Learn the true story of how President Jimmy Carter's career influenced PGA TOUR leadership

It’s a "What if" question a pair of Tims — Finchem and Smith — recently pondered, and they both smiled as they processed the query: Did Jimmy Carter losing to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 U.S. presidential election change the course of the PGA TOUR?

It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but after learning of Carter’s death Dec. 29 at age 100of causes incident to age, Finchem and Smith thought about their forced-upon retirement from politics when Carter lost in his bid for a second term, a defeat that ultimately took Finchem and Smith out of the White House and sent them — eventually — into the world of professional golf.

The two former PGA TOUR administrators, who both spent time working in the Carter administration more than 40 years ago, sat together at TOUR headquarters and talked about their professional trajectories, what transpired after Reagan’s defeat of Carter and the direction their careers went when Reagan and the Republicans took over the executive branch of the U.S. government.

A lot of their discussion centered around golf.

Finchem and Smith both had front-row seats to not only Carter’s 1980 re-election bid, but also to his four previous years in the White House, beginning with his November 1976 election victory over Gerald Ford. Finchem and Smith later had similar vantage points and played instrumental roles as the TOUR really began to take off and grow in the 1980s.

But, again, what would have happened had Carter won that election? Would the duo have ever made its way into the world of professional golf, eventually having the impact on the PGA TOUR that they did? Finchem and Smith both smile, the question hanging in the air.

“Well, we won’t get into the lofty expectations we had had President Carter won a second term,” Smith says with a laugh. “But I would have stayed on for another four years, and you would have remained, right?”

Smith looks at Finchem, who nods in the affirmative. Both men had strong respect for Carter and enjoyed their time working for and associating with the president and his family. Why wouldn’t they have stayed on?

Finchem and Smith go way back, to Charlottesville, Virginia, where they were students together but really only acquaintances at the University of Virginia School of Law, where Finchem was two years ahead of Smith. Once they went their separate ways after college, the friendship — and mutual respect — grew through their involvement in various Democratic political races.

Upon graduation, Finchem joined the law firm of Babalas & Ermlich in 1973, staying there for three years, before he became a partner in Croshaw, Finchem & Williams, in Virginia Beach. Meanwhile, Smith took a job with the New York firm Rogers & Wells following the conclusion of his time in Charlottesville. It was in that job where the golf connection began to come together.

One of Smith’s first clients was a fledgling sports organization based, at the time, in Washington, D.C.: the PGA TOUR.

“It’s my first month at the firm, and in short order, there were three anti-trust cases brought against the TOUR," Smith explains. "I had done some anti-trust work, and I liked studying anti-trust in law school, but I was no great anti-trust expert. I was thrown into that because we were shorthanded.”

Smith, at the time an avid tennis player but no golfer, became the TOUR’s main point of contact — then-TOUR Commissioner Deane Beman’s go-to guy. The newly minted attorney became well acquainted with Beman and all the TOUR’s legal concerns.

Smith’s time at Rogers & Wells didn’t last long, though. In 1975, he left the law practice to work for Georgia’s governor, who had his sights set on the White House. Carter had announced his intention to run for president, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale his running mate.

Learning this, Smith wanted to and became a part of the action. After Carter’s upset victory over Ford, Smith secured a job in the White House and quickly learned that Carter, a definite outsider to the Washington scene, faced deficiencies, especially as it related to hiring staffers wise in the ways of navigating the intricacies of Washington.

“We were shorthanded of competent, political people, so I recruited Finchem to come work with us,” says Smith.

Finchem, who is sitting next to his law school classmate when he makes the comment, doesn’t flinch when Smith refers to him by his last name. That’s how it’s always been between the two Tims. They are on a last-name basis.

The recruitment worked, and Finchem accepted Smith’s offer, becoming Carter’s Deputy Advisor for Economic Affairs.

Inside the West Wing, as Carter’s Deputy Appointments Secretary, Smith primarily helped organize and execute the president’s daily schedule. Part of Smith’s job was to serve on occasion as Carter’s personal aide, his “body man,” a term assigned to the person who trails the president wherever he goes.

“I was the guy who got to hang out with Carter. There was really nothing to do except take phone calls and run messages, stuff like that,” he again says, chuckling.

After only nine months in the White House, Smith took a position in the Department of Justice and spent two years as special assistant to the head of the anti-trust division before returning to serve as general counsel on Carter’s 1980 re-election committee, an election that posed some particular challenges, with Carter facing a primary-election battle against Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy in his bid for a second White House term. Carter’s would be no cakewalk to the general election.

Smith thinks back to the roadblock the junior senator presented his boss.

“He was part of the Kennedy dynasty and the vaunted Kennedy political machine. We had to out-organize, out fundraise him,” Smith adds of the unexpected primary opponent.

One problem was Carter’s campaign was spending more money than it was bringing in, and by Smith’s calculation, in order to defeat Kennedy — let alone Reagan — the campaign needed to raise in the neighborhood of $50,000 a day, a little more than 200,000 in today’s dollars.

