Ex–Golf Channel Anchor Lisa Cornwell Describes Culture of Sexism, Retaliation in Tell-All Book
In Troublemaker: A Memoir of Sexism, Retaliation, and The Fight They Didn’t See Coming, Lisa Cornwell has written a workplace drama about her nearly seven years as an on-air reporter and anchor at Golf Channel. Behind the scores and analysis about tournaments and the best golfers in the world, Cornwell attempts to show the inner workings of journalists in a fast-paced news environment. Golf hasn’t seen a book quite like this, but that doesn’t mean one couldn’t have already been written.
“There are many references to golf because that was my job, and it’s been a huge part of my life since I was a little girl,” Cornwell writes in Troublemaker. “But the heart and soul of this book is addressing the real-life struggles women continue to face in the workplace—and that workplace can be in any industry, not just sports—and it must change.”
Growing up in Fayetteville, Ark., as a cousin of Bill Clinton—Hillary Clinton wrote the foreword to this book—Cornwell has seen up close how power works on both a local and national level. In the book, over and over she points to the imperfections of the culture at Golf Channel and the failure of the human resources to reel it in.
“I think it’s like any office job,” she tells me. “You have in-office personality clashes. But it was pretty clear from early on for me at the network that the culture just wasn’t what it should be in the day and time that we live in.”
Cornwell, who filed two EEOC claims against Golf Channel, could have chosen to sue the network for discrimination and retaliation but instead wrote this book. With her coauthor, Tucker Booth, she faces down some of the most prominent personalities and executives in the world of golf television. One huge fight with one of her bosses surrounds her supposed failure to adequately get both sides of a story about an LPGA player’s request from a major equipment manufacturer. Things go sour between Cornwell and Brandel Chamblee after he embarrasses her on live TV and then explains it away by suggesting that things might have gone differently had she been better prepared. Cornwell has a fight with Matt Ginella over Twitter about John Daly using a cart in a major championship.
Everybody knows Chamblee as a brilliant and opinionated commentator on everything from the nuances of the golf swing to LIV Golf. In Cornwell’s telling, he was a man determined to get her fired from the network.
“I never thought that Brandel controlled my job,” Cornwell says. “I never thought that he had any influence on whether I remained at the network. But when I found out that he had orchestrated this campaign to get rid of me, just on the heels after I’ve been demoted from being a full-time employee to a freelance reporter, that’s when I thought, O.K., this whole retaliation aspect is very real. I know Brandel is very well known. He’s very controversial. I always said that he thought that he had a lot of power, and then that move proved just how much power that he did have at the network—and he used it.” (When asked about the book and Cornwell’s comments, a Golf Channel spokesman told Sports Illustrated that “Brandel has not read it and has no comment.”)
Chamblee’s allies in this effort to derail her career at the network, according to Cornwell, included the husband-and-wife team of Geoff Russell and Molly Solomon, both executives at the time she worked at the network, and Ginella, who was then a roving travel reporter.
Booth does his own reporting, vetting Cornwell’s recollections and speaking to contacts at the Golf Channel. The book reads as much like a legal brief as it does one woman’s effort to set the record straight about her demotion and later separation from the network when her contract was not renewed at the end of 2020.
“Many affirmed that [Lisa] was a tough girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind but was never cruel or intolerable in any way,” Booth writes. “All of them confirmed that she had been shitcanned at the end. It should also be noted that no one I spoke to came to the defense of Brandel Chamblee, Matt Ginella, Molly Solomon, or Geoff Russell. Across the board, they all agreed that the four of them were snakes and not to be trusted.”
Ginella declined to comment to SI for this story. Russell and Solomon did not respond to SI’s request. Regarding its company culture an NBC spokesperson said: “Golf Channel is committed to providing a workplace where all employees are treated equitably and respectfully. When concerns are brought to our attention, we investigate and take appropriate action.”
This is Cornwell’s truth: her word against these four individuals and others who have their own things to say about their relationship with her. Yet she shares disappointments in the workplace with scores of women across corporate America. Getting demoted and isolated after complaining to human resources and filing an EEOC claim, as Cornwell asserts in the book, are real occurrences in the workplace. Some cultures are misogynistic, and to get ahead and stay ahead in organizations women must abide by an old boys’ network.
“While I am aware that there is no Truth,” Robert Caro writes in his memoir, Working, “there are Facts, objective facts. Discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.”
With urgency and tenacity, Cornwell has assembled a set of facts and memories that conform to a truth for her about what led to the end of her dream job at Golf Channel. For Cornwell there are no neat lines between the personal and the professional. When she begins a romantic relationship with an LPGA player, it becomes a problem with her job, raising issues in the leadership about her ability to cover the tour. She is an unabashed advocate for the LPGA Tour and women’s golf and equity for women in the workplace.
“Anybody who knows me and anybody who works with me at Golf Channel knows that I spent a lot of time promoting the LPGA Tour,” Cornwell says. “I was always pushing to be out there as a reporter more. I was always pushing to try to get more things happening in the broadcast for the LPGA Tour.”
Throughout the memoir, Cornwell is fighting both for her place at Golf Channel against seemingly insurmountable odds and for all women that might share her circumstances. Following a Washington Post story about the workplace culture at Golf Channel, Cornwell says that several women reached out to her with their own stories of discrimination at the network.
“I don’t mind being the target of hate because I spoke out,” Cornwell says. “The one thing that I've really learned from all of this is that there’s a real fear in women to speak out. There’s a real fear of backlash and retaliation, and that fear is justified. I understand it because retaliation and backlash are absolutely real. I’m living proof of that.”
Now working with PGA Tour Live in an announcing role, Cornwell is happy to still have a job in the business. She believes that both men and women will benefit by reading her book. While she wants women to recognize that there is power in speaking out, she also hopes that men will read it, too, to understand the depth of the discrimination and burdens that women carry in the workplace.
I asked Cornwell whether she hoped that Chamblee and her other detractors at the Golf Channel would read the book. “I really could care less if they do,” she says. “I wrote this book for me. I wrote it for the dozens of women and girls, minorities and marginalized who continue to fight these battles.”