Instant Poll: Where Should The PGA Tour Go From Here?

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The obvious sticking point in the anchoring ban discussion: what does the PGA Tour do?

Commissioner Tim Finchem sided with the anchorers and his suddenly empathy-laden membership and voiced opposition to the ban. He also seems to be thinking quite a bit about the Champions Tour where several top players anchor. (Farrell Evans looks at some of the top players and what they might do.)

With that in mind...

Anchoring ban: Where should the PGA Tour go from here?
  
pollcode.com free polls 

Forbes: Finchem Leaps Tall Buildings In Single A Bound!

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Monte Burke looks at how Tim Finchem--all by himself!--saved the tour from ruin as the markets crashed and a fire hydrant jumped in front of Tiger's Escalade.

Thanks to all who sent what, despite the focus on Finchem with little mention of some of his hard-working lieutenants, lays out the business model for the PGA Tour in often impre$$ive detail. If the PGA Tour was a Jewish Tea Party group, the IRS would have a field day!

A few noteworthy parts in the interest of being able to hyperlink these in the future (the story is in the May 27 Forbes).

Under Finchem the tour has been able to stockpile investment assets that are now almost precisely $1 billion. *(Some $675 million of that money is in player retirement funds, which the tour lists as both an asset and a liability. Another $73 million is in cash.)

So when the perfect storm appeared, Finchem was negotiating from strength. He was able to assure nervous broadcasters that the game would be a risk-free investment. In a worst-case scenario the tour could use that money to fund its tournaments and keep the game on TV. “Even in the worst of the recession, we never missed a beat financially with the guarantees the tour gave us,” says CBS’s McManus.

The model stuff...

Here’s the model that continues to this day: A corporation–say, AT&T–signs up with the tour as a title sponsor of a tournament, usually paying between $8 million and $13 million for the honor (events that are televised only on the Golf Channel and do not have the final two rounds on either CBS or NBC pay a little less; a handful of sponsors pay more). Nearly half of that money goes directly to the event’s broadcaster, in the form of presold ads. The tour guarantees that between 60% and 65% of the broadcaster’s ads will be accounted for and traditionally delivers up to 85%. The remaining ad time is easy enough to fill: Unlike other sports, many viewers of tour events actually play the game, which gives endemic advertisers–like ball, clothing and club manufacturers–strong incentive to buy spots.

The rest of the title sponsorship money goes to a local tournament organizer, which is a nonprofit entity (the tour itself runs 16 events). These local groups use that money to put on the tournament–mainly with volunteers–and pay a share of the purse (the tour chips in as well). Revenues are generated through ticket sales, hospitality and local advertising. Any leftover money, after expenses, is donated to local charities.

Love this from the Shark...who is also quoted wanting to audit the tour in a sidebar for the story.

In 1999 the tour, along with four of the world’s other large professional golf tours, started what’s known as the World Golf Championships, a series of now four tournaments for only the top players in the world, with purses of close to $9 million. It was basically Norman’s idea. “It still irritates me, big time,” says Norman. “He cast me as a guy who was trying to ruin the game of golf, then he does this.”

And it seems Tim will be taking retirement in 2016...

Finchem expects to retire that year, and the Olympic debut provides him with a closing chapter. “My team here is mature and ready,” he says. His retirement challenge, he says, will be hiking to the summit of the 50-plus 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado. “I’ve done 16 so far,” says a man who knows a thing or two about peaks and valleys.

Norman Calls For Blood Testing, Finchem's Doctor May Be Calling For A Blood Pressure Check

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The Australian's Will Swanton caught up with the Shark and besides pretty much calling Vijay Singh a cheater, Greg Norman said it's time for golf's "disgraceful" testing to branch out to include blood tests.

PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, who long opposed drug testing and who has not been in a hurry to add blood testing for stuff like HGH, probably has downgraded the Shark's buddy status to 1995ish, when the two giant (egos) of the game were less chummy.

"You have to have blood testing, simple as that. It's a pin prick for a player, and you find out what's going on. If you're the head of golf or any sport, if you're the commissioner for a sport, it's your responsibility to make sure your sport is clean. That should be your No 1 priority."

"You only have to look at what happened to Vijay Singh just recently to know the drugs issue is there," Norman told The Australian yesterday.

