Reached for comment last month, Vickers could not hide his lingering dismay.
"They were less than straightforward with me," he said of Finchem and the rest of the Tour brass. "They were doing things behind my back that I was not aware of. If that's the way they want to do business, fine, but it's not how I like to be treated."
Says Finchem, "We did everything we could to make it work with the International. We extended our deadlines well past what we should have in trying to get a deal done, and as a result we needed to put a contingency plan in place. There had been internal discussions about potential markets and potential sponsors, but there was not any contact with any of the parties until after the International press conference."
Note that Finchem did not express any remorse, and why should he? After all, who means more to the Tour — Woods or Vickers?
Even as Finchem has cultivated the reputation of boardroom assassin, there are a few colleagues who have seen his softer side.
"He is always accessible to his family," says Ed Moorhouse, the Tour's co-chief operating officer.
Finchem is a doting dad to three teenaged daughters, and he seems particularly pleased that in his own house he has been able to replicate the spirited debate that characterized the family he grew up in.
"Dinners in our house are quite noisy, which is fun," he says. "There's a lot of needling. The great thing about my girls is that they have a little cynicism about the world, which I think is very healthy. Holly raised them well while I was away."
The guilt implicit in that last sentence is what makes Finchem maniacal about getting home from business trips at the earliest possible instant. When he zips around the country in the Tour's private jet he often ferries other staffers, though sometimes only in one direction. Says a colleague who has flown with Finchem, "If you're traveling with the commissioner you better have your bags with you and be ready to go — he'll leave your ass behind in a heartbeat."
Case in point: On Valentine's Day morning Finchem found himself in the gilded ballroom of San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel for a press conference announcing that after years of complicated negotiations the 2009 Presidents Cup would be played at Harding Park.
When all the speechmaking was over, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom lingered to chat. Finchem, meanwhile, was hightailing it out of the hotel into a waiting car, which took him straight to the tarmac. Against all odds he made it back to Ponte Vedra Beach in time for dinner with his wife, though he didn't have time to cook it himself, as he has done in the past.
Finchem's son from his first marriage, Spencer, is a professional chef, and his old man long ago developed a taste for being in the kitchen.
Finchem has cultivated a friendship with Charlie and Nan Niyomkul, the Atlanta restaurateurs who prepared the Masters champions dinner when their friend Vijay Singh played host in 2001. During the Tour's two annual stops in Atlanta, "we can't keep him out of the kitchen," says Charlie. "He's very intense, very serious, watching everything Nan does." (When it's time to drink, not eat, Finchem is a wine connoisseur who Moorhouse says "likes the good stuff," with a particular weakness for Bordeaux.)
"What I like about cooking," Finchem says, "is that I have to concentrate on what I'm doing and it takes my mind off everything else. I look for that sense of escape in all my hobbies."
His family often vacations at their getaway in Colorado's Eagle Valley, though, true to his populist roots, Finchem insists on saying that the cabin is "28 miles down valley from Vail, in the cheap seats." Depending on the season he will fly-fish or ski.
But Finchem is often alone in line when the lifts start operating because, he laments, his daughters "are the kind of people who like to ski from 10 to 2, with a long break for lunch. Here's my philosophy on skiing," he adds, breaking into a smile because he knows that most people manage to enjoy the pastime without articulating a well-thought-out philosophy. "I only get a few days a year to do it, so maximizing the number of runs per day has to be part of the objective."
