When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
The NSA is really humming these days, offering up another insteant message exchange between Tim Finchem and Carolyn Bivens, our faithful PGA Tour and LPGA Tour Commissioners. Click on the image to read...
Reader Tony was watching the AT&T second round coverage and noted this about the announcing:
Kelly Tilghman just said Chris Berman's not wearing a sweater because it's 2 degrees back in Connecticut so he's warm. It was 50 yesterday and it's 30 now and the sun has been down for an hour. Can we please make her go away?
In Kelly's defense, what else is there to say about a man who acts like this?
Rich Tosches at Yahoo details Nick Faldo's coverage of the Commissioner's round Thursday, apparently to the chagrin of Tilghman.
"He's one of the finest golfers for his height," Faldo said of the non-tall commissioner.
At the other Golf Channel microphone was Kelly Tilghman, who stirred great controversy last year when she suggested that players such as Sam Snead and Walter Hagen should take Ben Hogan into an alley and lynch him. This is where the expression "Hogan's Alley" comes from. I think.
Anyway, Tilghman flinched at each of Faldo's jabs at Finchem, in part, perhaps, because she admires the commissioner but mostly because, unlike Faldo, she did not win $8.8 million playing golf and probably needs the job.
So when Faldo, right off the bat, made a joke about Finchem's swing, Tilghman came back with this: "He's a solid six (handicap)."
When Faldo analyzed Finchem's swing in slow motion and said, "His arms break a little quick, and his hips are a little stuck and, oohh, there at the finish he's up on his tippy-toes," Tilghman was silent for several seconds - probably imagining herself announcing the Nome Open.
(After that long and awkward pause, Tilghman noted that Finchem was playing with Davis Love III and said, "They have a lot of policy issues they can talk about," which, if you ask me, is right up there with Al Michaels' "Do you believe in miracles?")
Or so Jim McCabe reports on Tim Finchem's opening round at the AT&T playing Pebble Beach, which he was supposed to be playing Saturday until someone pulled some strings to get off of the celebrity rotation.
From Doug Ferguson's story on Wednesday's pro-am goings on.
After year of prodding, one of the CEOs at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am includes the PGA Tour commissioner himself.
The tour gets five spots in the pro-am each year that it usually gives to corporate partners, and Finchem is using one of those spots.
For a guy who just a month ago asked players to do more in these lean economic times, and for someone who makes nearly $5 million a year, you'd think he could swing the $15,000 entry fee that helps fund a significant charity. I'm sure his accountant could write it off, no?
Ferguson also reports this red flag special. PGA Tour rule officials never jack around with tee times once they are set:
He'll play with Love, who was on the policy board in Finchem's first year as commissioner in 1994. The other team will be Mahan and Randall Stephenson, chairman of AT&T.
The only mystery was the draw sheet.
Finchem and Stephenson were to play the same course rotation as the celebrities (opposite side of the course) - Spyglass Hill, Poppy Hills, Pebble Beach. But a revised draw sheet on Wednesday had them away from the celebrities (translation: attention) by teeing off Thursday at Pebble Beach.
Nice line from David Toms in Doug Ferguson's notes column this week on the subject of Tim Finchem making his AT&T debut:
"It might be the only chance we have for this tournament to be moved to October,'' Toms said with a laugh, referring to weather issues that have occasionally plagued Pebble.
Tim Finchem, sporting a PGA Tour logoed dress shirt (PGA Tour PGA TOUR(C) logoed Hawaiian shirt would have sent the wrong message in these tough times) sat down with golf's last remaining scribblers to drone on about a few things, including negotiations on future Mercedes Championships at Kapalua (Robert Collias reports that the post-2010 future is far from certain.)
Q. You indicated that your major focus was to be better coming out of whatever this is we are in right now, than going in. How do you do that?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, there's a number of things that go into that. I think the first and foremost is coming out in good shape in the wide range of scrutinies that we always get during these downturns.
Scrutinies. New Year, new MBA jargon!
When we start into a downturn and companies are reducing their expenditures in advertising and marketing and sponsorship, they are obviously going through a process that they are deciding what's more valuable to them, where they get most value to the dollar spent.
In prior downturns -- and I would add to that, in my experience, every time we have a downturn, there was even more scrutiny than last time, and there's better scrutiny, because companies have learned how to do it better. They have better analytics and outside consultants, etc., etc.
Oh yeah, America is really feeling the effects of companies' improved scrutinies and those analytics. What did Obama say today? "We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility."
