The WGCs launched with the missionary notion of promoting a world tour. It became about as global as the World Series.
Sporting legacies are often defined by what is missing, no matter how bountiful the achievements. Dan Marino and Ken Griffey Jr. own many records, but not the rings that accompany the greatest prizes in their sports. Charles Barkley earned 11 All-Stars, but no championships. Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl combined for 15 Grand Slam titles, but found only disappointment at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, respectively.
Despite 80-odd victories worldwide, Greg Norman is destined to be among those athletes ultimately measured by what is absent. Sure, some fans will best remember his two sublime Open Championship wins, but more will think first of the near-misses, the other 18 top-fives in majors, the eight runner-ups, two consecutively owing to improbable hole-outs from off the green. Identifying exactly which missing piece of the career puzzle defines Norman should be a settled question since he’s 68 years old and long removed from factoring on a leaderboard. But his legacy is still being authored, which is why the tournaments that will eventually help explain Norman’s place in the sport are not the majors but the World Golf Championships, events in which he competed only a half-dozen times with no success.
The WGC era concludes this week with the Dell Technologies Match Play. The PGA Tour has made no formal announcement that the WGC umbrella is folding because several years remain on the contract for HSBC’s event in Shanghai, though it hasn’t been held since 2019. History will remember the WGCs as an experiment that fizzled, more noteworthy for contributing to the trophy case and bank account of Tiger Woods than to the goal of global comity. Woods’ 18 titles account for $22 million and almost a fifth of his total career victories.
[pickup_prop id=”31989″]
The WGCs launched with the missionary notion of promoting a world tour, bringing together the best players more frequently outside the majors. In time, it became about as global as the World Series, at least in venues. Fields were based on a hodgepodge of box-ticking criteria designed to satisfy tours co-sanctioning the events — the European, Asian, Australasian, Japan and Sunshine circuits. The result was a talent pool that often featured competitors decidedly out of their depth.
It was the creation of the WGCs that fueled the grievance driving Norman now. It just took him a few decades to find a mark with a sufficiently robust checkbook to act on that resentment. In November of 1994,the flaxen-haired finger puppet tried to launch a world circuit that promised first-place prize money of $600,000, significantly more than the majors paid at the time. His bid was a dizzying exhibition of arrogance, entitlement and ineptitude that makes LIV Golf seem eerily familiar to seasoned observers. By December of that year, Norman’s dream had collapsed so thoroughly that it might have been mistaken for an April Sunday afternoon in Augusta, Georgia.
Greg Norman, CEO of LIV Golf Investments sits on a bike during day two of the LIV Golf Invitational – Mayakoba at El Camaleon at Mayakoba on February 25, 2023, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)
When the PGA Tour announced the World Golf Championships a few years later — with top prizes of $1 million — Norman was livid, claiming commissioner Tim Finchem had simply stolen his concept.
“It’s the end of the rope for me. He hung me out to dry,” Norman said.
A quarter-century later, only the names and numbers have changed. As Arnold Palmer took the floor against him then, Woods and Rory McIlroy do so now. As Finchem tweaked the Tour’s product in response, Jay Monahan does now. Norman remains as constant as his undiluted animus.
The WGCs served an obvious purpose for the PGA Tour in cutting off a commercial threat, as the designated events do now. But there exists a warning for Monahan in how Finchem’s baby eventually grew old and died. The WGCs proved that enormous purses — and noble sentiments about competing against the best — were not enough to guarantee the presence of top players. Eventually they all stay home when it suits. Already players have balked at participation being mandatory in designated events. Monahan and his sponsors will learn that when it’s convenient for elite stars to compete for $20 million, they will. When it isn’t, they won’t. The more money they earn, the easier it becomes to sit out even a lucrative week.
A through line exists from the creation of the World Golf Championships to where Greg Norman finds himself today, torching billions of MBS’s money on a lousy product while offering chickenhearted equivocations on the literal butchery and abuses of his employer. It’s rare that a sportsman’s career is conclusively defined in the winter years, but this episode has laid bare the missing attribute for which Norman’s legacy will be remembered: character.
It was a special night in Dallas for Joe Louis Barrow, Jr.
The former CEO of the First Tee earned a big honor Thursday from the organization, which was hosting a network summit to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Barrow was presented the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award, and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan and former commissioner Tim Finchem presented the award to Barrow.
Barrow led the First Tee from 2000 until 2017. Under his leadership, First Tee expanded its network of chapters across the country and witnessed incredible growth. The organization also launched school and community programs, which serve millions who may not have access to a golf course.
