For 22 years, Tim Finchem served as commissioner of the PGA Tour, guiding its transformation into a multibillion-dollar organization, leading it through two major financial crises, tapping into the generational brilliance of Tiger Woods, expanding its media rights, creating the First Tee, the Presidents Cup and the FedEx Cup, all while keeping charitable giving as a through line.
Largely through Finchem’s vision and leadership, the PGA Tour and its tournaments have generated in excess of $4 billion for charity, making it a leader among professional sports organizations in that realm.
Now, as the 79-year-old Finchem deals with the increasingly debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s disease, the former commissioner and his wife, Holly, are donating $13 million to reenergize PGA Tour Charities, which will centralize the tour’s charitable arm, coinciding with the tour’s new competitive model set to debut in 2028.
“It’s because of our trust in the PGA Tour and its commitment to communities and charities and the diversity of the people and places that they have an impact, we thought they would be good stewards,” Holly Finchem said.
The gift will build on an initiative that was foundational to Finchem’s vision.
“The charitable impact of the PGA Tour is real and a powerful model we are proud of,” said PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp. “Our continued, shared responsibility is to make that impact even greater and easier for our players, partners and fans to rally around. We are deeply grateful for the incredible gift from Tim and Holly Finchem as we enter this next chapter.”
Finchem, who stepped down as commissioner in 2016, lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with a second home in Colorado. He still plays golf with a long-standing group of friends in Florida but he has short-term memory challenges, among other effects from Alzheimer’s.
“When I pick him up to go play at Pablo [Creek Club], I put oldies on the radio for the ride over and he knows the words. He can still make a decent pass at the ball. The golf course is his happy place,” said Tim Smith, former deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the PGA Tour and a friend of Finchem’s for more than 50 years.
“It’s devastating … He was the guy in our peer group that did everything right. He took care of himself.”
“ALS is to the body like [Alzheimer’s] is to the brain. It’s different in every person afflicted with it. It proceeds in a fashion no one can predict or plan for the pace or the effect. It is terribly sad to lose the person you knew and loved a little bit at a time.”
Holly Finchem
For Holly Finchem, who has been married to her husband for almost 40 years, the decision to go public with Finchem’s condition has not been easy.
“ALS is to the body like [Alzheimer’s] is to the brain,” she said. “It’s different in every person afflicted with it. It proceeds in a fashion no one can predict or plan for the pace or the effect. It is terribly sad to lose the person you knew and loved a little bit at a time.”
When Finchem retired a decade ago, a group of PGA Tour employees put together a video based on the opening number in the musical “Hamilton,” substituting the commissioner’s story for the one Lin-Manuel Miranda made legendary.
“It starts out like ‘Hamilton’ … ‘How does a son of a Marine drill sergeant … rise up and become the world leader of golf?’” is how Tom Wade, the tour’s former chief commercial officer, recalls the gist of it.
It’s a fair question.
Finchem was no stranger to golf. His father would drop him at the naval base course in Norfolk, Virginia, in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. Finchem would often play two balls by himself, one ball representing Sam Snead, the other Ben Hogan.
The son of a master sergeant and a homemaker, Finchem had a comfortable upbringing while understanding he needed a scholarship to attend college. He earned one to the University of Richmond through his debating skills.
Finchem later earned a law degree from the University of Virginia and worked in the White House during the Jimmy Carter administration. After Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Finchem stayed in D.C., where he met Holly and eventually co-founded a national consultancy.
Tim Finchem, circa 1985
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When Smith, who had joined the tour after working in Washington politics, convinced then commissioner Deane Beman to offer Finchem a job, it nearly ended badly. Beman and Smith invited Finchem to join them on an impromptu red-eye flight aboard the tour’s private jet from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio, for the Memorial Tournament, which had a memorable landing.
“This is our attempt to tell Tim how great we were. We didn’t end up in the cornfield but we were cornfield adjacent. One wing may have been touching corn,” Smith said.
“Somehow, some way, he still joined us.”
Within two years, Finchem was deputy commissioner and in 1994 he emerged from a group of more than three dozen candidates to be the tour’s third commissioner, succeeding Beman.
