LIV golfer Patrick Reed filed a defamation lawsuit against the Golf Channel and commentator Brandel Chamblee on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old is seeking a trial by jury for compensatory damages of more than $750 million as well as injunctive relief for consequential and punitive damages.
In the suit, Reed alleges that Chamblee and NBC’s Golf Channel have conspired for and with the PGA Tour to engage in a pattern and practice of defaming him by “misreporting information with falsity and/or reckless disregard of the truth, that is with actual and constitutional malice, purposely omitting pertinent key material facts to mislead the public.”
In an interview with the Travis Fulton podcast in June, Chamblee described the 2018 Masters champion and other golfers that joined the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Invitational series as “aligning themselves with a tyrannical, murderous leader,” according to the lawsuit.
Chamblee was referring to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who chairs Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund which owns the breakaway series.
A US intelligence report named bin Salman as responsible for approving the operation that led to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Bin Salman has denied involvement in Khashoggi’s murder.
Chamblee continued in the podcast saying that Reed would be willing to play golf for Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Vladimir Putin.
The lawsuit cites Chamblee’s comments on the podcast as an example of the golf commentator reporting false information, as Reed only plays for LIV and has never aligned himself with bin Salman.
The lawsuit claims Chamblee’s remarks are done on behalf of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, “in order to try to eliminate LIV and its golfers as competitors so that the PGA Tour and Golf Channel can continue to rake in billions of dollars in revenue.”
Golf Channel declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Chamblee.
