Reader Stuart pointed out that the Law Firm of Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has launched an investigation into possible breaches of fiduciary duty by the Board of Directors of KB Home in connection with executive compensation. The national firm has done this before, including in several court-appointed instances.
PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem sits on the KB Home board and has already avoided one potentially awkward scrape with angry shareholders over compensation committee work that approved a $9 million package to CEO Jeffrey Mezger during a year the company lost $1.41 billion.
A fixture rich with lore and tradition was quietly leveled Tuesday with the PGA Tour making official its plans to overhaul how its season will begin and end and how it will award PGA Tour cards.
Finchem, fresh from the board meeting at the nearby Ritz-Carlton, brought in several pages of notes, which is not often a good sign, since he can extemporaneously wing it with the best of them. He's a filibuster in wing tips. But this time, he was armed to the teeth with talking points for the spin offensive. He needed the armaments, because some major change is coming, some of it obliterating a half-century of tour culture.
There was also this from J.B. Holmes:
"So, we're going to end the season in September, then basically start it again a week later?" said veteran J.B. Holmes. "We make all these changes so that the season ends before football starts, now we're back competing against football again?
"Dumbest thing I have ever heard. You can quote me on that."
"Change is hard. Like when we did the FedEx Cup, there was a lot of talk, why are we changing something that's working. But to get to where we need to be, I think it's all good.''
Garry Smits says how this all works, is "not real complicated." If that was the case, why wasn't the system revealed after all of the work that's gone into it?
It's not real complicated. The top-75 on the Nationwide Tour money list join Nos. 126-200 on the PGA Tour FedEx Cup points list and play three tournaments. The seeding and whether the events will use money or points is yet to be determined but the top-50 get their Tour cards for the next season.
Yes, that won't be complicated!
And now to the transcript of the Commissioner's sitdown, which featured some respectful but tough questioning that the Commissioner handled well initially. But his logic disintegrated a bit as the proceedings dragged on.
His logic on how this impacts college golf, early in the presser:
What's changed is that the degree to which you can manage that is expanded, because in today's world, to manage that, you've got to get sponsor exemptions and get into the 125. In this new arrangement, you have to get sponsorships, but you only have to get into the top 200. And then you have a shot in the finals. So that's the first part of my answer.
Of course this ignores that those exemptions must first happen, and happen in a window of about seven weeks with the U.S. Open wedged in there. This, assuming that a player stays in school and competes in the NCAA Championships, a pretty strong likelihood if we're talking about true tour caliber golfers. That is, unless he quits school early, or never goes to college at all, both realities in the face of the new proposal.
Secondly, I would just point out that the number of players on average the last ten years who have come out of college, gone to Qualifying School and got their card is about 1.4 per year. So we'll see how that expanded access through the finals works, but it may be zero change. But certainly there is an Avenue there. It's just a different kind of avenue.
Yes, it's called, European Tour Here I Come!
Q. And lastly, I hope this is more philosophical than detail oriented, if you are making the Nationwide the pathway to the PGA TOUR and a guy completes the Nationwide season in the Top 20 or 25, what would preclude him from just getting his card without having to go through? Hasn't he done all the work at that point?
That would be the season long body-of-work argument used against Q-School...which doesn't hold up when the dreaded "R" word is used:
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, you're talking about if we end up with a seeding process that guarantees a player a card early without competing, is that what you're talking about? Well, if we end up there, you're still incentivized to play, because you're in the reshuffle. So you want the highest possible finish.
The reshuffle. Not a very free-market driven concept, is it? Ah, but what do these guys care about the free market!
Q. Are you close on a title for the Nationwide?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: We are in discussions with several different companies, and close might not be the right word.
That's encouraging. What sponsor wouldn't want to take the chance of becoming a verb? "What happened Bobby Joe, you finished tenth on the money list then missed your last three cuts and are headed back to the Nationwide Tour? "Well, I got Hyundai'd."
Here's where the Commish really dug himself into a corner. He was asked about the possible impact official fall FedExCup points might have on the West Coast Swing and launched into his on the backs of energetic new talent.
I think the fans clearly are demonstrating that what they want to see and be covered are good, young players, because like what they are watching, and that's what's driving the interest we are seeing in the tremendous ratings bump we have had this year. And it's not about this young player or that young player; the research we have done is, it's about the young players coming up. That's really a change from a focus on a small number of players.
So the young players coming up are fueling excitement, yet just about everything about this proposal speaks to delaying their arrival?
This next argument sounds a little silly considering the current clubhouse leader for rookie of the year never played the Nationwide Tour.
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, it's an awkward system, but we are not changing the Qualifying School. The Qualifying School is staying there. It just means something else. It means Nationwide Tour. I think the real question is, why would we be comfortable with that, and the reason we are comfortable with that is that we, the PGA TOUR, benefits a lot from a player going to the Nationwide Tour. He's a better player. He's better able to compete. If he's a player with personality and other ways to contribute, he's going to have a better chance to stay out here for a longer period of time.
I can't fathom how he feels this is a good idea. No other sport does this…for a reason:
Again, I think bringing the season to a conclusion and then setting, reloading quickly, and going out with players just having earned their card is a great way to do it. Because we just turned the corner, we got the fans's interest, we finished the season, Player of the Year is named, we are off and running two weeks later. We have a bunch of rookies in the hunt and down the road we go.