“While at First Tee, Joe was appropriately called the ‘Chief Evangelist’ because he was always sharing a great story about the impact First Tee had on a particular young person,” said Monahan, who also serves as Chair for the First Tee Board of Governors. “Joe led with many strengths, but perhaps his greatest was ensuring that kids remained at the heart of every decision.”
Barrow was CEO when First Tee launched its first national participant event, the Life Skills and Leadership Academy. In 2021, the event was renamed the Game Changers Academy honoring Joe Louis Barrow, Jr., and evolved to address challenges teens face in their daily lives, including social justice issues and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Barrow took on his role as CEO while First Tee was in its infancy. The nonprofit – which teaches life skills through the game of golf – was first announced by Finchem and other leaders from the golf industry at a Central Park press conference on Nov. 13, 1997. A quarter century later, the organization has served millions of kids.
“I am truly humbled by this recognition,” Barrow said. “And I am deeply proud of the positive impact First Tee has had over the years. It wouldn’t have been possible without my dedicated colleagues, the coaches and chapter staff and supporters who believed in our mission.”
The Lifetime Achievement Award was one of several awards First Tee presented in Dallas during the organization’s gathering held Nov. 16-18. The summit brought together representatives from First Tee’s network of 150 chapters to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary and continue building momentum for the future with robust workshops, training and peer-to-peer networking.
Former President George W. Bush, an honorary chair of First Tee, and Will Zalatoris each made an appearance.
“This isn’t going to be the f—— Greg Norman show.”
At the World Golf Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in March, David Graham approached former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and congratulated him on being inducted and joining him in receiving golf’s highest honor. As they shook hands, Graham looked him in dead in the eye and added, “I want you to know. I’ve got a long memory.”
Finchem nodded knowingly and responded, “Yes, I know what you are referring to.”
That would be an incident that happened more than 25 years ago, when Graham, an Australian who won two majors during his Hall of Fame career was unceremoniously ousted as captain of the International Presidents Cup team by his own players, just two months before the second biennial international team competition was to be held in September 1996. Some of what happened during a player meeting in July at a Grand Hotel conference room near Royal Lytham in St. Annes, England, where the British Open was being contested that year, still is a mystery but this much is clear: it damaged the reputation of a good man willing to give his time and effort to grow the fledgling event.
To this day, Graham is convinced Greg Norman, then the No. 1 player in the world and now the face of LIV Golf, and fellow Aussie Steve Elkington orchestrated what one participant in the proceedings dubbed “this mutinous act.”
Mike Bodney, who spent 25 years with the PGA Tour and served as the Tour’s senior vice president of championship management, was one of three officials in the room and remembers the meeting didn’t start out the way it ended.
“It was the last thing I ever expected to happen and one of the oddest things I ever experienced in my life,” Bodney said.
Initially, Graham agreed to talk about what happened all those years ago. For more than two decades he has taken the high road, speaking once to Jaime Diaz in 1996 for a story in Sports Illustrated, but primarily staying mum on the topic. When I finally reached Graham on the phone earlier this month, he demurred. He sensed nothing to be gained by rehashing a sad moment in an otherwise distinguished career. But as we continued talking Graham began to pick at an old scab. He recounted how he and three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin were selected as the first Presidents Cup captains, and Bodney credits Graham for his role in getting the event off the ground.
David Graham was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2015 at a ceremony in St. Andrews, Scotland.
Graham was truly honored to be the first captain of the International team. But after the first event, which was won on home soil by Team USA, Graham had reservations about reprising his role. It proved to be a lot of work. He called Irwin to ask him if he planned to continue in his position as team captain. Irwin said that once was enough and Graham shared that he was leaning in the same direction. He asked Irwin who would be his replacement. When told that it would be Arnold Palmer, Graham suddenly had second thoughts.
“I said, how in the world can I possibly turn down the opportunity to be part of something with Arnold Palmer?” Graham recalled.
Little did he know that at least two of the players on his team harbored feelings of resentment against him and questioned his communication skills.
First and foremost was Norman, the most powerful presence, the best player in the world for whom the Presidents Cup was essentially created to assuage his interest in a version of the Ryder Cup for the rest of the world.
“He did feel empowered and was attempting to break out of the mold of being just a player,” Diaz said. “Greg wanted to be big.”
Norman, however, came down with the flu the week of the inaugural playing of the Presidents Cup in 1994 and he was excused from participating in team events such as a black-tie dinner at the White House despite, at the urging of Finchem, the fact Graham made attendance compulsory. On the final day of the competition, Norman flew in to lend support and arrived on the first tee. Graham said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
When Norman asked if he could be mic’d up for the CBS broadcast, Graham laid into him. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” Graham said. “You’re not going to take anything away from these players who did all the dinners, all the practice rounds, all the meetings. You want to come riding in here and go on national television and tell everybody how great you are. That’s not going to happen.”
David Graham was the captain of the International team for the inaugural Presidents Cup in 1994 (shown here in 2000).
According to several sources of Diaz, an angry Norman told his teammates that Graham’s exact words were, “This isn’t going to be the f—— Greg Norman show.”
“I know what it was all about,” Graham continued.
It also had to do with Steve Elkington’s displeasure over the way Graham handled a special request of his during the International team’s visit to the White House. Elkington’s wife was about 3 months pregnant, and they asked to leave the party early.
“I said, fine, I’ll get you a car,” Graham recalled. “He said, ‘We all have to go.’ I said, ‘There’s no way the whole team is going anywhere. End of story.’”
Norman has always denied that he had been the ringleader in Graham’s dismissal. The story is relevant again as Norman continues to disrupt the professional game.
“Knowing him the way I know him now, he probably wanted to be a playing captain,” Bodney said.
As Bodney remembers it, the decision to ask Graham to resign didn’t feel premeditated: “It just got completely out of whack and snowballed.”
As the players moved to take a vote of no confidence, Bodney recalls Norman taking a step back. “He became quiet as if he didn’t want it to be seen like it was his idea,” Bodney said.
Brian Allan, the executive director of the Australasian tour, was in the meeting, too, and pleaded with the players to think through the consequences of their actions.
“We made all the arguments,” Allan told Diaz, “that it would hurt the event. That it would be a black eye for golf. That it would make the players look like traitors. At one point, Bodney asked, ‘Has anyone given any thought to how David Graham is going to react to this?’ When the response was silence, I said, ‘I’ve known the bloke for 25 years. He is not going to take this gracefully. I can assure you he is going to s— on you from a great height.'”
New Zealand’s Michael Campbell abstained while the other nine players cast their ballots to oust Graham. Until Henrik Stenson opted to join Norman’s LIV Golf and was stripped of his post as European Ryder Cup captain in July in favor of Luke Donald, Graham had been the only captain for either of the Cups to be relieved of his duties.
David Graham won the 1979 PGA Championship and 1981 U.S. Open titles.
Replacing a man of great stature and esteem in the game was unnecessary and cast a shadow over the Presidents Cup. The competition didn’t need controversy in its infancy. As Diaz tried to report the story of the mutiny, he noticed that most of the players attempted to distance themselves from their role in the matter even though many of them had supported the move in the team room. To Diaz, the reputations of Robert Allenby, Elkington, Ernie Els, David Frost, Mark McNulty, Frank Nobilo, Norman, Craig Parry and Nick Price – had taken a hit. “At worst, they lived down to the stereotype of the selfish and stupid modern pro,” Diaz wrote. “At best, they behaved like sheep.”
“It raised the question of how much power should a team have, should the athlete have?” Diaz noted. “It was a time-honored tradition to do what the captain says and you don’t betray that tradition of my captain, right or wrong.”
Parry, an Australian pro, had the unenviable task of breaking the news to Graham, who called him from his home in Dallas and asked, “How did the meeting go?”
As Diaz wrote, Parry swallowed hard. “My first thought was, I’ve got to tell him,” Parry recounted. “I’m not going to lie about it or keep it from him.”
“David,” Parry heard himself say, “the players would like a new captain.”
Graham took the news hard.
“I about dropped the phone,” Graham said. “I honestly had no inkling that there was a problem. I said, ‘I’m dumbfounded. Do you have any idea how much work I’ve done?'”
In a later interview, Graham admitted that when he hung up the phone, he cried.
Bodney had two difficult tasks of his own: he tracked down another fellow Australian, a reluctant Peter Thomson, and asked him to assume the captaincy. Even worse, Bodney had to call his boss and break the news to PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem.
“Tim lost it,” Bodney said. “But he understood the problem was the toothpaste was out of the tube.”
“I didn’t try to change their minds,” Finchem told Diaz at the time. “When I got to the British Open, this decision had been made. It had been communicated to David. Trying to force-feed something else was not in my province of authority and probably was unworkable. I feel responsible in many ways for what happened. We knew the eligible players on the International side some time ago, and we probably should have gotten them in a room somewhere and hashed out any problems.”
“He could’ve stopped it,” Graham said of Finchem’s role. “But he bowed to Norman and Elkington.”
