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12-21-2008 12:22 AM #1
PGA commissioner: tour cutting costs
The PGA Tour does not plan to cut its work force as other sports organizations have done, commissioner Tim Finchem said Saturday in reflecting on what he called a solid financial performance in golf.
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12-21-2008 08:01 AM #2
In 2006 Finchem's salary was thought to be $4.5 million per year. I doubt very much that he'll be cutting his own salary! He's not the type.
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12-21-2008 12:55 PM #3
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12-21-2008 01:18 PM #4
Pffft, how did he do this year without Tiger around half the time? TV viewership post-Tiger was in the toilet. That he "presided over" the most prosperous period of the PGA tour does not mean he "was a factor" in that success. The relationship is coincidental, not causal.
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12-21-2008 01:23 PM #5
I never said that they didn't prosper under this commissioner. They did. That doesn't mean, though, that one has to like the way he does business. I don't. From afar, he impresses me as autocratic, arrogant and cold-blooded, which may be assets if your only objective is squeezing every last dollar out of the sponsors and TV broadcasters. I prefer more compassionate human beings.
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12-22-2008 11:03 AM #6
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So working to further the interests of your organization is not compassionate? You've lost me, especially when we're talking about a guy who has made charitable giving the MAIN focus of the PGA Tour (besides the golf tournaments themselves). I get that you don't like the guy, maybe he reminds you of Napoleon, I don't know. But to dislike him because, from afar, you get a vibe? Weird.
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12-22-2008 08:12 PM #7
Working to further the interests of your organization says nothing about your compassion. Dedication to the former says nothing about one's ability to feel sympathy and sorrow for another's misfortune.
Charitable giving in connection with the PGA Tour pre-existed Tim Finchem's reign. He didn't invent it. More to the point, it is the sponsors and ticket buyers who constitutes the real sources of that charity.
As for vibes, mine are not solely based on intuition. To the contrary, my regard for the commissioner is the result of reading many stories about the tour and its commissioner. Let me give you a few examples. For 21 years, the International was one of the best run tournaments on the Tour. It experienced hard times. Tim Finchem's response was to fly to Denver and summarily announce the demise of the tournament. Its founder, Jack Vickers, is still annoyed about it.
For years the Canadian Open, despite its long connection with the Tour, couldn't secure a decent slot on the PGA Tour schedule. One would have thought that a tournament that had been around for so long would merit a bit of consideration. Not a chance.
After Greg Norman floated the idea of having a few world tour events, the commissioner unceremoniously cut him off at the knees. Years later Mr. Finchem reintroduced the idea, and as Norman knew it would, it became a success. Norman has never forgiven him. The following appeared in the Golf.com article:
"That's underrating what a ruthlessly effective behind-the-scenes warrior Finchem can be. He has repeatedly put down challenges to his authority with extreme prejudice. Only a couple of months into Finchem's tenure as commissioner, Norman floated the idea of a new world tour to be underwritten by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
The big-money events would have poached the Tour's top players and badly devalued its schedule. In late '94 Finchem arranged an audience with Norman and the other elite players gathered at the Shark Shootout.
For this meeting the commissioner brought along a powerful wingman in Palmer.
"Their spin was that it was my deal, about me and for me," Norman said in a 2004 interview with Golf Digest. "I was tarnished tremendously, being branded as someone who was trying to hurt the game of golf."
Norman's idea died, at least for a few years. It was brought back to life by Finchem, of all people. In 1999 Finchem introduced the World Golf Championships, initially four annual tournaments to be played around the world. These global events were the cornerstones of a revamped schedule that came with the blockbuster four-year, $1 billion TV deal Finchem negotiated in the heady months after Woods' epic victory at the 1997 Masters. ...
A juicy postscript to the world tour machinations came at Norman's Hall of Fame induction in 2001. From the dais Finchem credited his old adversary with the original concept of a global golf tour. It was a classy move by the commissioner but still left Norman seething.
"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Norman said back in '04. "Cut a guy's legs off, then give him a pair of shoes. Never, ever will I forgive Tim Finchem, and he can induct me into a Hall of Fame once a week." "
This is only a small sampling of what lies at the heart of my assessment.
Don't get me wrong. He may be a peach of a guy in all other respects, but in his dealings as commissioner I am not a fan.
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