SiriusXM has fired former PGA Tour pro Mark Lye, who made controversial comments about women’s basketball during a show Saturday.
“You know the LPGA Tour, to me, is a completely different tour than it was 10 years ago,” Lye said on SiriusXM’s PGA Tour Radio. “You couldn’t pay me to watch. You really couldn’t, because I couldn’t relate at all. It’s kind of like, if you were a basketball player, and I’m not trashing anybody, please don’t take it the wrong way.
“I saw some highlights of ladies’ basketball. Man. Is there a gun in the house? I’ll shoot myself [before] I watch that.”
Lye confirmed his firing to Golf.com.
“I was terminated about comments made about the WNBA, which I apologized for starting the next segment,” he said.
After making the comments on Saturday, Lye attempted to explain what he said on 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.
— mark lye (@letitflye) February 6, 2022
Lye, 69, played on the PGA Tour from 1977 to 1994 and won the 1983 Bank of Boston Classic. He finished tied for sixth at the 1984 Masters.
In May 2019, instructor Hank Haney, who gained fame by working with Tiger Woods, was suspended and then terminated by SiriusXM for what the PGA Tour and SiriusXM said were insensitive comments about women’s golf.
Haney sued the PGA Tour in federal court in December 2019, alleging it pressured SiriusXM Radio to suspend him and then terminate him. A federal judge in Florida dismissed his lawsuit in August 2021.