Diaz noted that “Norman was once again held responsible for a rash and
ill-conceived decision.”
All these years later, Graham expressed his displeasure that “neither Norman nor Elkington had the balls to call me.”
“I know one thing,” Graham told Diaz at the time, “I’ll never sign another shirt or hat with a shark logo.”
Graham never got an apology nor does he want one.
“It would be a worthless effort on anyone’s part,” he said. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t deserve one. When asked about Norman’s role as CEO in the upstart LIV Golf, Graham said, “I think he’s laughing all the way to the bank. I think he’s loving all the attention. He’s clearly an egomaniac. He’s been like that forever.”
Graham would know. A gentleman golfer to the very end, Graham, now 76 and still playing golf every day, concludes that he regrets accepting the captaincy for a second time. The two-time major champion should never have been dishonored.
As our conversation winded down and we shifted to other pleasantries, Graham said, “You got more out of me than I intended.”
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Some 44 years after shuffling on to the stage of “The Mike Douglas Show” as a 2-year-old and entertaining Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart and the host by hitting golf balls into a net and rolling a few putts, Tiger Woods was at PGA Tour headquarters Wednesday night for his rightful induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
“He is the rare athlete who not only exceeded the hype,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said of Woods, “he transcended it and continues to this day to have a massive influence on the game and the PGA Tour.”
[vertical-gallery id=778090281]
After winning three consecutive U.S. Junior Amateur titles and three consecutive U.S. Amateur championships, Woods, 46, turned pro in 1996. He promptly won three times on the PGA Tour in his first 10 starts.
Then he won the 1997 Masters by 12 shots, a historic victory as Woods became the first man of color to win at Augusta National Golf Club. He also, at 21, became the youngest winner of the green jacket.
Woods became the needle that moved the sport. Purses began to significantly rise, TV ratings surged upward. His presence spurred more athletic, stronger players to pick up the game. His peers followed him into the gym and the game became one featuring more power.
His influence on advertising and fashion for the sport was striking. Minorities became attracted to golf. And a generation of youngsters wanted to be like Tiger.
The list of his feats stretches out as long as one of his drives from his heyday. The record-tying 82 PGA Tour titles, the 15 major championships. A record 142 consecutive cuts made, a record 683 weeks – 13 years – atop the Official World Golf Ranking. A record 11 PGA Tour Player of the Year Awards.
[listicle id=778081998]
He’s the youngest player to complete the career Grand Slam, doing so at age 24 when he won the 2000 British Open at the Home of Golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews. En route to becoming the only player to win four consecutive professional major championships – known as the Tiger Slam – he won the 2000 U.S. Open by 15, the 2000 Open by 8, the 2000 PGA in a playoff, and the 2001 Masters by two. And he won on a broken leg at the 2008 U.S. Open and captured his fifth Masters in 2019 following spinal fusion surgery (his fifth back surgery, to go along with five surgeries on his left knee).
The list goes on and on and on.
“What can I say about Tiger that we haven’t said already?” world No. 1 Jon Rahm said. “Besides entertaining all of us for 20 years and doing unbelievable things, he inspired the generation of players that you’re seeing today.
“You have at the top of the world a lot of 20-some-year-olds and early 30-year-olds that grew up watching him and trying to copy him, and I think that’s why the level of the game is as high as it is right now.
“Aside from everything that he did, I think it’s a testament to what he was able to accomplish and how many people he was able to inspire.”
The Cat is back to hunting down golf trophies, just not on the course.
Tiger Woods is back to hunting down golf trophies, just not on the course.
The 82-time winner on the PGA Tour and 15-time major champion shared on Twitter that he’s seeking out his favorite trophies for his World Golf Hall of Fame exhibit and included a photo of his 1996 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year hardware.
It was 25 years ago that Woods stormed on the professional scene, winning two events in his first full season on Tour. Woods claimed the five-round Las Vegas Invitational at 27 under after a playoff with Davis Love III and two weeks later took home the Walt Disney World/Oldsmobile Classic at 21 under, one stroke ahead of Payne Stewart.
I was trophy hunting trying to pick out some favorites for my Hall of Fame exhibit and found this guy. Excited to see it all come together soon. pic.twitter.com/MNPK7Q7iTt
The World Golf Hall of Fame announced in December of 2020 that the induction ceremony for the 2021 class would be postponed to March 9, 2022 during the week of the Players Championship. Joining Woods in the hall will be four-time major champion and 11-time LPGA winner Susie Maxwell Berning, former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem and female golf pioneer Marion Hollins (posthumously), bringing the total member total to 164.
