Hank Haney files suit against PGA

[QuigleyDU]

 

 

Correct. Sorry for the misspelling, but you hit my point right on the head.

[Hawkeye77]

Didn't work out for the caddies, but that had a lot more and serious future implications for the Tour had they been successful vs. Vijay or Haney which are more "one off" kind of situations.

 

The Tour and Vijay announced they resolved it which would normally mean some kind of monetary settlement.

[tacklingdummy]

That is a crazy story. He had to pay a divorce settlement and he wasn't even married.  When her dad told him "If you don’t change your mind and marry my daughter I’m coming after you.” That will definitely give some guy more confidence and calm him into marrying that woman. Imagine how fun it would be hanging with the in-laws all the time forever. Lol.

[QuigleyDU]

Seriously. My point in bringing it up is that even in doing nothing wrong, sometimes the easy answer is to just pay.

[Holy Moses]

The caddies got a larger insurance stipend. Suing the Tour didn’t hurt them at all.

[dropkicked]

hmm... should've used a tongue-in-cheek, emoji... My bad.

 

:)

[rmgatl]

I’m not going to defend Haney - but have to say IMO the pga should worry more about the golf channels (both tv and radio) becoming about the biggest snoozers in the history of broadcasting. Golf is (hopefully, on a good day) just entertainment. Who’s the biggest star on Sirius xm? How is his political correctness trending?

[cardoustie]

First Don Cherry, then Mike Babcock, now Hank Haney ?

Will it ever end?

[easyyy]

What bothers me about Hank is that after his run with Tiger that CLEARLY was good for him he through Tiger under the bus with the book. Telling personnel and private facts about Tiger.

Then he says Jordan Spieth has the YIPES on record to get back in the news. Who does that? Do you announce a member at your club has the yipes to a group of people? That is discussed in private with class. He is struggling IMO.

 

Sad

 

[QuigleyDU]

I completely agree. It is too bad that his light of fame has burned out and he is losing relevance. Looks like he needs a new project and this is it.

[Hawkeye77]

Bad news for him is it’s still The Haney Project.

[Hawkeye77]

In the end they got pretty much nothing compared to what they seriously thought they would get and the Tour didn’t have to give them that. It was winning in court and would have continued to win.

 

Even the caddies agree the stipend change was in the works once Finchem left. Monahan much more pro caddie. Finchem was horrible.

[easyyy]

We had a long time member of my club leave a few years ago. He became disgruntle over a side deal his business didn't get through the club. So instead of leaving like a gentleman he went scorched earth and sent an email to 50% of the members about the deal he felt he should have gotten and didn't. All but 1 didn't support him and he looked like a fool with a vendetta afterwards. Too bad.... after 20 years he had to leave like that.

 

I have heard that Hanks os a nice guy and probably smart as well. To bad he has had such a turn for the worst. The book was first, then the comments about Spieth and now this? Stains.

Warren buffet said "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

[Frostfield]

Its PC run amuck. HH was very dismissive of the LPGA and that's a dumb move for someone in his position, but his remarks weren't racist or sexist. When so many of the ladies have the same or similar last names, its hard to differentiate who's who. That's not racist. Its dumb, insensitive, and dismissive and was spun as racist and sexist then the media piranhas gobbled him up.

[davep043]

He was employed by a radio station that is almost certainly licensed by the PGA Tour to use PGA Tour in the name of the station. The LPGA has a partner relationship of some kind with the PGA Tour. Haney says essentially "I can't be bothered to prepare for one of the LPGA majors." He wasn't doing his job. The PGA Tour decided he shouldn't be employed on their namesake radio station. If the PGA Tour was as "anti-Hank" as Hank claims, he never would have gotten the job to appear daily on PGA Tour Radio.

[Sean2]

Lol...too true. :-)

 

[tacklingdummy]

Yeah, but it takes a lot of time to keep up with all the great new players on the LPGA. So many tours to watch and follow now, LPGA, Korn Ferry, PGA, European, Asian, KLPGA, South American PGA, Canadian, etc. It is like Fantasy Football. It takes a ton of time to research players, watch games, and follow teams/players. I'm sure he is really busy with his multiple schools and instruction to spend time watching the LPGA. Probably better to not comment than to make state wrong information about them.

