Why the PGA Tour should fear Greg Norman

TROUBLE it would appear, is brewing between the European Tour and the PGA Tour in America and the outcome could have a huge bearing on the future of professional golf on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the one corner, Tim Finchem, the PGA Tour Commissioner, wastes no opportunity to consolidate the predominant position of his circuit, even when his actions prove detrimental to the world’s other tours.

In the other, George O’Grady, his counterpart in Europe, has signalled a desire to join forces with the Asian, Australasian, Japanese and South African circuits to create “a hugely strong alternative to the US Tour”.

Clearly, these two objectives will lead to conflict. Something has to give.

On one level at least, Finchem has been a huge success since taking the helm of the PGA Tour in 1994. Aided and abetted by sometime adversary Tiger Woods, he has overseen huge increases in both prize money and TV revenue, progress he has no intention compromising, as he recently told Times golf writer, John Hopkins, recently.

“Golfers look at our tour and see opportunity,” Finchem said in a revealing Q and A in the Thunderer. “Other tours are frustrated by that. They are charged with marketing their own tours, making their sponsors happy and when their (top) players gravitate to the US it makes their job tougher.

“I would say there is a fair amount of frustration with that. Unfortunately, I do not have a solution. We have a responsibility to make sure our Tour is openly competitive, I guess we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

O’Grady, meanwhile, is in a much weaker position than his American counterpart. Hampered by the frequent absences of tour members Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Padraig Harrington, Luke Donald and others, not to mention the consequential loss of press coverage those absences cause, he has had to search far and wide to secure playing opportunities for his members.

Speaking at the BMW PGA Championship at the Wentworth Club, O’Grady suggested a firmer coalition with the Asian, Australasian, Japanese and South African tours was imminent, a statement that might appear premature, in light of what happened during the week of the US Open at Oakmont.

That week, at 11.45am on June 11 to be precise, the tour announced plans to stage its first event in India. Almost instantaneously, there was a response from the Asian Tour: “The Asian Tour is appalled with the European Tour’s plans to stage a tournament in India without our sanction. This move is clearly unethical and against the protocol that exists within the framework of the International Federation of PGA Tours, of which both the tours are full members.

O’Grady might or might not go on to obtain a formalised agreement with the tours in Asia, Australasia, Japan and South Africa, but, even if such a coalition materialises, it is difficult to see how it can compete with a US circuit that attracts all the leading players, and has a further advantage in that its charitable status allows it to plough a much larger percentage of its income into player purses. The US Tour, it seems to me, holds all the aces, or all the aces bar one.

If I were chief executive of the European Tour, I think I would be seeking an exploratory meeting with former Open champion, Greg Norman, the one man who has a grudge against Finchem and seems prepared to act. Norman’s dislike of Finchem stems from the way the latter destroyed his plans for a World Tour back in the early 1990s and this animosity was not diluted in the slightest when Finchem inducted Norman into the Golfing Hall of Fame.

“Never, ever will I forgive Tim Finchem, even if he inducts me into a Hall of Fame once a week,” he told Bob Verdi of Golf Digest magazine. “It was a shame (he credited me with the vision behind the World Tour when he spoke at the induction). It was sad. Cut a guy’s legs off, then give him a pair of shoes.”

Norman, together with famous high-powered attorney Leonard Decof, is threatening to file a lawsuit against the PGA Tour for failure fully to disclose its income and might well be an ally for O’Grady.

In the meantime, the Australian has also come up with the most cogent explanation of why Finchem’s policies might be good for the PGA Tour but, ultimately, will do a great disservice to the game as a whole. His thoughts make pervasive reading, and add fuel to those who argue that it is not just in the area of politics that America abuses its pre-eminent position in the world.

“I can’t fault Finchem in some respects,” Norman told Scotland on Sunday’s John Huggan. “You have to say he has done a good job in getting prize money up in, so that players from all over the world are going there to play. But when you are the leader of the free world, as the United States is, you have responsibilities beyond that.

“President Bush has responsibility on his shoulders, whether he likes it or not, because of the power of the position he is in. It is the same for Finchem. He has a responsibility not to forget the rest of the world.

"He must support the likes of the European, Australian and the South African tours but that has not been happening. Fichem has to be aware that every decision he makes has an impact around the world. Sadly, he doesn’t pay much attention to that and never has.”