Mark Lye does not use Twitter very much, but he believes a movement on the social media platform led to the firing from his PGA Tour Radio show Sunday by SiriusXM.
“It’s really cancel culture,” Lye said on Tuesday.
During a weekend episode of The Scorecard, Lye, 69, said: “You know, the LPGA Tour to me is a completely different tour than it was 10 years ago … You couldn’t pay me to watch. You really couldn’t. Because I just, I couldn’t relate at all. It’s kind of like, you know, if you’re a basketball player — and I’m not trashing anybody; please, don’t take it the wrong way — but I saw some highlights of ladies’ basketball. Man, is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself than watch that.
“You know, I love watching the men’s basketball. I love watching the men’s golf. I never used to like watching ladies’ golf. But I will tell you this. I’ve been up close watching these ladies play because I used to have a big function every year called the Lucas Cup and I’d have LPGA players and PGA Tour players.”
Lye said Tuesday that when the five-minute segment went to break he wanted to apologize and talked to people involved with the show.
“‘Guys, I’m not feeling good about this,’ he said to those involved with the show after it went to break, ‘I need to make an apology to all WNBA fans,’ which I did.
Mark Lye responds on Twitter
Lye also posted this explanation to Twitter: “The fact that I can’t relate to WNBA does not make me sexist in any way. All you haters should listen to the whole segment, where I completely glorified womens golf, which I love to cover. Thanks for listening.”
“I thought it was case closed,” Lyle said.
But Twitter user @jalawsons had picked up the clip with the controversial comment and shared it, and it started gaining traction.
The online comments on the social media platform created a firestorm, with many saying Lye was against women’s sports or was a sexist, and needed to be fired.
One of the quote tweets from someone who shared the clip:
“Just because no one knows who you are, Mark Lye, doesn’t mean you can go around spewing your mouth like this (on national radio) and think we won’t ruin your life. I am not one to encourage cancel culture but… Hugs and kisses to the grave, Mark!”
Some below that comment defended or agreed with Lye’s comment, and some did not.
Eventually, the original tweet of the clip was taken down by Twitter (“This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules” it now says where the original tweet is located).
“In a way to glorify women’s golf I made a comparison by comparing it to another sport that maybe isn’t so successful,” Lye said Tuesday. “Now as I look back on it, it was a hurtful thing.”
“In a way to glorify women’s golf I made a comparison by comparing it to another sport that maybe isn’t so successful,” Lye said Tuesday. “Now as I look back on it, it was a hurtful thing.”
Lye said 10 minutes before the Saturday night show he was told he couldn’t go on because of what people on Twitter were saying regarding the clip. Sunday morning, he was fired.
“The reason (the comments on Twitter were) blowing up is they took the most unflattering part of that sound bite and they cut it off in a spot that buttressed their point of view, which is that men hate women’s sports or Mark hates women’s sports,” he said.
Lye said the segment of the show talked about comparing other sports, or within sports. For example, how baseball players would feel differently who were from the New York Yankees, who have one of the highest payrolls and are among the most popular franchise, versus those in Kansas City, which has one of the lowest payrolls and don’t have the attendance or popularity that the Yankees do.
“We were cross-referencing sports,” he said. “We talked about baseball. We talked about football. We talked about some of the tough things facing those sports, the challenges, and the challenges that the PGA Tour has against (Saudi Arabia’s Super) Golf League.
“That’s what made it germane. That’s why I talked about the WNBA. It just didn’t come out of nowhere. I happened to watch WNBA highlights on ESPN. I saw nobody in the stands. I said, ‘Wow, that’s a problem.’ I was trying to make the point that the LPGA is a living, thriving, credit to women’s sports in general, and that the WNBA was at the other side of the spectrum.
“I love watching ladies tennis, ladies golf, ladies volleyball. I can’t stand men’s volleyball. There are certain ladies sports that I really like watching. I like fast pitch (softball).”
Lye played on the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions, then was an analyst for the Golf Channel. He joined SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio in 2015, and originally did a show called “Time To Let It Fly” on Wednesdays in addition to weekend pregame and postgame shows.
“They want us to be somewhat interesting,” Lye said of the weekend radio shows. “We’re on the air for a two-hour show. They pay me to be who I am and that’s why they hired me. I’m not the most politically correct guy in the world, but I try to make things interesting for the common golf fan.”
Lye made the choice himself to end the “Let It Fly” show at the end of last year but still do the weekend shows.
“I can’t let it fly anymore,” he said Tuesday about explaining to his boss why he wanted to stop the Wednesday show. “I don’t want to get fired. Let’s cancel the show. This is not politically sound in this environment. … You can’t say just anything anymore.”
Lye coaches the girls golf team at First Baptist Academy, and his daughter, Eva, is one of the top players in the area. Mark Lye is a Type 1 diabetic, and his son Lucas is also, and he started the Lucas Cup he referenced in the clip to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 2013. He also previously had a role in the Immokalee Foundation’s charity pro-am, bringing in PGA and LPGA players for that.
Coincidentally, Lye said when he was doing the show Saturday, his daughter was following LPGA Tour star Nelly Korda in the LPGA Drive On Championship at Crown Colony Golf & Country Club in Fort Myers, and he also referenced that on the show.
“My kids are going to get exposed to this today (at school) and it breaks my heart that this is happening,” he said Tuesday. “My wife is in tears. I feel awful for my family.”
Lye said he didn’t look at what people were saying on Twitter until after he’d been fired. Some defended him, but many didn’t.
“I have death threats … ‘Hope your family is protected, I tweeted out your address.’ ‘You are the scum of the earth,'” Lye said, recounting some of the comments that were made either publicly or directly messaged to his Twitter account including one that told him to kill himself.
“I’ve made maybe 10 tweets in my whole life before (Sunday), but it started getting to me. I’m not going to sit here and take this. I’m going to defend myself. I found out that people have already made up their mind.”
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