at the end of 2020.
“Many affirmed that [Lisa] was a tough girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind but was never cruel or intolerable in any way,” Booth writes.
“All of them confirmed that she had been shitcanned at the end. It should also be noted that no one I spoke to came to the defence of Brandel Chamblee, Matt Ginella, Molly Solomon, or Geoff Russell. Across the board, they all agreed that the four of them were snakes and not to be trusted.”
Ginella is reported he declined to comment to SI for this story. Russell and Solomon also, according to SI. did not respond to approaches for comment.
Regarding its company culture an NBC spokesperson said: “Golf Channel is committed to providing a workplace where all employees are treated equitably and respectfully. When concerns are brought to our attention, we investigate and take appropriate action.
“This is Cornwell’s truth: her word against these four individuals and others who have their own things to say about their relationship with her. Yet she shares disappointments in the workplace with scores of women across corporate America.
“Getting demoted and isolated after complaining to human resources and filing an EEOC claim, as Cornwell asserts in the book, are real occurrences in the workplace. Some cultures are misogynistic, and to get ahead and stay ahead in organizations women must abide by an old boys’ network”.
Also, in the book Cornwell talks about when she begins a romantic relationship with an LPGA player, it becomes a problem with her job, raising issues in the leadership about her ability to cover the tour and this despite her strong support for the LPGA Tour and women’s golf and equity for women in the workplace.
Cornwell is not the first to take the Golf Channel to task as the Washington Post presented a story about the workplace culture at Golf Channel, and with Cornwell saying that several women reached out to her with their own stories of discrimination at the network. “I don’t mind being the target of hate because I spoke out,” Cornwell says. “The one thing that I’ve really learned from all of this is that there’s a real fear in women to speak out. There’s a real fear of backlash and retaliation, and that fear is justified. I understand it because retaliation and backlash are absolutely real. I’m living proof of that.”
Cornwell is now working with PGA Tour Live and, as reported by SI is happy to still have a job in the business.
“I wrote this book for me. I wrote it for the dozens of women and girls, minorities and marginalized who continue to fight these battles”, she said.
To obtain a copy of Lisa Cornwell’s book click on:
