Life continues to be good for PGA commissioner Tim Finchem, whose contract was extended Wednesday until 2016. His tenure started in 1994, the same year Tiger Woods enrolled for the first of two years at Stanford. That means Finchem, 64, has spent only two of the last 17 years without Woods as the most important player in the sport and the central reason for the prosperity and spread of the PGA.
Things could have gotten dicey with Woods’ recent troubles on and off the course combining with an economic downturn, but the sponsors have hung on — the PGA recently signed a nine-year television deal with CBS and NBC, and the purse at next week’s Sony Open in Hawaii is $5.5 million — and Woods appears set for a comeback.
That’s reason enough for Finchem, only the third commissioner in the tour’s history, to hang around instead of leaving at the end of his contract, which was set to expire this year.
– Craig Stouffer