So in prior downturns, we have performed very well in that regard, because our value model, in terms of spending a dollar with the PGA TOUR versus spending a dollar versus X-Sport versus spending a dollar in Y-Sport, we come out very well. The first step is to win that contest and to come out ahead. If we are coming out ahead in those tests and those challenges, that absolutely positions us better for the future.
The second thing is that we just take advantage of the environment to work hard on our cost structure, challenge ourselves, although, we like to think that we do that all the time, but even more intensely, and be more efficient coming out of it.
And on that note, my jet is prepped and waiting, so I'm outta here once we finish up.
And the third thing is, use the period to where we are not winning that contest, where we are in a situation where we are sliding, use the opportunity to fix whatever problem it is that created that slide and structurally make changes that give us more value.
Let's see, how about working on the dreaded WGC's? The Fixed Cup's version three in year three? Competing tournaments during majors and WGC's? Boring product fueled by excessive course setup and demise of shotmaking?
Get your cliche and sports metaphor boards out...
So that's where we are at full-court press to do. We are going to take some hits. Everybody is going to take some hits in this environment. But if it's cyclical, we'll come through it and we want to position it to get back into a solid growth pattern.
This answer about the decline of newspapers seemed to be an improvement over the one I got at Sherwood.
Let's say we have a PGA TOUR event in St. Louis this year, we're there once during the year for four days of competition. The market doesn't view it -- the intensity level of the fans isn't such that they really have to have somebody that covers that sport for them.
So when you are coming to chopping budgets, a dedicated golf writer is going to come on the chopping block before somebody that covers a team sport. That's just the way it is.
I went out to my driveway and picked up my local newspaper and thought I had lost a few sections of it. It got quite thin on some days. But I don't know where it leads.
To be able to live in Pittsburgh or Detroit or anywhere and see a familiar name dedicated to your newspaper writing about a sport is a good thing for our sport. Losing that is a bad thing for our sport. But I can't quantify it in terms of what it really means to the fan base.
Ah the first John Daly question of the new year...
But if a player comments, if a player says, "I was fined $50," and he was fined $10,000, we might correct the record. But that's the extent of our commentary. That's up to the player, whether the player wants to keep it confidential or not.
So that was my response to the John Daly situation. I did say that I am not clarifying or changing his commentary on his suspension, which by definition means that he is generally correct in what he said.
Now, why don't we talk about it or give out the details. One, we don't feel like people really care that much. We don't get emails from fans saying, Why don't you tell us. So we don't think there's this hunger for that information.
No, there's no hunger...just reporters all over the world writing about it!
Two, candidly, we don't have that much of it, and we don't want to remind people about it. I'm just being straightforward. If somebody -- and remember now, in our sport, a bad thing is a bad word; it's not getting indicted usually. It's a bad word. But we don't want to remind people by saying, we fined such-and-such a player $5,000 for saying a bad word. It's just reminding them that he said a bad word.
In most cases, people don't know he said a bad word; somebody was standing at the ropes, a marshal or a fan who brought it to our attention, for a fellow competitor, and the player got fined. So usually it's a very small amount of people that know about the kind of attractions that we get, and we see no reason to publicize it.
If we had a problem of any magnitude, if we had a conduct problem, if we were faced with any significant issues where a player is not showing integrity or respect for the game, we might have a very different attitude.
Thankfully John Daly would never demonstrate anything that, wait, continue digging this hole...
I mean, I can understand in the NBA that if a guy jumps into the stands and gets into a fistfight, if I the Commissioner, I would pretty much feel like I had to tell the public about that, because there's a demand to know. We don't have those kind of situations.
No, our guys just take spectators digital cameras and smash them into trees.
And finally an unusual and unusually succinct answer on Tiger's comeback:
Q. But do you expect him to come back better than he was?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I'm not going to comment on my expectations.
Immediately after Tim Finchem's Sherwood media chat Saturday, I asked the Commish about layoffs in the media world and whether the PGA Tour is concerned about how the situation might impact coverage.
Yes, we have. It's a changing communication world. The bad news is that, I guess, you don't have as many different heads evaluating the sport or reporting back, which is not good. On the other hand, it's a more global reach with anything that happens in the Internet environment and that's a good thing. So I'm not so sure you can reverse the trend. It is what it is.
You can just feel the empathy, eh?
Now, I would never presume to tell someone making $4.8 million a year how to do his job, however, if I were Commish and standing on enemy turf (in thise case, a nicely heated and fully furnished cart barn with excellent food), I might have said something like:
Of course we're monitoring the situation and naturally we are sad anytime anyone loses a job. From a more selfish perspective, we know that newspaper and print coverage is where our fans and broadcast partners learn more about our players. All of those great little anecdotes and insights humanize them and make out tour better. So anytime you see less coverage in print it is one less opportunity for our fans to experience a unique perspective and that's a concern.