"We know that because Vijay Singh got caught. How deep it is, I have no idea because we only do urine analysis instead of blood testing. If you really want to be serious about it and find about what's really going on, we need to do blood testing. I think it's disgraceful, to tell you the truth. The golf associations have to get together and step it up.

More From Clark & Scott...

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Jim McCabe goes into more depth on the media sitdown with anchorers Adam Scott and Tim Clark, and as McCabe lays out it there is a little more desperation in their voices. And I do sympathize with some of their points. Still, there is one major question not addressed: what exactly is being taken from you besides anchoring the putter against your chest?

The piece is well worth reading from beginning to end, but a few comments worth noting...

“Statements are thrown out like, ‘They’re good players, they’ll be all right.’ Well, hang on a second. Tim has spent thousands of hours practicing a method that is allowed. Keegan Bradley has spent thousands of hours practicing, rehearsing this method that’s been allowed. How do you just cut the legs out from us over your view that you don’t like seeing a junior putt (by anchoring)?”

Thousands of hours practicing? Might want go with hundreds there Tim!

He decided to try the long putter and practiced with various grips and stances for months until he settled on a method that suited him. He concedes that it felt a bit awkward, that because very few people used the technique he was “self-conscious” about it, but there were two over-riding aspects. One, it felt better on his arms, and two, it was clearly within the rules and no one raised an issue with it.

And again, the same grip and putter can still be used, so what's the big deal?

“We have a great game,” Scott said. “As professionals, we have great tours, and we should be working together on this. I’m shocked that they went ahead and proposed the ban before getting Tim Finchem’s point of view. Why would they want to rock the boat like this? I just don’t think golf is at a point where it needs a shake-up.”

Interesting that Scott is under the impression that Tim Finchem's and the tour's perspective was not known to the governing bodies when they made this decision.

Sunshine Tour "Affirms respect for decisions of game’s rulemakers"

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None of these tours are as powerful as the PGA Tour, but a unified front from the "other" tours is quickly putting a damper on Tim Finchem and the PGA Tour's recently announced stance against the proposed anchoring ban.

The latest and perhaps most powerful written statement yet comes from South Africa and the Sunshine Tour:

For Immediate Release:

PRETORIA, March 1 – The Sunshine Tour today confirmed that it would not oppose the controversial ‘anchoring’ ban proposed by the game’s rule makers, the USGA and R&A, should it go ahead as planned at the beginning of 2016.

“The issue here is not whether we, as the controlling body for professional golf in Southern Africa, agree with the proposed ban or not,” said Sunshine Tour Executive Director Selwyn Nathan. “It is about respecting the bodies who are tasked with the sometimes unenviable job of making changes to the Rules of Golf from time to time. In our case, the body from which we take this lead is the R&A and, as we have always done, we will continue to play the game in accordance with the Rules of Golf as set out by them.”

The USGA and R&A announced the intention to ban the anchoring of putters to the player’s body during the putting stroke in late 2012 and allowed for a period of comment. The proposed rule change will come into effect on 1 January 2016.

Tim Finchem's "No Competitive Advantage" Canard

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My colleague Sam Weinman is probably right that there are probably bigger issues in the game to be quibbling over than the proposed anchoring ban. I might have agreed, until the entire episode took on a new, bizarre and disconcerting twist when Commissioner Tim Finchem made his case last weekend by severely stretching the truth. And as Frank Hannigan pointed out in his letter to this site, Finchem had a long time to prepare his case.

The wise readers of this site knew it right away, and now the media is now calling him out. It should be noted, as I pointed out on Morning Drive Monday, that Finchem may just be doing the bidding (for a change) for his players, and averting a lawsuit. But a master debater who has had over a year to prepare a rebuttal failed so badly that his national television appearance could reflect poorly on the PGA Tour.

Jaime Diaz dismantles all of Finchem's key arguments for opposing the anchoring ban in a must-read Golf World column.

The lethal paragraph:

It would have been easier to accept if the commissioner hadn't been so obviously spinning. Like claiming that 20 percent of amateurs anchor, which is patently ridiculous compared to Golf Datatech research that puts the number at less than 5 percent. Or saying that the USGA had allowed anchoring since 1975 when the first long-putter cases occurred in the mid-1980s. Or maintaining that the USGA and R&A have conceded that anchoring provides no competitive advantage, when the associations have taken no stance on that criteria. Or that Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley "grew up" with the belly putter, when Simpson switched from conventional in college and Bradley a year after turning pro. All things the old debate champion wouldn't have done with a real opponent in front of him.