To what extent is the PGA Tour responsible for the health and well-being of its members when they are outside the ropes?
It’s unsurprising that some golf fans with long memories would find it difficult to muster sympathy for Grayson Murray.
He’s an abrasive and ignorant social media presence who once told Black people they wouldn’t be shot by police if they just obeyed the law, and whose infamous Twitter exchange with a high school girl could be generously described as creepy.
Still, it was disheartening to see how frequently respondents to his most recent social media post evidenced the very same lack of empathy that Murray himself has often been accused of.
Murray’s tweet on the evening of July 23 illuminated a young man in a dark place. He acknowledged his difficulty adjusting to the loneliness of life on the PGA Tour, his frustrations over form so poor that he hasn’t earned a dime in prize money for three months, and, most troublingly, his alcohol addiction. He referenced a drunken incident at a hotel bar in Hawaii—presumably at the Sony Open in January—that has him on probation with the Tour, a violation of which will cost him a $20,000 fine.
“Why was I drunk? Because I’m a f——— alcoholic that hates everything to do with the PGA Tour life,” he wrote.
Murray claimed the Tour is at least partially responsible for the crisis in which he finds himself at age 27, writing, “No the PGA Tour didn’t force me to drink, but the PGA Tour never gave me help.”
Since he describes his alcoholism as something the Tour “had no knowledge about,” one assumes this lack of help he refers to means not having aided his adjustment to life in the pro ranks, rather than a denial of assistance for his addiction. He concluded with a demand that unnamed persons at the Tour be held accountable for unspecified shortcomings.
Murray’s confessional leaves many things unknown—the nature of the help he expected, the extent to which he actually sought assistance, specifics on related disciplinary proceedings—and the Tour won’t be clarifying anything given privacy concerns and its ingrained opacity on off-course issues with players.
“We can unequivocally say that the PGA Tour is a family, and when a member of that family needs help, we are there for him,” a spokesperson offered. “That has been the case here and will continue to be.”
Murray’s is the most raw contribution yet to an ongoing conversation about mental health in golf, which was initiated by Matt Wolff’s courageous candor at the U.S. Open and admirably backed up by Bubba Watson and several LPGA stars. The life these golfers have chosen is rife with challenges, no matter how gilded it might appear. Tour players are branded successes or failures every week, so its easy to start measuring your self-worth against the total on a scorecard when things aren’t going well. That would be corrosive even without a chorus of trolls eager to slobber about how much you suck.
But Murray’s broadside apportioning blame for his struggles raises an intriguing question: to what extent is the PGA Tour responsible for the health and well-being of its members when they are outside the ropes?
As Tour players often remind us, they are independent contractors, so the statutory protections customarily afforded employees do not apply. And even if Tour officials had noticed that Murray was abusing alcohol, they would surely have been hesitant to broach the need for treatment before he did so himself. The same caution governs most workplaces. Predictable then that the only confirmed interface between Murray and Tour HQ concerning his drinking involved disciplinary action over the incident in Hawaii.
There are valid reasons to say players’ personal problems are not the Tour’s business—that’s what managers are paid for—but there’s a persuasive argument that providing its members a support community is good business.
NFL rookies have a mandatory, three-day, straight-talk seminar that covers a litany of life skills: managing domestic arrangements, financial guidance, cautions about exploitation and the perils of an entourage. Other major leagues offer similar counseling, but their rookies are typically all in the phase of transitioning to adulthood. PGA Tour newbies cannot be so neatly characterized in terms of maturity or career and life experience. Their pathways to the big show are simply too diverse.
The Tour also has an orientation for new members, though one player described it to me as being less about developing life skills than emphasizing the need to avoid negative publicity. A zealous focus on protecting the reputation of the Tour above all else remains the carcinogenic cultural legacy of former commissioner Tim Finchem.
There’s no direct connection between that mindset and Murray’s situation, but one could postulate that if the Tour were transparent about disciplinary processes—for example, not hiding the fact that he was sanctioned for an alcohol-fueled incident in Hawaii—then those who care most about him might have been alerted sooner to a developing crisis.
Transparency is crucial in adequately addressing mental health and addiction issues, but it is not a guiding principle of the Tour. The power to change that practice rests with those whose well-being is the organization’s concern: the players.
Murray and the PGA Tour almost certainly have wildly conflicting versions of how things arrived at this juncture, of what actions the Tour did and could take, and where responsibility lies when a young man proves acutely ill-equipped for the burdens of a life and career in professional golf. Hopefully they will at least agree that there’s plenty for all parties to work on, for the sake of the next Grayson Murray.