I can dream, no?
Commissioner Tim Finchem sat down Saturday with the assembled scribes at Sherwood (here, here to Doug Ferguson for suggesting we pull up chairs...it was a long 30 minutes). For a summary of the conversation, you can read Ferguson's focus on the PGA Tour cutting costs and not jobs, while Steve DiMeglio shares some of Finchem's most detailed remarks on the economic crisis's impact. GolfChannel.com posted this short interview with Finchem that also serves as a healthier, more cost effective alternative to your daily Valium consumption.
The Commish talked about the demise of the Hope Classic and I used the opportunity to ask about a rumored shift in over course setup philosophy that we might see in 2009.
Q. You mentioned talking about the Hope, that one of the things that has possibly impacted the tournament was the shift in the way the golf courses played and presented, and now it's going back in the other direction. Do you see that as something that's a shift for that tournament or a shift in general for tour golf courses?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: To some extent I would say that it's really two different things, because the Hope, we are talking about a straight configuration of history and culture of the tournament, the atmosphere, what you want to try to accomplish in an environment where you play lots of golf courses during the week, and it's very difficult for a competitor to properly prepare, learning their way around one golf course let alone several.
Having said that, we are looking at ways to have a broader range and variety and set of conditions. We have, you have probably noticed in the last year, we have experimented a fair amount at certain tournaments.
For example, at Boston this year, we set up the 18th hole to where it's very conducive for players to reach the green and be in positions for eagle and birdie, just to see what reaction there was from players and the fans and television viewers.
You'll probably will see more of that type of presentation moving forward because we are trying to find more risk/reward and trying to find more things that create interest for the fans but still maintain the integrity of the competition.
Q. Was that a reaction at all to television ratings or player feedback?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I don't think it's a reaction to television ratings, but it is the recognition that we should be on the weekend making the competition and the play of these golf courses more interesting to fans generally.
Sometimes you miss things and you realize you should be concentrating more -- not that we have necessarily missed anything, but we are putting out more interesting -- those kind of issues as we look at golf courses.
Uh, that's a yes, they are going to try and generate a little more excitement via setup in 2009. That should reassure Peter Kostis, who has expressed concern about some of the oddball setups of 2008 possibly carrying over into next year.
Finchem was also asked to confirm John Marvel's GolfDigest.com report that the Commish is entered in the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach.
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: The chairman and CEO of AT&T asked me to play, and I do believe I said, "Yes, sir."
Q. Who is your partner?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Davis Love. It has not been announced yet.
Q. What is your handicap?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I think my index right now is 6.3.
Q. So if you have to play a few tournaments in the schedule, you're trying to lead by example?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I'm going from zero to one.
Q. So who is in your foursome?COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Hunter Mahan and Randal Stephenson and myself. That's the plan, anyway.
Looking like he'd been kidnapped, Tim Finchem issued a plea to PGA Tour players for upbeat messaging and overall call to not act like entitled brats in '09. Lit by an Ikea fluorescant bulb lamp tilted sideways by an unnamed PGA Tour VP who made the cost-cutting suggestion, it was reported by SBJ's Jon Show that Finchem suggested the slugs add an event here or there, you know, for the effort.
"We’re asking every player to add a tournament or two to their historical schedule to assist the tournaments that historically have weak fields,” Finchem said. "We have a lot of title sponsors this year that are up for renewal. We have to put our best foot forward in terms of presenting our competitions." On the subject of showing appreciation to sponsors, whose payments range from thousands of dollars to millions, Finchem asked players to spend more time visiting corporate hospitality areas and “make your feelings known about the role of the sponsors, both publicly and in private communication to leadership of our sponsor companies."
I guess Tiger didn't pass along the video link to Stevie Williams:
He also requested that players avoid making negative public comments about the Tour. "We want players to be, No. 1, upbeat and positive about what the PGA Tour is doing and where we’re going,” Finchem said. "We want you to be excited about the competitive opportunities that you have. And third, we want you to talk about PGA Tour properties when you describe what this year, 2009, is all about. Particularly the FedEx Cup." He also asks players to be more involved in charity functions during tournament weeks. Before closing by wishing the players happy holidays, Finchem said, “I want to thank you in advance for the additional commitment that I know you’ll be making in 2009.”
Is that thanking them in advance part like a Corleone saying "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse"?
Oh and Freddie Couples must feel good that the Commish has a painting of him on the office wall.