“The campaign was in terrible shape, and they asked me who could we get who could raise that kind of money daily. I said, ‘Finchem. Go get Tim Finchem. He can do it,'” says Smith.

Called into service on the campaign, Finchem transitioned from the day-to-day job of advising the president on all things related to the economy to serving as the national staff director of the Carter-Mondale campaign. For those working tirelessly to get Carter re-elected, it didn’t take them long to understand why Smith said: “Go get Finchem.”

By early 1980, after Finchem had been on the job for less than a year, Carter had amassed $2 million in his war chest, Kennedy had spent a good majority of his available money early in the campaign and the Kennedy challenge suddenly didn’t feel so formidable as his funding dried up at a time Carter’s was flourishing. When the Iowa caucuses arrived, the early bellwether in any election season that establishes a candidate’s viability, Carter was rolling (he defeated Kennedy, 59 percent to 31 percent), eventually earning his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

“Finchem turned around a very ineffective operation and made it terrific,” Smith adds. “Recruiting Finchem was extremely beneficial.”

Finchem continued bringing in big money to Carter, but the former head of the family’s peanut business couldn’t overcome Reagan, who won the general election with a nine-percent margin of victory and a 489-to-49 electoral-vote triumph. The Democrats’ control had ended. Smith and Finchem were about to exit stage right.

“We were starting a family, and as we thought about it, getting out of Washington was probably healthy for us as we got on with the rest of our lives,” Smith recalls.

Recognizing that working for the TOUR was always an option in his career, Smith had stayed in touch with Beman throughout his time in Washington. Finchem would soon get on the same path.

First, though, Smith returned to Rogers & Wells, back in the law business, the firm again assigning him to work on TOUR cases. The only problem with the setup was Smith realized legal work didn’t exactly provide the excitement that his time in Washington had.

“The only client I could stand working for,” Smith freely admits, “the only one that held any interest to me at all, was the PGA TOUR because it was a cool client with really interesting legal issues.”

Beman had previously suggested Smith consider joining the TOUR full time, but Smith had always declined. Eventually, however, Smith acquiesced, resigning from Rogers & Wells to become the PGA TOUR’s first in-house counsel. He made the move in 1981. By this time, the TOUR had moved its operation from Washington to the at-the-time sleepy North Florida enclave of Ponte Vedra Beach.

Finchem, post-election, stayed in Washington, starting his own consulting and lobbying firm.

When Smith began in his new position, his new employer, as he tells it, was facing two major issues that were impacting the way the TOUR did business. In borrowing money to add to its Tournament Players Club portfolio, the TOUR took out a loan to cover construction costs of TPC Avenel (now TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm) in the Washington, D.C., area. At the same time, Reagan’s Tax Reform Act, among other things, proposed to cut out corporations’ abilities to purchase golf club memberships and use that as a tax deduction. Reagan’s plan would also eliminate deductions companies could enjoy from sponsoring professional sports. Golf tournaments certainly fell into that description. When Beman asked how Smith proposed the TOUR navigate this new problem, he had a familiar answer.

“Go get Finchem.”

That’s what Beman did, and he went about it by hiring Finchem’s firm to lobby on behalf of the TOUR — Finchem doing all the heavy lifting.

“That was my first introduction to some of the inner workings of the PGA TOUR,” Finchem says.

Assignments continued to come his way, and that eventually led to him accepting a full-time position with the growing sports organization. Finchem shuttered National Strategies and Marketing Group and moved to Florida in 1987 as the TOUR’s director of business affairs. He later became a vice president over that side of the TOUR before ascending even higher within the organization.

“Finchem was two for two," says Smith. "He killed it on the Avenel corporate memberships, and he got an exemption (to the new law) for any sport that had paid 100 percent of its net to charity, which the TOUR was doing. Companies were free to purchase club memberships and sponsor tournaments without tax reprisal."

The following year, Smith left the TOUR to pursue other business interests, including becoming the National Thoroughbred Racing Association’s first commissioner.

When Smith departed, leaving Beman without a right-hand man, the TOUR looked very different compared to 1981. The organization was growing, and quickly, and Smith left it on firm footing.

With Smith gone, Beman eventually tapped another University of Virginia Law School grad and Carter administration official to take over as deputy commissioner. Finchem became the TOUR’s third commissioner when Beman announced his retirement in 1994. By this time, Reagan won re-election in 1984, and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, succeeded him, in 1988. Politics and Washington, D.C., for Finchem, were a distant memory. He was entrenched in professional golf as the TOUR expanded and flourished under his leadership, becoming the sports powerhouse that it is today.

Finchem remained commissioner until late 2016, when he handed the keys to a smooth-running car to another deputy commissioner, Jay Monahan.

In retirement, the two Tims still live in Ponte Vedra Beach, and they often play golf together. They fondly look back on their time in politics, working for President Carter and the memories that period in their lives provide. They also spend a fair bit of time talking and reminiscing about both their White House and TOUR days.

They don’t know the answer to the "What if" question. How could they? What they do know is they are relaxed and happy, satisfied with where their respective careers took them and what they were able to do to make the PGA TOUR what it is today.