Former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem guided the Tour through two serious situations, the aftermath of 9-11 and the 2008 recession.
Former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem guided the Tour through two serious situations, the aftermath of 9-11 and the 2008 recession.
He said neither situations approach what his successor, Jay Monahan, has to cope with in trying to bring the Tour and its constituents out of the suspension of play because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We get a lot of credit for what happened during that period with the [2008] downturn and after 9/11,” Finchem said earlier this week on a teleconference to announce his election to the World Golf Hall of Fame. “It wasn’t really all that difficult in the sense that we were successful in coming up with a strategy. The thrust we had was we want to come out of this better off than when we went into it — how do we get there?”
[jwplayer ao5T1imW-vgFm21H3]
Finchem then mulled a frightening figure.
“Twenty-two million people are unemployed right now … new unemployed,” he said.
The unemployment rate during the 2008 Recession peaked at 10.2 percent. The current rate is approaching 18 percent. No one knows how many companies will be able to continue sponsorships and corporate hospitality deals with the Tour, or how many people will be able to afford tickets once fans are allowed into tournaments.
The good news is that the Tour emerged from the 2008 recession with few title sponsorship cancellations, and what few did cancel were quickly replaced. Some of the corporate team Finchem members had on board are with Monahan now.
“He’s got a great team … some of that team was inherited from the time I was doing the job, but it’s a terrific team which he has strengthened considerably even in these last three years,” Finchem said. “And that makes all the difference in the world. It doesn’t make his job — I wouldn’t suggest it makes his job any easier. It makes the ability to deal with issues more realistic, and certainly, that’s the course he’s followed.”
Finchem said he and Monahan have had “a couple conversations about what was happening.”
“He hasn’t leaned on me much at all,” Finchem said. “From time to time, he’ll share with me what direction he’s going. He lives about 100 yards from me, so if he wanted to talk to me about something, he knows I’m available. But he’s got to steer the ship. He’s got a million things going on, and I’m quite aware of that.”
Former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem is the latest golf administrator to be elected for what is supposed to be the game’s highest honor.
It’s a good year for retired Commissioners of sports leagues. First, Paul Tagliabue, who ran the NFL for 17 years, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 in Canton, Ohio. It took 10 years and a one-time only expanded class for the NFL’s 100th-year celebration to get across the goaline. Tim Finchem didn’t have to sweat out “golf’s highest honor.” He was a first-ballot guy as a finalist, just like his fellow Class of 2021 inductee, Tiger Woods.
“To be included in that group is very powerful,” Finchem said in a press conference on Monday of being elected in the “contributor category” to join the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine, Florida. “I want to certainly thank those that thought that I was deserving of it. I kind of in many ways don’t feel like I am deserving because I just had so much fun being in the job for so long. It was absolutely captivating for me year after year after year.”
Finchem isn’t the only one who doesn’t think he’s deserving. Social media was not kind when the announcement was made this morning.
it's ridiculous. he happened to be sitting there when Tiger arrived and just got swept up in the hurricane. A rubber tree plant could've done that.
And why should they be? Just days ago, my colleague Beth Ann Nichols and others applauded the World Golf Hall of Fame for finally electing Marion Hollins also through the contributor category. (Quick aside: If the Hall is going to continue with this category, please at least limit it to a max of one per induction.) Hollins was a trailblazer and while her inclusion won’t send people turning off I-95 at International Golf Parkway in droves, hopefully some of those visitors who spring for a ticket to go and see the locker for Tiger Woods will learn her story too.
But the World Golf Hall of Fame needed another plaque of an administrator about as much as it needed one for Augusta National chairman Billy Payne two years ago. This isn’t so much a knock on Finchem as much as a wider complaint that we’re honoring the wrong people. The Hall of Fame should be for the greats of the game, the players who achieved the moments etched in our memory. There is still one more inductee to be named later this week, but all of the other players who will be left on the outside looking in are far more deserving of recognition in the Hall of Fame than Finchem.
He led the PGA Tour through very prosperous times during his 22-year tenure that began in 1994 after Deane Beman passed him the baton, but Finchem’s been richly rewarded for it. According to the Tour’s 2017 Form 990, he earned $12 million and another $6 million in reportable compensation from related organizations.
“Deane’s left him a Mercedes with the tank a quarter full, and all Tim has to do is keep putting gas in it,” Tour pro Peter Jacobsen once said.
