Brooks Koepka’s Coach Absolutely Goes Off on Media Over LIV Golf After PGA Championship Win

Claude Harmon III sounded off on golf media and their treatment of LIV golf after Koepka won his fifth major.

As the first LIV golfer to win a major championship since the upstart league emerged in 2021, Brooks Koepka has sparked quite a bit of discussion in the golf community. And in the wake of his victory, Koepka’s swing coach, Claude Harmon III, is playing a significant role in that conversation. 

Harmon is the son of Butch Harmon, who famously coached both Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and over the weekend he spoke to Golfweek’s Adam Schupak and unleashed a slew of passionate takes about golf media, LIV, the PGA Tour and Koepka himself. 

In the interview, which began just after Koepka’s Sunday tee time and continued after the final putt dropped, Harmon particularly sounded off on NBC and Golf Channel. 

“Brandel is a paid actor by NBC and Golf Channel. All he’s trying to do is get his lines and shows for the Golf Channel. He’s just trying to get lines for Brandel ... And I mean, I love him, I think Eamon is a fantastic writer, but for Eamon Lynch and Brandel Chamblee, who worked for NBC Golf Channel to utter the words ‘sportswashing’ when the company they work for televised the last two Winter Olympics in Russia and China with the same leaders that they’ve had. It’s not like they were good leaders back then. It’s not like Putin was a good guy, right?” Harmon told Golfweek. 

Harmon continued by criticizing members of the media for pushing a narrative that LIV golfers were no longer going to be competitive in majors because they “got the bag” from the Saudi-backed league.  

“Maybe you’ve changed your tune, but initially, it was all just bulls---, a bunch of guys playing who didn’t care, who got the money, who got the bag, and it’s 54 holes and there’s no competition and all that. So it was easy for you guys to just pretend like these guys just weren’t good players anymore. And I think you guys largely did that because you drank the Kool-Aid of everybody else. But how you guys all thought that these guys just weren’t going to show up and be great players is beyond me. I think it is an interesting Jedi mind trick that they played on you guys and you guys fell for it. Because you guys were all, ‘These guys were all washed up. They took the bag. They’re insignificant. They play against no competition.’ And that’s just not the case.

“If I’m critical of you guys in the media, you guys portrayed this as [Brooks] took the money and then Tiger came out with his comment, you know, Tiger, the ultimate guy who got all the money up front. I mean, I was around then. He flew to his first professional golf tournament on Nike’s private jet, and he wasn’t paying for it. So you guys pushed this narrative and pretended like LIV was an exhibition, nobody watched it, you guys didn’t report on it, none of you guys came to the tournaments. I mean the golf that I saw Cam [Smith] play last year, the golf that I saw DJ play last year, the golf that I saw Brooks play at the end of the year is the same golf that is being played on the PGA Tour. You guys just tried to pretend that it wasn’t.”

Harmon later added that he believes PGA Tour players are lauded by media while mentioning Will Zalatoris in particular—who is currently out with a back injury—for his world ranking, which Harmon believes is “laughable.” 

Currently, the Official World Golf Ranking does not award points to LIV golf events. (The SI World Golf Rankings, our own data-driven list, awards points to all pro leagues including LIV.) The league’s OWGR application is under review by its board, which includes representatives from Augusta National, the PGA of America, the PGA Tour, the USGA and several other governing bodies in golf. 

“Listen, there are a lot of people that having gone through this whole LIV versus the PGA Tour, there are a lot of people that you guys on the Tour side of this, I mean, blow smoke up their asses like they're (expletive) world beaters. And some of these guys haven’t won tournaments in quite a long time. The fact that Will Zalatoris is top 10 in the world is laughable, and it has nothing to do with him.

“But my point with that is you guys all acted like Brooks was a s----y player and Will Zalatoris was great, but the guy has won one [expletive] golf tournament, yeah, he’s finished second in a bunch of tournaments. So have a lot of players, but you guys are ready to crown him as if he’s the second coming of Christ and you guys are acting like Brooks Koepka was a bum. Seriously, pre-Masters, that is what was happening. And you guys know that … LIV also allows players to have time off, that you guys have beat everybody up for. They do get time off, they get two weeks stretches off, they got four months off. And so some of these guys used that time. I think Bryson used that time really well. I think Phil used that time really, really well. But, you know, I watched Taylor Gooch, he was on DJ’s team last year. That kid is a legit golfer. He is an old-school shaper, he can move it a bunch of different directions and then the golf that Peter Uhlein is playing right now on LIV. I mean if you’re going to make the argument that the only reason Peter is playing good golf is because he’s only got to play against 48 players then you can make the same argument that Max Homa and Sahith [Theegala] and all these guys that weren’t ever really superstars all of a sudden you could make that argument too. It’s just golf, there is some unbelievable golf being played on LIV. There really is because I see it week in and week out.”

Harmon continued to sound off on the LIV golf discourse throughout the remainder of the interview, which you can find in its entirety here.