A Golf Channel analyst, Chamblee has informed and often unpopular opinions that he isn’t timid about expressing and defending, vexing those among the Twitterati who are certain he could fertilise a golf course with them. “Please dump Brandel Chamblee,” one man posted on Twitter recently. “He has no creds to offer player evaluation at the Master’s. Low end player, good grief.”

It might surprise him and others that Chamblee, in addition to knowing there is no apostrophe in Masters, once shared the first-round lead at Augusta National, that he won on the PGA Tour, that he once ranked as high as 58th in the world. Can we just stipulate here that whatever one does for a living, if they’re the 58th best in the world at it, they qualify as an authority on it?

Chamblee’s critics will persist nonetheless, and the 55-year-old is going to risk empowering them by reviving his dormant competitive career, at least on a trial basis. He will enter a Senior British Open qualifier this summer and is considering entering some PGA Tour Champions qualifiers and possibly its Q-School.

“I get a chuckle out of people who try to denigrate my career,” Chamblee told Golf World. “I was an extraordinary golfer. I say that with all humility. There are 25 million who play this game, and I was 58th in the world. I was a decent tour player. I played at the highest level for the better part of 15 years. At times I got damn close to being really good. “I don’t at all look back on my career with any regret. I gave it my all. I burned the candle on both ends, practicing sunup to sundown and thinking about it until I decided to do something else. I didn’t quit because I was playing bad or was hurt. I quit because of life matters, family matters and a goal of wanting to do something else in my life and see if I could be any good at it. That was it.”

Related: Jason Dufner roasts Brandel Chamblee after getting blocked by him on Twitter

Chamblee left the PGA Tour in 2003 and joined the Golf Channel, creating more time at home with his three young kids. Fifteen years later, the Senior Open at the Old Course at St. Andrews, set for July 26-29, “was too strong a lure to ignore,” he said, noting that he’ll already be at Carnoustie the week prior as part of the British Open coverage on Golf Channel.

Stan Badz/PGA Tour
In his playing days, Chamblee was a winner on the PGA Tour and ranked as high as 58th in the world.

“When I’m playing and practicing a week or two at a time, my game gets pretty good. I have roughly three months to try to get my game in order. Every day I go out and try to swing like Ben Hogan, chip like Jose Maria Olazabal and putt like Bobby Locke or Horton Smith. I don’t, but I’m not afraid of failure.

“I want to be as smooth as Rich Lerner or Mike Tirico, too, but I don’t know that I get there all the time,” Chamblee continued. “Big goals, they’re fun. If you fail, you pick yourself up, get after it [again] and narrow your focus. I’m 55. I’ve got five more years probably to do it. I’m probably not as banged up as most 55-year-old golfers. Physically, my body is in pretty good shape. I don’t hurt. I’ve still got a lot of flexibility, a decent amount of speed.”

Related: Brandel Chamblee: Jordan Spieth ‘on his way to becoming one of greatest frontrunners in history’

He, too, has technology that was unavailable to him when his livelihood depended on how he played. “I was out pitching the ball today and I was really, really close. I YouTubed Jose Maria Olazabal and there it is, the greatest chipper who probably ever lived. How can I duplicate that right here right now? Boom, my contact got better immediately. I felt like Jose Maria Olazabal chipping the ball today. Before, you’d have to go to a short-game guru and pull up one or two grainy tapes.”

Yet technology, for all its advances, can’t turn back the clock. Inevitably, Chamblee’s effort will elicit the Charlie Rymer example. Rymer, Chamblee’s Golf Channel teammate, also re-entered the world of competitive golf. He has played two PGA Tour Champions events and has a scoring average of nearly 80. He shot 87 on two occasions.

Chris Condon/PGA Tour
Chamblee says he’s not afraid of failure, whether it be on the air with his analysis or on the course in his return to competition.“I’ll defend Charlie all day,” Chamblee said. “I commend him for putting it all out on the line. He didn’t withdraw or get himself DQ’d. He posted those numbers. I’ve got tremendous respect for Charlie wanting to challenge himself. Charlie’s got a dream. He got healthier, fitter, lost weight, got excited. So what that he went out there and got slapped in the face by the game of golf. It happens to all of us.”