Chris Millard summarizes the economic crisis' impact on golf and shares this from Commissioner Finchem:
PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem strikes a veteran tone when asked about challenges facing the tour in 2009.
"You just have to react to it," he says. "It's like worrying about the weather to some extent, but you've certainly got to have your raincoat on. You've got to work harder to deal with it. You've got to make sure that you're doing what has made you successful before, because we've been through these before, and we've come through them quite well."
Nothing like a good raincoat metaphor to start your day, eh? At least he wasn't using it in the other raincoat vein.
This next item could be why there has been no 2009 schedule release. The Commish is coming into the Sherwood cart barn to answer press questions Saturday, so perhaps this has been resolved:
The biggest question mark on the 2009 PGA Tour is the Wachovia Championship. With the impending purchase of Wachovia by Wells Fargo, the sponsorship and the championship remain in limbo. According to Ty Votaw, the tour's executive vice president of communications and international affairs, Wells Fargo can still be expected to stage the event. "They assume the contract of Wachovia," he says. "They're the successor organization."
Wells Fargo isn't so sure. Company spokeswoman Heather Schow told Golf Digest on Oct. 30, "We are still separate companies, and no decisions have been made as to how Wells Fargo and Wachovia will combine their sponsorship activities."
And about those ironclad contracts...
Broader concerns lie in the tour's overall sponsor mix. In 2008, the PGA Tour calendar had six tournaments title-sponsored by automobile manufacturers and 14 tournaments titled by financial-services/insurance companies.
"Fact of the matter is that if somebody comes up and says, 'Look, we can't pay—sue us,' that's not in the best interest of the tour," says Alexander, who foresees some negative pressure on the tour in 2009 but expresses confidence in the tour's ability to withstand it. It's the organization's lesser tours—the Champions and Nationwide tours—where he believes the greatest impact could be felt.
Mark Soltau chats with Fred Couples about the President's Cup and other matters. Here's something you don't hear everyday:
Golf Digest: You won a million dollars this year and cracked the Top 125 on the money list, all before your recent 49th birthday. You have to feel pretty good about that?
Couples: I do. I have one goal for next year -- I've got to get into the Top 50 in the world rankings. That's the only way I can get into the Chevron World Challenge. It would take an unbelievable year.
And...
GD: Do you have a backup for Robin Williams?
Couples: Apparently, he lives five minutes from Harding Park, which I had no idea. What we're hoping he will do is come into the player's lounge one night. I didn't know he does a golf skit, which I hear is unbelievable. He's my favorite comedian. I throw this stuff out there to get Tim Finchem a little bit worried. I like to keep the PGA Tour on their toes. Hopefully, Robin will come and give us a little skit one night.
It seems Reuters convened some sort of sports summit and Commissioner Finchem appeared with his posse to spin things. He did reveal a few things worth noting...
"We've got to assume and prepare for some slippage, and prepare for some replacement there."
Finchem said the PGA had already held a wide range of discussions with companies about adding new sponsors or expanding existing deals if necessary.
Finchem said Toyota Motor Corp, the world's largest automaker, could be one candidate for a bigger marketing presence in U.S. golf, while others could come from industries that "have performed relatively well during the downturn".
Such sectors include energy, the environment and retail, and Finchem mentioned the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart may be one company that could broaden its role.
More interesting was this Reuters blog item from Robert Macmillan. He either doesn't understand the Commissioner's extraordinarily, painfully dry sense of humor or the Commish is living in a fantasy world when it comes to Tiger Woods:
If there is a silver lining, it’s that Tiger downtime means that other nascent players might come to the fore, perhaps making them tomorrow’s stars. To understand how the PGA views Woods in this respect, Finchem pointed out that President-elect Barack Obama *might* be the first person in a very long time to knock Tiger off his perch as the most-recognized American.
Might? Really, you think? For the sake of our country I hope so.
Tim Finchem, engaged in bold adverb usage with Bloomberg's Michael Buteau who asked about PGA Tour purses in the coming years:
It will certainly flatten,” Finchem said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio’s “On the Ball” program that will air this weekend. “Whether it will go down, I’m not prepared to go that far. ‘‘I don’t see the kind of growth that we’ve had these next three or four years versus the last six or seven, and it might be a flat period.”
And...
“I suppose if the economy continues to spiral away from us, if we get significant difficulties with sponsorships, anything is possible,” said Finchem, who has led the tour since 1994. “That would be the worst-case scenario. We don’t know how this is going to play out. Right now, we seem to be weathering the storm pretty well.”
I guess this means that the second most popular sport behind the NFL scenario is out?
