Alzheimer’s disease has settled into the minds of tens of millions of people around the world, and it’s likely you’ve seen it up close in your own life. It doesn’t discriminate. Holly Finchem, in her beautiful comments to Global Golf Post about her husband, former PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, made that point without even trying. Here was — here is — a man who, as people often say mindlessly, has it all: family, career, financial security, intelligence, a disciplined manner of living, good work-life balance and good health. Good health until he didn’t. Mrs. Finchem said it so powerfully: What ALS does to the body, Alzheimer’s does to the brain.
This guy had some mind. At press conferences and interviews, he ran circles around reporters, responding to our simple and direct questions with a long minute or two of gobbledygook, appearing to say everything while saying nothing, because it didn’t serve his purposes. Tim Finchem was a lawyer with a keen understanding of the nation’s capital and an uncanny ability to play things close to the vest. As the PGA Tour’s third commissioner — he had the job from the middle of 1994 to the end of 2016 — he was always playing poker.
The first commissioner was Joe Dey, a refugee from the USGA and an ethicist at a time when the PGA Tour needed to show the world that tournament golf with vast TV prospects was not some sort of the-circus-comes-to-town road show but a serious competition worthy of your time. The second commissioner, Deane Beman, was a little man with vast ambition, a former PGA Tour player who turned the Tour into a big business. Finchem was his deputy. As the third commissioner, Finchem rode the excitement of the Tiger Era, and the vast growth of the S&P 500, with expert and unflashy care, all to the Tour’s benefit.
It’s easy to guess what kind of secrets Finchem had to sleep on every night. He made sure the show went on. I mean, John Daly, for starters. Tiger Woods’s days and nights were no day at the beach.
This is an inadequate list of Finchem’s accomplishments but it is a good starting point:
*He slyly got the Tour to side with the USGA, and not the PGA of America, in its successful effort to prohibit anchored putting, which Woods and Arnold Palmer and other purists felt was an insult to golf’s traditional values;
*He never got high-handed with Augusta National even though the club, which did not have any women members until 2012, was in obvious violation of the Tour’s own non-discriminatory policy as a host club for PGA Tour events;
*He maintained the Tour’s IRS status as a tax-exempt non-profit trade group, even as he and other executives flew on private jets and earned vast salaries, and his players did about the same.
These guys are good. It was broadly true and Finchem broadly believed it. He and Holly Finchem showed their commitment to the concept with a gift to PGA Tour charities for $13 million, announced the other day. It’s inspiring.
I once went to see Finchem for a story I was trying to write about a well-known golfer who, by my accounting of his life, got on the senior Tour at age 48. Finchem had me doubting my own age by the end of our session. We’ll look into it. Birth records can be murky — and the docs we have look good anyhow. And does anybody really care?
Anybody other than you.
Even Tim Rosaforte, one of the best reporters the gentle golf beat has ever known, couldn’t get Finchem to say something he didn’t want to say. Tim and Tim. Tim covered Tim from start to finish. Tim Rosaforte died in 2022 at age 66 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Tim was a bear, a linebacker, a stud. Tim Finchem was always built like a jockey. We both count Davis Love as a friend. Davis is a true gent, and he killed on Capitol Hill, in the Finchem years and later for Finchem’s successor, Jay Monahan. He said vacations with Finchem — in snowy mountains, beside silver rivers — were studies in seize-the-day living. You needed a vacation from your vacation. Tim Finchem was always fit.
He was always in a sport coat. Not always always, but pretty much always. (He played in the occasional pro-am and appeared to be in control of both his emotions and his ball flight.) It was no great surprise to see him at the Masters in 2017, in a green member’s coat, invited to join the club by Billy Payne, the club’s chairman. He was golf’s ultimate Establishment figure. I remember thinking he could be an excellent deputy to Payne’s successor. He was too new to the club to be the next Payne. He was always in complete control of himself. That’s so golf, and that’s so Augusta.
I liked him, not that that matters, but most who knew him either a little or a lot did. Liked him and respected him. I admired his caginess. Finchem was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2022, the same night Tiger Woods was. There was something slightly halting about his speech and manner that night, and I left the ceremony worried about him.
LIV Golf was in the air that night. It was everywhere. LIV stood for a sort of golf culture that was foreign to everything Finchem stood for. Donald Trump, as golf impresario, did, too. Trump bought Doral in 2012. The Tour left Doral in 2016. Finchem always wanted his players to be the stars of their weekly show, even when the Tour went to Pebble for the AT&T, to Augusta for the Masters, to Shinnecock Hills for the U.S. Open, to Kiawah for the PGA Championship. Doral, Colonial, Hilton Head, the same. When golf was played at its highest levels, PGA Tour players were the headliners. He worked for the players. He worked hard, effectively and as far as I know ethically. He took the lessons of Joe Dey and Deane Beman, absorbed them and practiced them.
What a shame, that these golden years are being robbed from Mr. Finchem. What an inspiration, to hear Mrs. Finchem saying what she is saying for the long-married couple to be making the gift they are making.
These sentences from Holly Finchem are absolutely beautiful and can surely be applied to somebody you know:
“Those who know Tim know the qualities that have always defined him: his quiet strength, his sharp mind, his deep loyalty and his belief that the PGA Tour could be a force for good far beyond the golf course. To watch him face this disease has been painful beyond measure. But even now, the essence of Tim remains present in the moments we treasure most — in our love for our family, his connection to the game and the enduring relationships that have meant so much to him throughout his life.”
I think we all know what Holly is saying here: seize the day, don’t sweat the small stuff, stay in touch with joy wherever you may find it. Not easily done in our crowded and daily lives. But what is?
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