That is an oversimplification, of course, but best I can tell Finchem wisely followed the Deane Beman playbook and had the good fortune of having Tiger, the world’s most famous athlete, come along and lift the sport to new heights during his tenure. As Beman used to say during his good years, “we’re not selling here, we’re enrolling.” (Last side note: Beman, Michael Bonallack of the R&A, and former USGA president Bill Campbell, who are all previously inducted, could have earned this distinction for their amateur record alone.) I’m not saying Finchem had an easy job, but it would have been hard to fail at the job with Tiger and an ever-expanding TV contract.
Former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem will be inducted into the Golf Hall of Fame next year with Tiger. Fitting that he rides on Tiger's coattails one last time.
Even Finchem conceded as much when he told the following story about Tiger.
“There was some magazine that ranked me in the top 10 or 20 powerful people in sports one year. Obviously a lousy magazine. But people called me to say, what do you think?” Finchem recounted. “Well, I’m not — you know, the person that’s the most powerful person in sports is Tiger Woods, and they said, what do you mean by that. I said, well, I’ll give you an example. If I wanted to convey something, we’re building a tournament in Tokyo or something, I wanted to convey some information, I’d have to spend a week getting people charged up figuring out some communications, who are the people we have to go to to get this message across, this, that and the other. Tiger Woods doesn’t have to do any of that. Tiger Woods, all he has to do is issue a little statement, and his name is on it, Tiger Woods, everybody in the world knows about it. And to me, that’s real power. That is real power.”
Tiger Woods and Tim Finchem after Woods won the 2009 Bridgestone Invitational.
And when asked about how much more difficult a job it would have been without Tiger, Finchem channeled his inner Captain Obvious and said, “It would have been a much more difficult job.”
You don’t say? Give Finchem a gold watch on the way out the door for a job well done and I’m OK if you want to let him continue as a board member of The First Tee. But membership in the World Golf Hall of Fame should be sacred. His election further validates claims that it is merely a popularity contest and charges of cronyism. (PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, who was Finchem’s handpicked successor, and other leaders in the game whose chances of being honored in the future probably also improved with Finchem’s election are among the voters. It all adds up to too much potential conflict of interest.) Interestingly, Finchem was a semi-finalist in 2019 and didn’t even make it to the list of finalists. It makes you wonder what changed in the last two years during his retirement. But his election is just another reason why the number of members returning for the ceremony is often low and why Hall of Famers continue to give their best mementos elsewhere. The last thing it needed was to enshrine another administrator, even if Finchem says he has a great letter from Arnold Palmer that he will donate to his exhibit along with some photographs of the greats that he bumped elbows with – from Gene Sarazen to Tiger.
When asked if he felt administrators should be honored at the Hall of Fame, Finchem demurred. “I’m not going to comment on that now, but when I speak at the induction, I will comment on it. I’m not trying to be cagey, but I’d just prefer to do it that way.”
I’ll save his speech writer some time. He’s going to say that it’s an honor to be recognized but the players are the real heroes and that he and his fellow administrators just support them. And people will clap politely and then we’ll move on to the induction of Tiger and the next time some guest says they want to see Finchem’s plaque will be the first time, but he’ll be housed there all the same between Nick Faldo and Raymond Floyd.
But as long as the Finchem’s of the industry continue to be enshrined, “golf’s highest honor” will remain just what it is – another empty slogan.
Golf’s Hall has deserved much of the criticism it has received, but inducting Finchem acknowledges his considerable impact on the game.
For everything that has been denied golf fans in this period of quarantine —access to courses for many, the Masters for all, freedom from Peloton updates for an unlucky few — one thing remains soothingly constant among the social media commentariat: begrudgery.
That much was evident with the news that former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem will join Tiger Woods and Marion Hollins in the next class to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. The announcement was greeted with griping that was as predictable as it is tedious, an exercise in collective eye-rolling intended to suggest not only that Finchem is undeserving but that his inclusion dilutes the Hall’s credibility.
That argument is familiar and has been leveled against more deserving targets who got a call to the Hall, like George H.W. Bush, Bing Crosby or Bob Hope. But there’s no sound basis for raising it against Finchem.
There is a sentiment that says lockers in St. Augustine ought to be earned for exploits on the field of play, and the only field of play that matters is a golf course. Not a boardroom or a factory or a production trailer or a media center. It’s an absolutist position that would disqualify plenty of current Hall of Famers.
Like C.B. Macdonald or Pete Dye, who only designed those fields of play,
Like Karsten Solheim, who innovated the instruments used on those fields.
