Lisa Cornwell SLAMS Golf Channel after leaving the company
Former Golf Channel Lisa Cornwell has spoken out on the No Laying Up podcast about alleged mistreatment.
Former Golf Channel employee Lisa Cornwell recently appeared on the No Laying Up podcast along with her attorney and she has slammed the network for years of mistreatment during her time there.
After leaving Golf Channel after a seven year spell at the company, Cornwell took to Twitter to announce that she would be speaking out for not only herself but for many other women who have been mistreated during their time there.
Jan. 1, 2021:
The first day in 7 years I'm not in a contract w/Golf Channel & am free to speak up for the many women who’ve been marginalized, belittled, berated & treated like second class citizens — including me.
The days of it being swept under the rug are over.#MoreToCome— Lisa Cornwell (@LisaCornwellGC) January 1, 2021
Cornwell spoke of allegations about the hierachy at Golf Channel who she believes tried to keep her away from broadcasts when possible, multiple run-ins with Brandel Chamblee, as well as senior employees making fun of an employee who suffers from anxiety whilst at a company dinner.
"The person leading that dinner, and there are 15 people there, he’s the head of Golf Central," said Cornwell, discussing the incident occurring at a company dinner at the 2016 NCAA Championships in Oregon.
"We have a new analyst who’s had some anxiety issues on air, and he’s basically making fun of him.
"I stood up, he’s a friend of mine, I said ‘What are we doing? We don’t do this. This is not who we are. This was a big issue, and it was hard for him, and we’re not going to sit here and make fun of it."
Another issue occurred two years later in 2018, which was one of multiple negative encounters with Golf Channel analyst Chamblee, who Cornwell says "never liked me from day one".
Cornwell said she made a mistake whilst reading a strokes gained graphic on air whilst working alongside Chamblee, who reacted by making frustrated gestures and then pursued to ignore her following the show.
Following the incident, Cornwell called senior vice president of Golf Channel Geoff Russell, who she later found out is a close friend of Chamblee.
She told Russell, "I am pissed off. You have to fix this. I am tired of working in this environment, with this man, who treats me like I shouldn’t even be there."
It was after that moment that Cornwell believed her working environment became even more difficult. A few months later, Cornwell received an email that revealed she would not be hosting the 2019 NCAA Championships, something she has done since arriving at Golf Channel.
"I had always hosted the women’s NCAAs since I had been at Golf Channel. I get a scheduling email that I would not be the host that year at Arkansas, that I had been demoted to a reporter, and they didn’t even have the guts to tell me."
The No Laying Up team then asked Cornwell if she believed this decision was due to her complaint about Chamblee, to which she responded assertively: "100 percent, how could you justify it?"
The final straw for Cornwell came when Russell "screamed and cussed" at her for tweeting about a gender-related issue in the professional game, when Xi Yu Lin was made to pay for her Mizuno irons that she wanted to use (something you simply wouldn't see in the men's game).
“A man, in his 60s, who was my boss, screaming and cussing me out and sending me home over a gender-related issue from a women’s golf tournament during the middle of a retaliation, gender-discrimination, EEOC case. I don’t know what organization allows that to happen, but Golf Channel didn’t do anything about it.”