Robert Lusetich refers to Finchem's "bullying tactics" and highlights how the debate shifted with Finchem not exactly refuting the prevailing view of players that its unfair to have amateurs making the rules of golf:

Instead of arguing the merits of anchoring, proponents have twisted the debate, making it more about the USGA and R&A.

They persuaded PGA Tour players by preying on their historic dislike of golf’s ruling bodies; on the idea that amateurs shouldn’t be deciding what professionals can and cannot do.

They said that the USGA has allowed anchoring for 40 years, that’s there’s no data showing a competitive advantage for anchoring — a dubious assertion given many bad putters anchor, thus dragging down performance data — and that it won’t grow the game, as many golfers with the yips would stop playing.

“The USGA approved it twice,” Finchem noted.

And of course, they did not, something Bob Harig addressed already.

Michael Williams at GolfWRX also takes on the Commissioner and says "golf must be honest and consistent about its reasons" for banning anchoring, and he says the USGA/R&A has held up their end of the bargain. By going on national television the way Finchem did while uttering factually problematic statements, Williams says Finchem failed the game when he tried to pass off the "no competitive advantage" canard.

Finchem said in an interview there there was an “absence of data or any basis to conclude that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by using anchoring.” In one sense, he is correct. Of the top 20 percent of the Tour’s leading putters, none used an anchored putter. But the point is not if the long putter makes a given player statistically better than everyone else; the only meaningful statistic is if it makes the player better than he or she might have been using an unanchored putter with a conventional stroke. While the Tour has no way to compile such statistics, you can bet the players and their putting gurus do. If the putter works by the numbers on the practice green, then you can bet they are going to bring it to the course.

The USGA/R&A never conceded this "no competitive advantage" point. They made clear this is about the potential that an anchored stroke may provide a competitive advantage and may alter the competitive challenge of making a stroke.

The USGA/R&A emphasized that its proposal "comes in response to the recent upsurge in the use of anchored putting strokes at all levels of the game, combined with growing advocacy by players and instructors that anchoring the club may alleviate some of the inherent challenges of traditional putting and therefore may be a preferred way to play the game."

And: "The player’s challenge is to direct and control the movement of the entire club in making the stroke. Anchoring the club removes the player’s need to do so by providing extra support and stability for the stroke, as if one end of the club were physically attached to the body.”  

So here's the big problem with the "no competitive advantage" talking point Finchem presented: anchorers say that this method of lodging hand against torso does not provide them an advantage, but the moment it was suggested the governing bodies might take that anchoring option away, they said they would their living would be fundamentally impacted if not for the ability to anchor.

Who needs data when you get admissions like that?

And then there's Tim Clark's "plight."

Randall Mell talked to some players at the Honda Classic Tuesday who admitted that Clark's sad saga of genetic condition convinced them to oppose the ban.

Another canard.

“Tim Clark got up and said some things that were very sincere, about his livelihood and his family,” said Brandt Jobe, who was there. “When Tim spoke, that really impacted players who would have been on the fence. A lot of people who didn’t really care that much were affected by the points Tim made that night and decided, ‘I’m going in that direction.’”

Clark has a genetic condition that prevents him from turning his forearms and wrists inward. He has used a long putter for several years.

And under the proposed rule change, Clark will (A) be able to continue to use the same exact putter he uses now, and (B) will be able to grip that putter exactly the same way he has before, with one difference: the putter must not be anchored to his torso.

Clark and those with similar physical ailments merely have to move the putter 1/2 to 1 inch from their bodies.

Same grips. Same putters. Only now they have to use only their hands and arms to stroke the ball.

Naturally, we all know these pros are unhappy about this simple shift because they believe they have gained a competitive advantage in anchoring the putter against their torso. Trying to claim anything otherwise while also suggesting livelihoods will be impacted means the "no competitive advantage" claim is an outright falsehood. And this is why any empathy some of us might have had for professional anchorers will be abandoned. (As for amateur yippers who may give up the game, that's another subject entirely and I don't know the answer.)