A segment of viewers no doubt will be watching Chamblee’s bid eagerly, ready to pounce in the event that he similarly is slapped in the face. “They have the right to say what they want and to think what they want,” he said. “That’s the nature of our social-media world. Everybody has a voice. I’ve always thought the greatest challenge anyone of us has is to be criticised or complimented and not be affected by either one of those.

“The goal is to have in your mind what you want to do and be true to that and go have fun doing it. It’s just sport.”

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By Jaime Diaz
There’s been a lot of theorising lately that Western civilisation is going through the “post-truth” era. The supporting evidence from the world of golf could be the current controversy over whether Bernhard Langer is anchoring.

It’s not that a game that so values honour and integrity is being plagued by public lies and blatant spinning to the same extent as the general culture. But there has been a noticeable eroding of the once almost unquestioned presumption that players are telling the truth. It seems as if—from charges of PED use, to taking drops in the right place, to correctly marking balls, to anchoring—golfers don’t quite believe each other like they used to.

Ensnared in this evolving perception are Langer and Scott McCarron, who have continued to use a long putter despite the USGA and R&A’s 2016 ban on using an anchored stroke. Each golfer vehemently maintains that by holding their top hand away their body and keeping it away during the stroke, they have legally adjusted to the new rule.

However, it’s easy to find fellow PGA Tour Champions players who will contend, off the record, that in the cases of Langer and McCarron, there is no perceptible daylight between their top hand and their chests when they putt. Some of these players believe that top hand brushing against clothing constitutes anchoring. It amounts to a substantial group of peers who feel there is enough visual evidence to warrant a strong suspicion that the two players are illegally anchoring.

Other objections to the methods of Langer and McCarron are founded in the language of Rule 14-1b, which in prohibiting anchoring states, in “Note 1”, the following: “The club is anchored ‘directly’ when the player intentionally holds the club or a gripping hand in contact with any part of his body, except that the player may hold the club or a gripping hand against a hand or forearm.”

It is the word “intentionally” that led Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee, who considers Langer’s and McCarron’s putting methods “questionable.” to deduce that anchorers have a built in “get out of jail free” card.

“And intent, I think there is apprehension on the governing body’s part not to ruffle feathers further,” Chamblee told Golf World’s Tim Rosaforte, cutting seven letters off the key word. “When it’s time to dig in, they’re reluctant to do so. Their acquiescence is to pass this rule, but the only violation is the intent to break this rule. … Basically what the USGA is saying is, ‘If you can live with cheating, then fine. If you can sleep with yourself, then fine.’

However, PGA Tour Champions rules official Brian Claar told Golf Channel that the word “intentionally” was put in the rule to protect a player from being penalized in the rare case of an accidental slip or strong wind during the putting stroke pushing the hand against the body.

Accusations, or suggestions of cheating in golf are always startling, especially when they involve prominent players. Langer has been dominating the senior circuit for years, as much at age 59 as ever. This year he is ranked second in putting average, as he was last year. McCarron, who has won four times on the 50 and over tour, is currently second to Langer on in the Charles Schwab Cup and ranks third in putting. At the Constellation Senior Players Championship two weeks ago, with unrest over the inssue among some their peers, they finished 1-2, with Langer giving up a lead late to McCarron.

It’s worth noting that there is a third player who made the same adjustment with the long putter as Langer and McCarron—Billy Mayfair. But the 50-year-old journeyman, whose T-9 in Wales marked his best finish on the PGA Tour Champions, has not been publicly questioned.

Phil Inglis/Getty Images
Despite the whispers, Langer has won five of his last 10 senior major starts, and enjoyed the latest with his wife Vikki (left) and daughters Christina and Jackie

Will Langer’s win Sunday at Senior British Open in Wales douse or intensify the controversy? It marked his third senior major victory of this season and his record 10th total. Langer is also the only player to have won all five senior majors, and with his 33rd official career senior victory, he would seem to have a shot at Hale Irwin’s once considered unapproachable record of 45.

