PGA Tour’s Finchem readies last lap around Tour Championship
When you are the soon to be out-going commissioner of the PGA Tour, retirement holds more than the promise of joining a Wednesday morning golf league at the nearest executive course.
Gotta believe Tim Finchem has his pick of a tee time just about anywhere there are 18 holes and a guard gate.
“I’ll probably have a good success rate,” he said last week. “But I’m less concerned about where I play than getting out and playing.”
He is 69, and has spent the last 23 years avoiding the traditional commissioner-suspends-suspected-felon headline. At the same time he has overseen a sport that for the bulk of his long tenure claimed one of the globe’s most visible athletes, one who was just a tin of green ink short of printing his own money.
So, by all means, time to go to work on that 7-and-a-fraction handicap.
Tuesday at the Tour Championship Finchem will hold his last end-of-the-season news conference, and pitch for one final time what a great season it has been and how brilliant the future appears. It is a tournament tradition, the commissioner spreading it thicker than the local Bermuda rough.
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He has sounded the same message through fat times and lean. He presided over changes in how the PGA Tour season begins (instituting the wrap-around schedule, putting the fall and winter into play). And how it ends (the FedEx Cup playoffs, concluding at East Lake). He kept things together as his corporate partners retreated during the economic downturn that began in 2008. Built up the World Golf Championship events. And stayed around long enough to witness golf’s reintroduction to the Olympics.
When he signed on in 1994, the PGA Tour featured 44 events with $56.77 million in purses. This year, there were 47 events with $327 million in prize money. And that doesn’t include the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus doled out at the end of this week.
(Here, Finchem will remind the listener of the impact of his predecessor. “When Deane Beman became commissioner in 1974, the net worth of the PGA Tour was $150,000. He set the base.”)
Finchem’s contract technically runs through May of 2017, but he is expected to hand over the keys to deputy commissioner Jay Monahan as early as the beginning of the year.
At the close of Finchem’s first year as commissioner, Fred Couples (No. 6) and Corey Pavin (No. 10) were the only two Americans in the top 10 of the world golf rankings. The question facing the new commish then: Whatever was the PGA Tour to do without a dominant, foundation player?
Within two years, a crossover performer with the catchiest name – Tiger Woods – had joined the show and essentially genetically modified the game, such a potent agent of growth was he. Then the question then became: Whatever was the PGA Tour to do during all those events in which Woods didn’t play?
Finchem rolled with both scenarios, and has continued to roll as Woods went into eclipse.
“Now if Tiger came back tomorrow it would be a huge bonus because everybody in the world would want to watch to see what he can do compared to what he used to do,” Finchem said.
“But when he hasn’t been playing in the last two or three years, what’s happened it has opened up the opportunity for younger players to get really good exposure, which gives us more stars. There’s a real positive to that.” That new array of stars is on full display at the Tour Championship — Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed are all on the sunny side of 30. And that 32-year-old Dustin Johnson isn’t exactly riddled with the rheumatiz.
Adaptability is a required trait of the modern sports commissioner, whether he’s the NFL’s Roger Goodell, the NBA’s Adam Silver or Tim Finchem. Their jobs all intersect at the crossroads of the big television deal, new media and the various ways technology accelerates change.
Finchem’s job differs in that he doesn’t have to deal with team owners. His tournaments are largely staffed by eager volunteers, and are built upon a wide charitable base. And in dealings with the players, Finchem said, “We don’t have in our sport some of the issues that the other sports have. We have our things now and then, but comparatively not that much from a negativity standpoint that we have to be concerned about.”
It is in the PGA Tour’s dealings with its players where Finchem meets some of his most persistent criticism. This year, Dick Pound, a former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, labeled the Tour’s drug testing inadequate. Also, there is no transparency when a player is disciplined. Nothing’s made public. It’s Finchem’s belief that it serves no purpose to air such information. But, he added, if there were more serious issues involving, say, violence against a fan or domestic violence, “We’d have to step right up and say, ‘OK, here’s what we’re doing about it.’”
So, no, do not expect the final Finchem wrap-up at the Tour Championship to be a comprehensive fault-finding mission. It never is. Nothing ever happens in these things that suggests this isn’t a pretty sweet gig Finchem is putting down.
Like four-time major winner Ernie Els told Golf Magazine, “As long as guys on the Tour keep their noses clean and give them a nice, clean product, it’s going to be hard to screw this up no matter who the commissioner is.”
About the Author
Steve Hummer writes sports features and columns for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He covers a wide range of sports and topics.
