"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," Norman said back in '04. "Cut a guy's legs off, then give him a pair of shoes. Never, ever will I forgive Tim Finchem, and he can induct me into a Hall of Fame once a week."
Finchem fought off another challenge in 1998, when three veteran players — Mark Brooks, Danny Edwards and Larry Rinker — founded the Tour Players Association, conceived as a union of sorts to give the players more of a voice in Tour operations.
The TPA was born out of frustration when its founders were stonewalled in an attempt to get the Tour to release salary information on its top executives. (The numbers are now released annually.) Finchem knew the players generally vote their pocketbooks, and with the WGCs already guaranteeing fat paychecks to the top players, Finchem was able to appease the Tour's middle class by pouring bonus money into the retirement plan and allowing players to fully vest after five years on Tour, a standard that replaced the old, onerous requirement of having to make 150 cuts, which could take a decade or more. With the players increasingly fat and happy the TPA could never gain any traction and the rebellion quietly fizzled.
In the spring of '99 Finchem sought out Rinker, who as the TPA's secretary had been an outspoken critic of the commissioner. Shaking Rinker's hand, Finchem channeled the Corleone family mantra, saying, "Larry, it's just business."
Finchem has even been able to co-opt the most powerful man in golf.
In late 2000, as Woods was putting the finishing touches on the greatest season in golf history, he took time out to blast the commissioner in the press over a series of simmering grievances, including his desire to wrest more control from the Tour over how his image and likeness were to be used.
Woods's criticism of Finchem took on a personal tone when he was quoted as saying, "The only time he talks to me is when he wants me to do something for him. It's not like he ever asks me how I'm doing."
A few weeks later a chastened Finchem met with Woods and said and did all the right things.
"My relationship with Tim has definitely improved because of it," Woods later said. "He was very candid, very open. I appreciated that. There was a lot of fence-mending."
Finchem helped secure the uneasy peace in 2002 when the Tiger Woods Foundation was made the beneficiary of the newly created Deutsche Bank Championship. Last year he went one step farther, giving Woods his own tournament, the AT&T National, for which Woods's foundation is also the charitable beneficiary.
The AT&T National filled a hole in the schedule created by the demise of the International, which for 21 years was widely regarded as one of the best-run tournaments on Tour. In its final years the International had struggled to lock up long-term corporate sponsorship. The tournament's patriarch, Jack Vickers, a wily former oil baron, claimed to be working toward a blockbuster deal to save the tournament, but he couldn't complete it in time.
On Feb. 8, 2007, Finchem and his top lieutenants flew to Denver for a tense press conference announcing that the International was kaput, effective immediately.
Less than three weeks later the Tour was trumpeting the creation of the AT&T National, at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md.
