Fittingly, Tim Finchem joins Tiger Woods in same World Golf Hall of Fame class

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Golf was on the television set and players were huddled around, watching and reacting. No surprise, given that the locale was vaunted Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, where many of the world’s best golfers were gathered for the 1994 NEC World Series of Golf.

Meandering through the locker room, Tim Finchem, barely two months into his job as the third Commissioner of the PGA TOUR, stopped and observed the players, maybe 20 to 25 of them. “They were watching Tiger Woods win the (U.S.) Amateur,” he said. “I never saw that many watching like that before – and they were mesmerized.”

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There was a class field in attendance that week – Nick Price, winner of both The Open and the PGA Championship; young U.S. Open champion Ernie Els; Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal; fan favorites Greg Norman and Fred Couples – but Finchem concedes the image of so many touring professionals watching Woods resonated.

“I thought to myself, ‘This kid must be the real thing, because these guys know their business.' ”

A little more than two years later, Woods was fresh off a third straight U.S. Amateur victory when he triumphed in just his fifth PGA TOUR tournament as a pro.

Six months after that, on the Saturday night before the final round of the 1997 Masters, Finchem was having dinner with Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight, both men trying to digest what they had seen for three days.

Woods, after playing his first nine holes in 4 over, had blistered hallowed Augusta National Golf Club, and at 15 under, he owned a nine-stroke lead over a field of elite players who didn’t know what had hit them.

Finchem and Knight weren’t sure they had ever seen anything like this, but the man whose company had inked Woods to a corporate deal months earlier told Finchem he knew one thing. “We were with our wives,” said Finchem, “and at one point, Phil looked at me and said, ‘Tim, you and I have one thing in common. All we have to do is ride the wave.’ ”

The memories, even 23 years later, elicited a warm smile from the retired PGA TOUR Commissioner, who brought them to mind when asked to comment on the expected news that Woods, 44, had been voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. However, Finchem didn’t realize that his recall would have twice the emphasis because the news Monday provided a remarkable sense of symmetry.

Finchem has joined Woods as a 2021 inductee, the two of them voted in by a 20-member selection committee in rolling announcements that also included Marion Hollins last Friday. It was humbling recognition for Finchem, 72, who possesses a self-deprecating sense of humor and would concede that he indeed did as Knight suggested back in 1997 and rode “the wave.”

Only the greater truth is, Finchem – who served as commissioner from June 1994 through the end of 2016 – was very much responsible for the emphatic wave that provided the ride.

Said eight-time PGA TOUR winner Brad Faxon, who served three terms on the Player Advisory Council during Finchem’s regime: “Tim did ride the wave of a young Tiger Woods, but he used his skill in the growing sports media sector to really make our TOUR the biggest and most competitive golf Tour in the world.”

To many, it is fitting that Woods and Finchem should enter the World Golf Hall of Fame in the same class, as their incomparable successes ran parallel and produced staggering numbers. For Woods, whose 82 victories is tied with Sam Snead for most in a career, there is no end to his brilliance – 11-time Nicklaus Award for Player of the Year, 10-time Arnold Palmer Award for leading money winner, more than $120 million in career prize money, 12 seasons with four or more wins.

“A uniquely gifted individual,” Finchem said.

But there are many who would use those same words to describe Finchem and offer numbers to validate his World Golf Hall of Fame stature.

When he succeeded Deane Beman as commissioner in 1994, the purses on three tours – PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions, Korn Ferry Tour – totaled $90 million. Last year, six tours (adding in the Mackenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada, PGA TOUR Latinoamerica and PGA TOUR China) had purses that combined for $400 million. In 1994, six players earned at least $1 million in prize money; in 2016, Finchem’s last year as commissioner, six players went past $5 million in prize money and 106 made at least $1 million.

Then there is what’s at the heart of the PGA TOUR – “We are about working with communities,” said Beman – and Finchem’s 22-year run deserves massive credit for a total charitable output that has surpassed $3 billion.

Beman, inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame 20 years ago, rightfully gets high praise for being the guy who envisioned many of the aspects that are part of the PGA TOUR business model. “But Tim took the plan and expanded it and improved it,” said Beman. “He provided the business structure and the management structure.”

When the reins were handed to Finchem in 1994, the PGA TOUR was getting a savvy executive with “a very interesting skill set,” said Beman.

“He was a lawyer by education (Finchem graduated from the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia Law School) but was very in tune with politics (he served in 1978-79 as an economic adviser to President Jimmy Carter) who also knew marketing (he helped the PGA TOUR sell memberships to TPC Potomac, which led Beman to hire him in the 1980s).”

An elite competitive golfer at the amateur level, then a PGA TOUR winner, Beman saw in Finchem a natural leader to take the sport into the next era because so many more deals with television and golf courses and government leaders were going to enter the picture. “Most lawyers think things through,” Beman said. “They’re naturally pragmatic; they think before they act.”

It is a Finchem trademark, because in his years as PGA TOUR Commissioner, no matter the upheaval or level of challenge, what impressed about Finchem was his calm demeanor.

“He never was one to lose his cool,” Faxon said. “But he was not one you wanted to debate against, either, as he always had all four bases covered. He was the perfect man for the job.”

During his tenure, the changes to the PGA TOUR landscape were dramatic – from the introduction of the Presidents Cup in 1994 and of the World Golf Championships in 1999, to the FedExCup Playoffs in 2007, to widespread TV exposure on network TV and The Golf Channel, to tighter partnerships with the Masters, R&A, USGA, and PGA of America, to significantly stronger ties with The First Tee and the World Golf Hall of Fame.

How should his legacy be judged?

“I would hope that people would think we accomplished a lot and we did it without taking ourselves too seriously,” he said. “That we were seeing what’s ahead and what the possibilities are. We can always get better and that’s the upside to think about.”

Fair, all of that, yet when the deserved praise will flow in the aftermath of the Hall of Fame news, Finchem will likely offer a sly grin and brush it aside. Maybe he’d relate that comment from Knight in 1997, but he might also tell you of the time he couldn’t believe how it was reported that he was “the most powerful man in golf” in a publication.

“I told people, ‘Tiger is one of the most powerful people on earth, with capabilities far beyond mine.’ If I wanted to get information out to a fan base, I would have to work one week and with a staff to get the news out,” laughed Finchem. “But if Tiger wanted to get news out, he’d say, ‘blah, blah, blah’ and the game would be over.

“That’s power.”

He is right, of course. Which always was a Finchem staple, that ability to envision, to understand, to study and react prudently and effectively. There was substantial power in that, too.