Professional golfing anchorers have a little less than four years to move their putter grip just millimeters away from their chest. In light of the mistruths they've spread after a good-faith effort by the governing bodies to hear their feedback, the USGA and R&A must call Tim and Tim's bluff and usher in the proposed Rule 14-1b ban.

Letter From Saugerties: Tim Finchem & Anchoring Edition

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Former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan saw PGA Tour Commissioner's appearance on Sunday's WGC Match Play telecast and felt compelled to analyze the tour's surprising decision to not support the proposed ban on anchoring putters. You can read Frank's past letters here.


Letter from Saugerties                                                                                    February 27,2013

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem gets away with murder.

During his endless interviews throwing the USGA under the bus last weekend on the anchoring issue, nobody asked him the right question: when did you first know that the USGA was moving in the direction of a ban on anchoring and what did you say in reaction?

The PGA Tour is represented at USGA Rules of Golf committee meetings by an employee named Tyler Dennis. It is surely his job to tell Finchem where the USGA is heading. My point is this: Finchem last year, long before the USGA made known its position on anchoring, could have stopped the movement cold by telling the USGA and/or the R&A at the British Open that he did not know how his members would react to a ban on anchoring.

The USGA exists to offer a set of rules that it believes make sense, accompanied by an argument that the game is best served if those rules are broadly accepted. Nobody has to buy that argument but virtually everybody does.  As former USGA Executive Director David Fay once said, "We govern by all the power not vested in us."

Albeit unhappily, the USGA recognizes that the influence of the PGA Tour is enormous because golfers think what they see on television is the genuine article. This has been so since the 1960s when the Tour was first invited to participate in the rules making process.  The consequence has been worldwide uniformity, a most unlikely achievement given the money and egos of modern golf.

The USGA would never have moved to ban anchoring had it known the Tour would diverge. The average male golfer has about a 17 handicap and struggles to break 100.  Do you think the USGA cares what method he uses to putt?  Hypothesize that anchoring had somehow caught on in everyday golf but was used by no Tour players. There is no chance the rules would have been changed.

Finchem evidently misread his members - who are his employers. That can happen. He's dealing with 300 relatively young people who have a lot of money and very insular views of the world. Few of them have ever done a lick of work other than hit golf balls. It's a pure recipe for fickleness.

Meanwhile, the USGA is hardly blameless. Given their policy of rules uniformity as the Holy Grail, they should never have gone where they did without an iron-clad agreement from the Tour. Instead, they end up with golf's version of sequestration.

Since the ban was not to take effect until 2016,  along with a 90-day period inviting comments, I figure the USGA was racked with internal dissension. Finchem could have made it easier for them to back off by voicing the opposition of the players quietly - even last week. Instead, he opted to go as public as possible, accompanied with wild specious arguments such as claiming  20% of amateur golfers are anchorers. Evidently he got that number from his new best friends at the PGA of America. Why he chose to play it as he did, whereby there must be a winner and a loser, is beyond my comprehension.

I see much of the USGA clumsiness as a consequence of systemic foolishness. All power is granted to a volunteer executive committee of 15.  Some are golf sophisticates. Some are golf ignorant. The USGA by laws say that the president of the executive committee, who lives nowhere near headquarters and already has a full time job, is the CEO. The same by laws refer to the USGA staff as "clerks."  The executive director of the staff of some 300 has no job description.

But let's suppose that the president happens to be a gem, a genuine prize. (As USGA Executive Director I was lucky enough to have three).  USGA presidents serve two years and then depart. (The USGA has had only one one-year president. That was Prescott Bush, father and grandfather of US presidents, in 1935.  I have no idea why he bailed out early.)

Has anyone ever heard of a viable institution that has a bona fide winner as CEO and then dumps him after two years? Even college presidents hang around for four or five years as their agents search for higher paying jobs.

While Tim Finchem Was Distracting Us Sunday...

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NBC used this new graphic to show where various driving distances finished on the 7th hole at Dove Mountain. I only saw it by watching the re-broadcast after reader Steve asked if I had seen it. Not coincidentally, this aired at the time Tim Finchem was live on Golf Channel talking about the tour's opposition to the anchoring ban.