RELATED: Langer cruises to Senior British Open title

His additional bona fides would appear impeccable. Langer is a Hall of Famer, a former World No. 1 with two majors and 42 victories on the European Tour, a Ryder Cup stalwart as a player and winning captain. His doggedness has enabled him to overcome the putting yips four times, and his legendary attention to detail gained him a reputation as one of the game’s slowest players. He applied those traits to his adjustment after the anchoring ban, saying it took him four to six months to get comfortable with keeping his knuckle away from his body. He is also known for being deeply religious. His integrity as a golfer has always been above reproach.

Langer, who says the accusations have been “hurtful,” insists he is following the new rule to the letter. He and McCarron have both checked with rules officials to make sure they are not anchoring and have been told repeatedly they are not in violation of the rule.

In a joint statement earlier this month with the USGA and McCarron, Langer said: “I believe in honesty and integrity, and I could not live with myself if I broke the rule and did not incur the penalty. I’m certain that I’m not anchoring the putter and that my putting stroke is not violating the Rules of Golf.” For his part, McCarron said: “I’d like to emphatically say that I do not anchor my hand, arm or club against my body during my putting stroke.”

Most importantly, the USGA issued this clearance, which made a point of addressing the subject of loose clothing: “We are confident that Rule has been applied fairly and consistently and have seen no evidence of a player breaking the Rule, which does not prohibit a hand or club to touch a player’s clothing in making a stroke.”

Langer, predictably, has mostly remained stoic. Recently, perhaps to reduce confusion among his peers, he has stopped “anchoring” in his preparatory practice strokes. But when pressed in Wales, he told The Telegraph: “It’s human to be jealous, let’s put it that way. If I was 180th on the money list, I don’t think anybody would be talking about it. But I’ve been No. 1 the last few years.” Fair point, given that Mayfair has escaped public scrutiny.

Bottom line, this controversy should stop. Perhaps the ruling bodies should be more precise with how “intentionally” is meant to apply to Rule 14-1b. Perhaps distributing some high-definition close-ups of the movement Langer’s and McCarron’s top hands as they putt could be helpful and even definitive. But until then, there’s nothing more to discuss. Langer and McCarron—whose version of events as individual players (in the absence of definitive evidence) are to be believed over the accusations of another player according to The Rules of Golf—both firmly contend they don’t anchor. And the rules officials—the final arbiters of the rules—say they don’t anchor. End of story.

There are those who believe that Langer and McCarron are being unfair to the other players by coming so close to a violation. As one PGA Tour Champions competitor told me, “Why are they putting us in this position?”

But the real question is, “Why are fellow players putting Langer and McCarron in this position?” As a society, we might be the “post-truth” era, but as golfers, we should never relinquish the game’s fundamental trust in the player.

The post Why is Bernhard Langer guilty until proven innocent? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Golf Digest senior writer Golf World editor-in-chief Jaime Diaz received the Lincoln Werden Golf Journalism award on Monday night during the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association’s 66th National Awards Dinner in Tarrytown, N.Y. The award is presented to a writer, broadcaster, photographer, artist or other individual for outstanding contributions in the field of golf journalism.

Diaz, 63, is the seventh Golf Digest writer to receive the MGWA award, joining Nick Seitz (1993), Dan Jenkins (1994), Bob Verdi (1998), Jerry Tarde (2012), Ron Sirak (2015) and Tim Rosaforte (2016).

“To be included among so many past recipients that I’ve greatly admired, at such a historic dinner, is a thrill,” Diaz said.

It’s not the first time the San Francisco-area native has been recognized for his contributions to golf journalism. In 2012, Diaz received the PGA of America Lifetime Achievement in Journalism award, which honors members of the media for their steadfast promotion of golf, both locally and nationally. Diaz also was the recipient of the annual journalism award at the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament in 2014.

Diaz has been at Golf Digest for 17 years and became Golf World editor in 2012.

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