[Hawkeye77]

Good point!!!! And no doubt the Tour will be stressing that if, and it almost certainly does, it has approval power of on air talent.

[Golfingfanatic]

I hope this is sarcastic? It is his job to know this stuff.

 

[elwhippy]

I fear Haney is, to use a UK expression..."Cra£$^%$g in his own nest" and will get hammered in the courts now that Tiger is back as the anointed one and can do no wrong.

[tacklingdummy]

Not really. His job is teaching golf. I highly doubt that all top level instructors know all the new up and coming players on all the tours if you asked them on the spot. There are literally hundreds of new up and coming players to know who they are, know their games, and what they are doing. Haney just didn't say it in a PC way that people liked. If he just said it in a different way, that he didn't follow the LPGA much because of time constraints and don't know much about the new players, there would not have been controversy about it.

[bscinstnct]

 

We the Jury award Hank Haney

 

 

 

[davep043]

I don't agree. When he signed a contract with PGA Tour Radio, his job expanded to include being able to talk knowledgeably about professional golf. And this wasn't the Podunk Open on the Malaysian Symetra Tour, this was the US Open for women! I believe he owed his employer at least a little bit of preparation for a major tournament. Maybe he was embarrassed that he hadn't done a thing, and tried to make a joke to cover up, but he simply wasn't prepared.

[Hawkeye77]

He actually sounded a bit awkward - maybe caught off guard a bit. (The sexist/racist allegations I just never bought into but those are the headlines you get in today's age).

You'd think with the whole vendetta thing, lol, he'd also have motive to be prepared since the Tour that approved him on the broadcast was still out to get him. ;-)

And I agree, if you are going to show up for a radio gig, or any sports talk kind of gig, you pretty much owe it to the people paying you, their sponsors and your audience to put in the work and be prepared.

I didn't listen to him the rare times I landed on the station because (1) it seemed like he was rarely actually on (that may have just been because of random sampling), and (2) compared with others with similar shows he really seemed to just ramble on and on like the entirety of preparation for the day was "talk about golf". Of course, you couldn't escape him during the endless ads because they were his products, haha.

 

[davep043]

I didn't listen to him much either, I'm just not listening to anything at that time of day, but I happened to be in the car, and heard this stuff live. I agree with you, he sounded stumped, and made his "joke" as a response. But as you say, he didn't always sound prepared on the few other times I had listened, so it didn't seem way out of character. Besides that, I never liked his speaking manner, which was mimicked very accurately by @tiderider in post 78.

[MidwestGolfBum]

This was my exact take on the whole thing, even when it happened. The fact that he wasn't even close to prepared to talk about something like the Women's US Open told me all that I needed to know about the show that I listened to just a handful of times. As @Hawkeye77 mentioned, it was basically just "let's talk about golf" every time and whatever happened with that, happened. He had very little insight into things that I found interesting, though I know I'm not the entire audience as well as maybe not even being the target audience. Him being fired after people called him out for the comments seemed to me like it was a really clean way for the Tour to get him out of there without having to continue his contract.

[Valtiel]

Very well said, 100% agree.

[youngwaldo]

I have to agree here. I didnt see anything wrong also. People are starting to get thinner skin lately and way too PC.

 

Wk

[Holy Moses]

Hank said he hasn’t coached since Tiger. He runs his academies, but doesn’t personally coach. He’s been pretty popular even after Tiger. Golf Channel reality shows, plenty of sponsors including TaylorMade and Callaway (he designed a SW that got terrible reviews), his Sirius XM show, his new podcast, clothing sponsors, and so forth. You might not like Hank Hank, but he’s been plenty successful since his relationship ended with Tiger.

[davep043]

Have you read the discussions of his lack of preparation to discuss a significant tournament in US golf? To me, that was a bigger issue than any racial aspects of what he said. And although he did apologize for offending people, he never did say anything about his apparent ignorance of a significant partner of the PGA Tour, and one of its major tournaments.