“Right now, our focus is to add to our operating reserve and be in a position to transcend this downturn,” he said.
Jon Show reports:
Tim Finchem received $4.8 million in compensation in 2007 as the commissioner of the PGA Tour, a drop of about $400,000 from the previous year. His income included $1.3 million in salary, $3.2 million in bonuses and another $240,000 in benefits.
The year-to-year drop was due to an additional bonus Finchem received in 2006 for “extraordinary service in 2005,” said Ty Votaw, executive vice president of communications and international affairs. The commissioner made $4.2 million in 2005.
Extraordinary service? Was that for coming up with the FedEx Cup, Version 1? The Casey Martin legal bills were finally not on the balance sheet?
Here are the real eye-openers:
According to the PGA Tour’s tax forms, its executive vice presidents and co-chief operating officers, Ed Moorhouse and Charlie Zink, were the next highest-paid officers at $1.6 million and $1.5 million, respectively. Chief Marketing Officer Tom Wade and Chief Financial Officer Ron Price brought in about $1 million apiece. Rick George, executive vice president of championship management and president of the Champions Tour, made $628,122. Bill Calfee, president of the Nationwide Tour, made $592,992.
Rick would have been 31st on the '07 Champions money list whereas Tim would have landed 3rd on the PGA Tour list. Back to Q-School for you Rick!
Ed and Charlie would have been just outside the top 50 on the PGA Tour money list and Bill, congrats, you are the leading money winner on the Nationwide Tour by $150,000. Way to go!
I joined the hastily arranged Tim Finchem conference call to hear about the latest FedEx Cup iteration. Now, before we get to the remarks and commentary, I have to say I was prepared to ask the Commissioner a question. But I just couldn't shake myself out of the deep trance he lulled me. Frankly, I don't know how all of the VP's down in PV get through staff meetings. I had to take a 20 minute siesta as soon as they said goodbye.
Anyway, there wasn't much worth reading from his give and take, though it was wonderful to hear the slight pause before remembering to call it The Tour Championship...presented by Coca Cola.
Doug Ferguson asked about the shootout concepts. After a droning on a bit, the Commish said:
So you once we figured out ways to accomplish that, we were not persuaded by moving further to rebuild something we thought was working. We had a great year in '07 and a good year in '08.
Sure.
So that said, as you look at some of the things that you're referring to, also our concern was that most of them went in the direction of taking away the value of what happens all during the year and the playoffs.
We still like the basic concept that you still have a home-field advantage if you, at the top coming out of the regular season, you carry a bit of a home-field advantage into the playoffs. If you play well enough to keep that, you have a home-field advantage going in.
Ah, as a conoisseur of euphemisms, this had to rank as a favorite. Padding and gerrymandering points to "protect" the season long race is just a matter of protecting that home-field advantage. Got to hand it to the Commish, that's a clever one.
The Angels sure wish home-field advantage got them to the World Series this year without having to work too hard!
Continue...
Also, the basic premise that something this important should be decided over 72 holes and not a shootout.
Whoa there...something this important? It's not a major, it's entertainment. I guess importance trumps fun, yet again.
We had a match play interest, and we liked the 72-hole format, and we liked the idea of making Atlanta and building it and continuing to build it into something very special. So for all those reasons, we stuck with the basic structure.
Until next year after another ratings dud.
As for the reaction from scribblers who weren't comatose from the call, Bob Harig covers the failure of the shootout concept to take hold:
The tour is into rewarding players for their body of work over the course of the year. And those in charge couldn't quite stomach the idea of a fluky finish deciding who gets $10 million.
"There were a lot of concerns with that,'' said PGA Tour veteran Tom Pernice, a member of the tour's Players Advisory Council. "Guys might only be worried about getting into the Tour Championship and not moving up. They could skip the playoffs.''
I'm betting they still will. It's just not that important to the big boys.
because as Ferguson notes in his AP story, there's still a typical-Tiger-year loophole:
Even with the change, Woods could have the kind of year he had in 2007 - five wins and a major before the playoffs - and still skip the opening event without doing too much damage to his chances of winning the FedEx Cup.
Steve Elling offers a few "first blush" comments and raises this vital point about field size.
First blush: Short-field events are risky and never seem to deliver the crowds and buzz of full-sized tournaments. NASCAR stages its Sprint Cup events within full-field races in the fall, keeping track of its 12-driver Sprint points on the side, but tour players seem to think culled fields is more compelling. Again, the tour could track FedEx Cup points within more interesting full-field formats, but nobody wants to hear it.
No Steve, something this important should be played by as few people as possible!
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
