Finchem's Memo

Filed in archive Golf News on November 13, 2007

There was a time, 75 years ago or thereabouts, that golf was a simple game.

The best golfers were amateurs, men of class and leisure, who played for the pure joy of competing to win. To win what? Nothing more than a trophy and the satisfaction that came with it.

It was not a widely popular game back then, confined as it was to the ranks of the privileged who played at elite, cloistered country clubs owned by giants of industry.

Fast forward 75 years - three quarters of a century - and what a different sport it is today. What a different world it is today.

Certainly, the gifted amateur golfer today is simply passing through a phase until turning professional. A Walker Cup berth is merely a stepping stone along a career path paved with more money than any one human being could spend in several lifetimes.

Don't think that's true? Then read Geoff Shackelford today. He has reprinted a memo issued by Commissioner Tim Finchem to the PGA membership outlining the coming season.

I have no idea how Shackelford gained access to the memo but he has many friends among tour players, I'm sure.

Here is why a gifted amateur would be a fool not to turn professional: 278 million dollars in prize money for 2008 and 48 "official" chances to win that money.

That's before the tour arrives at the FedEx Cup which will be back in greater glory in 08. Finchem calls the inaugural effort "a great success...ultimately delivering a fitting conclusion" to the season.

For next year, that enormous 10 million dollar "bonus" to the series winner will no longer be a deferred payment. The winner will get 9 million of it with the other one million going into the player's retirement plan.

The balance of the overall pot of $40 million is divided among the top 150 players in the series and is deferred in a complicated formula. So there should be greater happiness among the rank and file and greater compliance when it comes to playing in all the prescribed FedEx Cup events. Or so the theory goes.

The implementation of the PGA's new drug policy seems to still smack of Finchem's great reluctance to go along with it. It goes into effect next month with "extensive player outreach and education", yet no actual testing will be done before July, 2008 at the earliest. The Nationwide Tour doesn't have to worry about testing until late in 2008.

So, like the FedEx Cup payouts, the drug policy is a deferred vehicle as well, at least in the short term.

Finchem goes into great detail about how the drug policy will unfold, how testing will occur and how naughty PGA pros will be punished.

On the whole, it appears very transparent and well thought out. I just wonder why it takes 7 months to educate players who are pretty smart people to begin with.

75 years removed from the era of the "gentleman amateur" golfer playing simply for the love of the game, we have today a vastly different creature - a golfer driven by the money, flying in private jets, being paid millions in appearance fees and many more millions in endorsement deals. And drug-tested.

Yes, it certainly is a different world today.