“Tim said our job is playing opportunities and charity and they are equal. It’s not like we will see how much money the players can make and if there is extra it will go to charity. Everything went back to those basic principles,” said Davis Love III, a member of the PGA Tour Policy Board when Finchem became commissioner.
“Tim drove charity dollars hard. It was as important to him to say $1 billion and $2 billion were going to charity as to say the purse in Las Vegas will be $1 million. His passion was the same for both.”
Finchem (left) with President Gerald Ford at the Presidents Cup in 1994, the year Finchem was named PGA Tour commissioner
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When Finchem became commissioner, total tournament purses were $53.2 million, substantially above the $8 million total when Beman had taken over in 1974.
Charlie Zink, a 31-year PGA Tour employee and former chief financial officer, said the tour’s assets were approximately $20 million when Finchem arrived and they are now $3 billion. Revenue had grown to approximately $1.4 billion in 2018 shortly after Finchem’s retirement, according to the tour’s tax filings.
“Tim was Cool Hand Luke,” Zink said. “He had a look about him and a confidence. He was smart as hell.”
Finchem was not flamboyant, though he had an appreciation for good food and had enjoyed his time in Washington, where he met his wife when she was working as a tournament assistant for the inaugural Chrysler Cup at what was then called TPC Avenel and he was helping the new club build its membership.
At the tour, Finchem built on what Beman had put in place, constantly pushing to find ways to make the tour better.
“Tim was good at putting together a good team and he expected his team to bring its ‘A’ game every day. He was great motivator,” said Ron Price, former chief operating officer of the tour under Finchem.
“He motivated by challenging people to do their best. He would have been a great coach. He brought the best out of people.”
Finchem could operate at the 30,000-foot level then drop down to work through the operational details for whatever initiative was being pushed forward.
He was also disciplined enough to plan for inevitable financial fluctuations. Finchem understood those would come – he dealt with the dot.com bubble bursting in early 2000 and the great recession in 2008-09 – and brought the tour through both in a stronger position than before.
“In both cases, it looked disastrous because the tour is so sponsor dependent. I remember in 2008 we lost something like 25 sponsors but we replaced them all and didn’t miss a beat,” Wade said.
“Tim went into action and we convened a crisis team that met every day. His operating principle was we are going to do what we have to do to be successful.”
Ty Votaw, who worked in various leadership roles at the PGA Tour from 2006-22, was among Finchem’s closest associates.
“[He] inspired people to do better. It motivated you to work as hard as he worked,” Votaw said.
“You never wanted to disappoint him. His superpower was an unwavering optimism, an unwavering work ethic from a discipline perspective and knowing if hard times do come, we’re going to have a toolbox to utilize to get us through that.”
Peter Dawson, the former R&A chief executive, came to know and admire Finchem as both a business leader and a person.
Almost to a person, those who worked closely with Finchem at the tour mention his tenacity. It was a tenacity of vision, of purpose, of execution, tempered by an underlying compassion for the individuals within the organization.
“He was not loud in his speech but when he did say something you had to hang on his every word to make sure you were listening. You thought to yourself, ‘Gosh you’re dealing with someone here who really knows his stuff. You had better get up early in the morning to keep up with him,’” Dawson said.
Finchem’s reserved personality hid a wry sense of humor. A fan of late-night legend Johnny Carson, Finchem liked to needle those close to him, especially when things were going well.
Votaw had been at the PGA Tour less than a year after leaving his job as LPGA commissioner when he found himself with Finchem at Muirfield Village, awaiting the Memorial Tournament’s annual honoree ceremony.
When Finchem asked Votaw the biggest differences between the tours, Votaw pointed to the commonalities of both wanting the best for the players and sponsors though the PGA Tour’s financials had more zeroes.
“I said the one thing that struck me was there seemed to be more people on the men’s side that consider themselves the smartest guy in the room,” Votaw said. “Tim said, ‘What do you mean?’ Well, there are a lot of players who think they are smartest guys and some sponsors feel that way. Agents sometimes try to present themselves that way and some in the media present that way.