It's not often we get good visual innovations in golf broadcasting that help put architectural features into context, but this one certainly does.

Also kind of amazing that Ian Poulter had the long drive.

Finchem: Anchoring Ban not "in the best interest of golf or the PGA Tour."

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To the transcript!

TIM FINCHEM:  Thank you, Laura.  Good afternoon, everyone.  This is the coldest microphone I've ever felt. Thanks for coming over for a few minutes.  I hate to take your attention away from the competition, but it seemed like this was the most ‑‑ best opportunity to answer your questions about this anchoring issue that have boiling around for the last several months.

Was it really? I'm thinking Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday would have all been happy days, but go on...

The USGA and the R&A notified us several months ago about their intention to put forward a proposal to change ‑‑ essentially change the rule as it relates to what a stroke is by further defining it as something where you can't ground your club and anchor your club.  In addition to the historical limitations on what a stroke is of scraping the ball or scooping the ball or pushing the ball.

We then undertook to go through a process to determine our position on that because they had a commentary that ends next week.  We brought that to a conclusion last week.  You're all aware of that because of the comments that have been made by folks who were involved in that process.  Our Player Advisory Council looked at it twice.  We had the USGA come in and make a presentation to a player meeting in San Diego, USGA made a presentation to our Board.

We researched and looked at it and articulated our position at the end of last week to the USGA and shared that thinking also with the R&A.

Essentially where the PGA TOUR came down was that they did not think that banning anchoring was in the best interest of golf or the PGA TOUR. 

Key point there. Not only for the game, but not in the tour's best interest. In other words, we have star players who anchor and it would be bad for us if they could no longer do that. Quite a precedent.

I would note that the PGA of America came to the same conclusion after consultation with their membership.  Golf Course Owners Association came to the same conclusion, as well.

So nice that the Commish cares what those two organizations think!

I think there are a number of factors here, a number of details, a number of issues, but I think the essential thread that went through the thinking of the players and our board of directors and others that looked at this was that in the absence of data or any basis to conclude that there is a competitive advantage to be gained by using anchoring, and given the amount of time that anchoring has been in the game, that there was no overriding reason to go down that road.

Absense of data. Hmmm...bring on the data USGA and R&A. If you have it.

Recognizing a couple of things:  One, that an awful lot of amateurs today use anchoring;

I wonder if the Commissioner could provide data on that?

and two, that a number of players on the PGA TOUR who have grown up with a focus on perfecting the anchoring method, if you will, did so after the USGA on multiple occasions approved the method years ago, and that for us to join in supporting a ban we think as a direction is unfair to both groups of individuals.  So those were the overriding reasons.

I'd be happy to answer your questions in just a second, but I would like to add to that because I've read some things that would suggest that this is kind of a donnybrook between the PGA of America and the PGA TOUR on one side and the USGA on the other, and that's not really, I think, correct.  You know, the USGA did on multiple occasions look at this and come to one conclusion; 25 or 30 years later now they've come to another conclusion, at least tentatively.  They've asked us to give our comments.  All we're doing at this point is saying this is our opinion.

On the Sunday of the WGC Accenture Match Play. No Friday news dump there.

We hold the USGA in the highest regard as a key part of the game of golf.  We don't attempt to denigrate that position in any way whatsoever.  It's just on this issue we think if they were to move forward, they would be making a mistake.

I'm just going to do it on national television while one of our signature events is playing out!

Q.  Do you accept your anchoring stance puts the R&A's and USGA's position under threat?

TIM FINCHEM:  Well, we're in favor of the current rule‑making system, and we're delighted that that system is open to the kind of input and suggestion that it's open to right now.  I think that's very healthy.  You know, bifurcation is kind of a different issue as to whether you could have different rules in certain areas, and I think that's still open to discussion.  I think in a perfect world, we'd all like to see the rules be exactly the same.  They're not exactly the same functionally now anyway, and in certain cases I could see where bifurcation might be an appropriate way to go.  But maybe, and I think we continue to believe that if possible we should keep the rules, the structure of the rules the same, and if possible, without bifurcation.  And I think that's doable.

Right, if they drop this anchoring ban! And here most of us thought bifurcation would introduce more restrictions to restore skill, and we're doing the opposite.

