"Our objective is to do the things that we need to do to continue to grow as we come out of a downturn, and it's not our intention to go backwards to get ready to go forwards."

Poor Commissioner Finchem. He meets with the most powerful man on the planet Tuesday and the scribblers just lob some annoying questions about purses. But there is a good reason.

The blame for Wednesday's surprisingly frank discussion about "cum audiences" (hey, I just copy and paste), demos and charitable dollar streaming goes to Seth Waugh, who had this to say last weekend (from Randell Mell's story):

“I think [the PGA Tour] needs to think about things,” Waugh said. “I would not have raised purses last fall, not because they couldn’t, but because it was the wrong message. Every model of every business is under pressure, and you have to create more value for people, either by doing it cheaper, or by creating more value. People want a deal. They want to feel like they are getting more. They have to think their way through that, having people feel good about the experience, as opposed to being dictated as to what it is.”

Now here's one of the Tour's biggest fans whose company has by all accounts had a very positive experience, essentially scolding the tour for having raised his purse in trying times. (From $7 million to $7.5 this year). He's also the first CEO of an existing event to call out the tour on raising a purse during the economic crisis.

So that brings us to today's press conference. Without being there, it's hard to grasp the tone, but in print Finchem is starting to sound stubborn in a way that reminds me of a certain recently-crowned "former LPGA Commissioner":

Q. Seth Waugh said last week, sounded rather adamant, in fact, that he thought purses should have stayed the same for this year instead of the incremental increases built into the contracts. Was that given any consideration?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Not any real serious consideration. You know, our purses have flattened considerably. If you go back six or seven years, there were fairly steep increases. That has flattened out now. I think you'll see relatively flat going into next year.

The increases have been slight, but we wanted to continue to grow. And our plan is to continue to grow. And that means purses and charity dollars. Charity is going to be off a little bit this year, not as much as we thought in January.

But our objective is to do the things that we need to do to continue to grow as we come out of a downturn, and it's not our intention to go backwards to get ready to go forwards. Our intention is to slow our growth during this period and then come back and grow more, and that's what we want to do.

But overall I'd say over the next five or ten years, you won't see the kind of increases we had the last ten years, even in an up economy; they'll be more modest. But that's our intention is to continue to grow. Again, that means prize money and charity, because charity is part of our corporate mission.

Now the growth mantra is understandable, even admirable if you think of the Commissioner as looking out for his players first and foremost. And I understand he needs to take a certain public stance in negotiations when dealing with corporate tycoons who look for any opening. However, shouldn't there be some display of compassion for the other side in these times? 

After all, if you raise the Deutsche Bank purse $500k, isn't it likely to impact the local economy or perhaps the charitable contributions raised by the event? Finchem denies this, though I don't find the answer very convincing since we've had tournament directors say charities are the first to get hit in this environment:

Q. You've referenced charity a couple times. If you trimmed purses 10 percent, wouldn't that -- I know there's a wavy line and it's --

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: No, because every tournament has a different contract structure. If we cut a purse and the dollars are tied to the contract because of the purse level, we have to go back and negotiate with the title sponsor as to where -- that could mean a lot of things. Probably just giving it to charity is not necessarily going to happen.

Our job is to focus on charity. We've done a good job of getting to where we are in charity, and we want to continue to grow charity, and we are. I think by any estimation, the performance we're going to generate this year on the charitable side is very, very strong.

With the return of his growth mantra, there's the inevitable question about the Commissioner's personal incentive to grow purses.

Q. I need to put you on the spot here. A couple players have suggested that some of your bonuses are tied to purse increases. Is that accurate?

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: No. The bonus structure for our executive team is like any other company. It has to do partly with the overall performance of the company, partly with what management thinks is your particular contribution, partly with how your particular business area performed. Revenue, not prize money.

Isn't prize money a form of revenue?

Prize money is a strategic determination we do on a tournament-by-tournament basis with companies based on what we think prize money should be.

Having said that, an objective -- we have three objectives at the PGA TOUR; one is financial strength and benefits to our players and creating a good marketing platform for all the reasons I've suggested. That's important to the sport; two is generating charitable contributions to the communities where we play; and three is helping grow and protect the game. That's why we're involved in things like First Tee and the World Golf Foundation. That's our mission, and we want to grow in all three fronts.

I already miss the value proposition days.

Comments

[Tom]

Some 20 years ago, Golf Digest ran an article that slammed the PGAT for their two-faced policy on charity. Don't remember the details, the gist of it was that while PGAT used charity as a favorite PR point, over the previous decade or whatever purses had grown by a factor of like 10 while charitable donations had only grown by something like a factor of 2 (don't quote me on those numbers, I honestly don't remember). Some tournaments were far better than others at directing revenue to charity. PGAT took PR credit to itself for the charitable activity of others, namely the local organizers and sponsors. MIght have been more.

I haven't followed the issue since then. Has anything changed? Policy reforms at PGAT, anybody know? Or, since Finchem said that purses are up this year but charity "is going to be a little off," is PGAT still trying to have its cake and eat it too?

[Wisconsin Reader]

Seems clear that "charity is off" while "purses are up" means what it means.
Finchem should run for Congress - he has the gift of double talk too.

[Farmingdale]

I would try my best to never do business with anyone that talks like that...

[Observer]

Finchem's charity comments caught my when juxtaposed with the big Arnie Celebration that seems omnipresent.

Where can one access the charitable giving record of The Bay Hill Invitational??

[paboy]

Reminds me of Alison's Restaurant when Arlo Guthrie just keeps singing I want to kill, kill, I want to kill, kill!...

[carnaptious and camsteerie]

No sportsMAN is worth the prize money he gets these days. It's obscene.