“He turned to me with a wry smile, and said, ‘What they don’t understand is I’m the smartest guy in the room.’
“I don’t think he was serious when he said it but I think he was right.”
Finchem spearheaded a $213 million fundraising effort to start the First Tee.
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“He wanted people who cared about their jobs and worked hard but didn’t think it was all about them. He embodies that himself,” Smith said.
“I said one time, ‘You need to do this for your legacy,’ and he almost snapped at me. He said, ‘Legacy? What are you talking about? What is a legacy? Is it a legacy that I did my job pretty well?’ He said ‘that’s the legacy for me.’
“I pushed back and said ‘wait a minute, what about the First Tee?’ He said, ‘OK, maybe the First Tee.’”
With the tour’s emphasis on charity, Finchem wanted the organization to have its own vehicle. He marshaled the support of the Masters Tournament, the USGA, the LPGA, the PGA of America and the PGA Tour to create a pathway to introduce children to the game while building in life lessons centered around core values.
“I was in the room the day when Tim talked about the First Tee and he said he was going to go out and raise $200 million. I thought, is this guy crazy? How’s he going to raise $200 million? He raised $213 million to get the First Tee started,” said Jay Monahan, who succeeded Finchem as commissioner.
The program was launched in Central Park in 1997 with President George H.W. Bush there as the first honorary chairman. The program now reaches more than two million youngsters annually.
“Tim recognized that the game still had a lot of growth to do in being inclusive. He thought how do we change this? He got the right people together to figure it out alongside him. Joe Barrow was a brilliant choice [as CEO]. He helped shape the vision into action to bring it directly to communities. You start with the kids,” Holly Finchem said.
“You’re not just bringing them into the game. That’s one small piece of it. It’s also bringing people in a part of society who may not have had the exposure and leveling them up.”
Throughout his career, Finchem abided by Teddy Roosevelt’s admonition to live a strenuous life, carving out one hour a day for exercise.
In Colorado, Finchem hiked more than a dozen of what the locals call “14ers,” peaks with elevation above 14,000 feet. He challenged co-workers to go with him when they were on retreats out west.
During a forced stop in Nova Scotia on the way to the Open Championship, Finchem convinced Votaw to go for a run together. Finchem suggested they do interval training, running at a comfortable pace for four to five minutes then sprinting all out for one minute before starting the process over.
“I thought I was in pretty good shape so I said sure,” Votaw said. “I couldn’t finish. I had to send him on. After three or four of the sprints, I was gassed – and he was 14 years older than me.”
“As his condition and his symptoms increased, we’d be driving in the cart and he’d say look at that tree, how old do you think it is. Look how beautiful that flower is or that cloud formation.”
Ty Votaw
Finchem invited Love and Justin Leonard to come skiing in Colorado. Finchem prepared breakfast and dinner – he particularly liked cooking Asian dishes and he could sometimes be found in the kitchen at Nan Thai Fine Dining when he was in Atlanta – and kept his guests busy.
“He never sat still. He’d say I’m going to hike these four peaks in the next month,” Love said.
When Finchem turned 60, he asked Love to plan the celebration. They wound up back-country skiing in British Columbia.
He advocated reading “The Blue Zones,” a book that delves into the places where people live the healthiest and longest lives. He did crossword puzzles regularly, keeping his mind busy.
When Finchem goes out to Pablo Creek to play golf with his friends, the muscle memory has remained along with much of his long-term memory. It’s the more recent memories that have been lost.
“As his condition and his symptoms increased, we’d be driving in the cart and he’d say look at that tree, how old do you think it is. Look how beautiful that flower is or that cloud formation,” Votaw said.
Alzheimer’s has a heartbreaking effect on those who watch their loved ones gradually disappear and Holly Finchem lives that every day. She and Tim are parents to three daughters and a son, and they are grandparents.
As they head into a future they had not anticipated, they aren’t going alone.
“He has been loved and cared for through this process by dear, dear friends who are helping him stay out there in the game and in life. I couldn’t be more thankful for that,” Holly Finchem said.
“They are keeping joy alive for him.”
Top: Tim Finchem (center), Tiger Woods and Holly Finchem
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