Here comes the more tortured language:

I do think, however, that, as I said earlier, transparency, openness, discussion, input involving people across the spectrum in terms of rule‑making, particularly as it relates to equipment rules, is very, very important.  Now, this particular rule has been put in a non‑equipment bucket, but functionally it's kind of a quasi‑equipment rule, non‑equipment rule, just because it's a method of play, a method of play that's been endorsed by the governing bodies for a generation.  And the struggle here is that after all of that, to be able to come in and say without an overwhelming reason to do so, without a powerful reason to do so, is a struggle for a lot of people.  And that's the struggle we have.

It's a struggle!

Q.  Could you see a day where the USGA and R&A outlaw anchoring and yet it's allowed on TOUR golf?

TIM FINCHEM:  You know, I haven't really ‑‑ I haven't spent much time worrying about that.  That would be speculation, and I haven't really thought about it.  I've thought more about some areas of bifurcation, whether it would work or not. 

The ball!

But I think that the focus here ought to be, if possible, to go down the same road, everybody go down the same road on anchoring, and that's certainly where we are right now.  We just hope they take our view on it.  We'll see.

Yes we will.

Q.  I'm sure this is a distraction having to do this on Sunday, not the best‑case scenario.  Why did you feel compelled to come out and make this announcement?

TIM FINCHEM:  Well, only because the elements of where we were have been reported at different levels.  That was one reason. 

It's the media's fault!

But the bigger reason is I've seen some stuff on line, some stuff has been said that's been suggestive of this donnybrook kind of approach, that this is kind of a war developing, and I felt like it was important to speak to that and make sure that we understood that this is part of a process at this point.  There's no reason to assume that everybody is going to go down different paths.  I just want to try to calm that sense down.  I think that's ‑‑ we ought to be able to have a discussion about this and come to conclusions without negativity.

Doesn't this only open the door to negativity?

Good question here:

Q.  When the USGA invited comments, they said they didn't think there was anything they hadn't thought about.  Do you feel confident that you are putting factors forward that they wouldn't have thought of?

TIM FINCHEM:  Well, I don't know.  I think that we have a variety of reasons why we're either troubled by the rule itself.  We also have reasons why we feel like the reasons put forward to do this are not compelling, and that's all we can do.  We can give them our thoughts.

Honestly, if you think about it, this is a very subjective area.  It's very subjective. 

Actually, this is true, and most opinions have suggested it's a competitive advange and not a stroke. But go on... 

Everybody has an opinion about it, and we certainly respect everybody's opinion.  A large number of our players ‑‑ our players are split on this issue in different ways, but I think if there are ‑‑ there are a good number of players that if you had asked them in 1980 or 1975, should we have long putters, should they be anchored, you would have got an answer.  And those players today will tell you, if this was then I'd be of the same opinion.  But it's not then.  It's after two times it was reviewed and specifically approved by the USGA; it's after thousands of people have gravitated to this method; it's after decades of having the method and no way to determine ‑‑ an inability, even with data, to know whether it provides an advantage.  So the PGA of America has concluded that it will hurt the game with certain numbers of amateurs.  You can't figure out how many.  And in our case, we agree with that, but we also think as a matter of fairness, unless you can pinpoint some negative ‑‑ one thing we know for sure on the professional side is the professional game globally is stronger than it's ever been today, and that on the heels of having anchoring fas part of it for the last 30 or 40 years.  It certainly hasn't been a negative.  You can't point to one negative impact of anchoring.

Now, some people might say I don't think you should anchor or I don't think you should do that or I don't think you should do that, but it hasn't translated into a negative thing for the sport.  And that's why we're having trouble with it.

When Joe Dye and P.J. Boatwright and these people at the PGA were asked about it, they said it seemed like it was consistent with the definition of a stroke.

I think we could understand it if for some reason or another or a set of reasons it had negative results for the game of golf.  But actually more people ‑‑ some more people are playing the game because of it than would be without it, and competitively on the PGA TOUR, we look at this stuff all the time, we just don't see the negative aspects of it.

So it's just a personal view.  And I respect ‑‑ if a player says I just think you ought to have to swing the club differently when you're putting, everybody is entitled to their opinion.  We have to look at it from the standpoint of is it good, bad or indifferent for the game as a whole, professional level, amateur level, and we conclude that it's not.