Like Dan Jenkins or Herb Graffis, whose only mastery was of a typewriter on the sidelines.
The reality is that most sports halls of fame are intended to acknowledge not just quantifiable achievement but immeasurable impact. Charlie Sifford wasn’t inducted for his two PGA Tour victories but for what his presence, courage and determination symbolized in golf’s ugliest era. Frank Chirkinian wasn’t given a locker to store his Emmy awards, but because the legendary CBS producer’s influence far exceeded that of most players he put on living room TVs.
It’s why the football and tennis Halls have “contributor” categories to enshrine non-players, and it’s why the golf Hall is welcoming Finchem, just as it did his predecessor Deane Beman, Augusta National’s Billy Payne and the European Tour’s Ken Schofield before him.
This is hardly to say Finchem is beyond criticism. He forged a colorless culture at Tour HQ and enforced a level of secrecy around disciplinary proceedings and drug testing that would have been envied in Pyongyang. But it can’t be argued that he didn’t leave the Tour in a considerably better place than he found it.
When he took over as commissioner in 1994, total prize money on Tour was $56.4 million. Toss in the Champions and then-Web.com Tours and the fund was just over $90 million. This season the Tour’s prize money is nearing $400 million, before bonuses at least until COVID-19 upended things. He created the oft-maligned World Golf Championship events, which if nothing else helped temper Greg Norman’s plans for world domination, and the FedEx Cup playoff system 13 years ago.
It’s a popular though specious suggestion that Finchem owes his success to coat-tailing on Tiger Woods. Sure, he was dealt a strong hand, but he played it well for what was demanded of him. If subsisting on crumbs from Tiger’s table was sufficient to earn a spot in the Hall, then Mark Steinberg would have his own wing.
Arguing over Hall of Fame inductees is a staple of most every sport, moreso during a quarantine when we’re happy for any meat to chew on, no matter how lacking in nutrition it is. And golf’s Hall has richly deserved much of the criticism it has received over the years. The last class inducted Peggy Kirk Bell. The famed teacher was eminently worthy, but she was deserving of the honor when she was alive. She lived for 95 years, but the Hall only saw fit to induct her three years after her death. That kind of standard can’t be encouraging to others who deserve a spot and have been thus far denied, like Tom Weiskopf or Butch Harmon.
There are obvious shortcomings surrounding golf’s Hall of Fame. There are those who deserve the honor who have been overlooked and those who’ve been given a spot they didn’t merit. But whatever his failings, Tim Finchem doesn’t belong on either list.
Former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem will join Tiger Woods and Marion Hollins in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Tim Finchem is going into the Hall.
The World Golf Hall of Fame announced Monday that the former PGA Tour commissioner will join Tiger Woods and Marion Hollins for enshrinement as part of the Class of 2021. Finchem, who served two years in the White House during the Jimmy Carter Administration as the deputy advisor to the president in the office of business affairs, became the PGA Tour’s third commissioner on June 1, 1994. He succeeded Deane Beman.
“It is the greatest honor to be elected to join golf’s most legendary players and contributors in the World Golf Hall of Fame,” Finchem said in a release. “This is a truly humbling moment, for which I am most grateful, and I look forward to celebrating with my family and friends throughout the game of golf and the many people who made this possible for me. I am especially proud to stand alongside one of the world’s all-time greats, Tiger Woods, in the Class of 2021 and look forward to what will be an exciting year ahead.”
During Finchem’s 22-year reign, prize money went from $100 million on three tours in 1994 to more than $400 million on six tours when he retired in 2017. Under his governance, the FedExCup and the playoffs, the Presidents Cup and World Golf Championships were created. The PGA Tour and its tournaments raised more than $2 billion in charity contributions. Finchem also was instrumental in the formation of the First Tee and led efforts for golf’s return to the Olympics in 2016 in the Rio Summer Games after an absence of 112 years.
“Tim Finchem’s vision and leadership have made an indelible impact on the game of golf over the past 25 years,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a statement. Monahan succeeded Finchem on Jan. 1, 2017. “His enshrinement into the World Golf Hall of Fame will forever stand as a testament to his tireless dedication and contributions, but more importantly, so will the countless lives – whether those are the players on the PGA Tour and beyond, millions of First Tee participants, or charitable organizations around the world – impacted by his life’s work.”
The Class of 2021 was elected by the Hall of Fame’s Selection Committee, a 20-member panel co-chaired by Hall of Fame members Beth Daniel, Nick Price, Annika Sorenstam and Curtis Strange. The committee also includes media representatives and leaders of the major golf organizations.