The notion that such a turnaround will create the best possible "product" defies any and all common sense, not to mention will wear everyone involved with the tour out. Especially since, as J.B. noted, the current system was set up to end the season sooner, give players opportunities overseas or to rest, and to give fans some downtime to get refreshed.
On that note, the most palatable video clip of the Commissioner that the PGA Tour Productions staff could muster up:
Tim Finchem joined NBC's Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller for the traditional WGC-contractually-obligated-visit-by-the-Commissioner and perhaps sensing no one really expects him to say much of interest, threw out a stunning assertion.
The pieces are all coming together and after letting it slip today that FedEx was attracted to the year-round schedule concept (and therefore year-round talk of the FedExCup), that was a piece for the company in ponying up through 20
Steve Tanner feeds off a recent David Brooks column where the NY Times scribe defines haimish as “a Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality.”
Someone actually asked Tim Finchem during a Waste Management Open stop-in if the 18th at Torrey Pines was unfair Sunday because a guy using poor judgement and juicy grooves spun a ball back into the lake. The Commish handled the question well before moving on to lots of euphemisms (schedule flow!) to discuss the controversial plan to change Q-School and turn the tour schedule into a year-round.
John Paul Newport lauds Tim Finchem in his Saturday WSJ column and my head's still spinning thinking of the Commish reading Walter Isaacson's bio and somehow trying for a Jobsian approach to golf. Creative and original are not the Commish's strongsuits.
Note the Commissioner's age is left out of the release, but this will take him through to his 69th birthday. Pretty amazing run it'll be, especially for a guy who has notoriously shown folks the door when they reach retirement ages of 60 and 65.
Dave Shedloski notes the main takeaway from Tim Finchem's Sunday presser at Kapalua, the Commish's insistence that PGA Tour growth is not dependent on Tiger and that Tiger's success doesn't matter in the all-vital area of...growth!
"The PGA Tour grew when Jack Nicklaus was winning. It grew when he stopped winning and it's grown with Tiger winning. It doesn't matter to us," Finchem said Sunday at the Plantation Course at Kapalua Resort. "We can grow with one player dominant or we can work with more wide-open competition. The fans like it and are interested in it both ways."
Right, and the ratings sure reflect that!
Moving right along, this was interesting from the presser as well: on top of a V-word explosion, there was his suggestion that schedules were changed last year by top players to help struggling events.
When we talk to players about moving their schedule around, it's a private conversation. We respect their decision regardless. I think that's the philosophy that we'll continue.
Having said that, last year we went out and asked players to move their schedule around and over 90 percent of players did in some fashion and it helped our fields, it helped our sponsors.
Is that 90% based on some sort of sliding scale? Say, with Tiger playing Frys.com accounting for 80% of the 90%?
Q. Why not legislate that players as a part of membership have to play a different event each year so that you can get that remaining ten percent on board?
COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, we looked at that. We looked at that last year. We said we don't like to legislate and tell players what to do unless it has an overriding importance.
In this particular case, we asked for a volunteer; by now virtually, I'd say 90 percent, I couldn't tell you any players that haven't been helpful to be honest,
...double negative alert...
including a couple of just referenced in your question about moving their schedules around the first quarter this year.
So this is an ongoing process. We are doing very well with sponsors. Our sponsors are very pleased with the value equation on the PGA TOUR; if they didn't, they would be spending their money elsewhere. There are multiple value streams that go to sponsors. Our price point is such that given that value, you are 100 percent sponsored.
Three V's in three sentences. That's a nice clip for the season-opening presser.
We don't have a crisis in this area and we have a very, very positive situation. When somebody writes an article like at Memorial that five of the Top 25 players are not here or something, and somebody is sensitive to that, we are not going to start changing policies because of that.
Of course, in the same press conference he was talking about options to help the weak field situation at the Tournament of Champions, even though they are not sensitive to such things..
ports Business Journal has presented their annual listing of the most powerful suits in sports working to do their best to emasculate our favorite pastimes, and boy are there are a lot of people I haven't heard of captured by photos of emotive hand gestures. PGA Tour Commish Tim Finchem, who vaulted five spots to No. 14, gets a really nice Getty image captured during the summer months when his brown hair has been lightened by the Florida sun and even better, he's not in a navy jacket or sporting awkward hand movements.
So, let me get this straight. The PGA Tour does not comment on disciplinary matters, which was reaffirmed yesterday in the Steve Williams matter. Today, the PGA Tour and European Tour Commissioners Tim Finchem and George O'Grady issue a statementsaying "We are aware he has apologised fully and we trust we will not hear such remarks again."
Their statement added: "The International Federation of PGA Tours feels strongly there is no place for any form of racism in ours or any other sport.
"We consider the remarks of Steve Williams, as reported, entirely unacceptable in whatever context.
"We are aware he has apologised fully and we trust we will not hear such remarks again. Based on this, we consider the matter closed and we will have no further comment."
The following week is the Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne, where Scott and Woods - or is that Williams and Woods? - could face each other in any of the four days of competition.
Scott tried to deflect speculation that he could be walking into a frenzy Down Under.
"Hopefully, it's just for my good play rather than anything else. I don't think there's a story going forward," he said, adding that "the matter has been put to bed and I've got nothing more to talk about it with anyone. So I'm moving on."
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning Drive, is co-host of The Ringer's ShackHouse is the author of eleven books.
