Like a furtive man waving people away from a troubling scene with an old cliched, “Nothing to see here, move along,” PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem urged golf writers on his conference call yesterday to believe that Tiger’s transgressions are not worthy of suspension, and Woods’s link to a Doctor whose associates were busted with HGH and other banned substances doesn’t concern him and shouldn’t concern the Tour.
“There’s a lot of doctors linked to HGH,” Finchem explained dismissively, as if brushing off a fractious child brought to the Principal’s office for skipping a class. “There’s no reason for me to be concerned because I have no information to trigger a concern,” he muttered unconvincingly.
He sounded too much like Bug Selig, and this situation is beginning to look exactly like what happened to baseball. MLB ended up in front of Congress for a public excoriation because they did exactly what Finchem appears to be doing right now: stonewalled, ignored, excused, and evaded.
Like the boat operators in “The Perfect Storm” the worst possible hurricane winds are blowing around the PGA Tour – and all the people it employs and everyone associated with televised golf and golf publishing – and Finchem’s answer is the ultimate in hubris: let’s just drive right through it.
Finchem certainly didn’t convince many of us on the call that his course of action in these matters is wise. Jim McCabe of Golfweek has this scathing review:
“You get the feeling that he’s at the helm of the S.S. Good Ship Lollipop….Finchem’s first public comments since Woods’ private life exploded into the public theater following a Nov. 27 car accident outside his home were certainly upbeat. Forget that the constant barrage of Woods’ infidelities and sordid lifestyle has seen his favorable rating with the public drop like Anchorage temperatures in December, it also has draped a black cloud over the entire PGA Tour….Reaction and comments on all of that should have been up front and perhaps the only topic of discussion. Yes, it’s that big. It was no time for the “spin” that some feel can make us overlook things. It’s impossible to do that and it would have been nice to hear that Finchem and his staff were investigating on their own, asking questions and planning a meeting with Woods, if for no other reason than to ask him about these meetings with Dr. Galea.
That’s not privacy, that’s part of a drug policy all players agreed to, Woods included.”
McCabe also does a stellar job of breaking down the Galea controversy like a fraction for us, so even those readers not well versed in steroids and PEDs can understand the dispute:
“It’s been reported that Dr. Galea helped Woods by using “blood-spinning.” It’s a technique that isn’t illegal, but what raises a flag when Dr. Galea’s name is mentioned is the fact that his assistant was arrested at the Canada-U.S. border with vials of HGH, which is banned in the United States, and Actovegin, a controversial drug that is not approved by the FDA.
While it’s documented that Dr. Galea is under arrest for drug-related charges, no one is suggesting Woods should be the subject of suspicions. Still, it was alarming to hear Finchem state, almost brushing it aside like a three-putt bogey, that “I have no reason to have a concern with respect to him and a doctor (Galea) who has used HGH with patients for whom it’s not an illegal drug (which is true of HGH, in Canada).”
Dick Pound wonders. The former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency said, “You would have a heightened awareness. I would not put it any further than that.”
Dr. Gary Wadler, chairman of the WADA, does take it a step further. Asked if he thought Finchem should have expressed a little more concern, Dr. Wadler said, “You can’t be dismissive. I’ve seen that for years and years and years. Let’s put it this way: As a doping expert, when I hear in the same sentence ‘blood-spinning, HGH, and Actovegin,’ I intend to straighten up and have a better look.”
Yesterday, Dr. Wadler left for meetings in Europe, so I’ll be reporting with comments from USADA officials, but the long and short of the issue is, if you are a sports commissioner in the 20th century, and you hear of any player consulting with a doctor of Galea’s dubious reputation, you order an investigation.
“Finchem should have ordered an immediate investigation and told us that’s what he was doing,” said one prominent prominent TV broadcaster, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That does two things: 1) it gives the appearance of caring about the issue and seeming like he’s doing something about it, and 2) it keeps the Tour image clean…at least the Tour looks like it cares about doing the right thing, and is being proactive. Instead, Finchem is going to attract more people to look, maybe even Congress. He could not have been more wrong yesterday: it was wrong for the game, wrong for the Tour, and especially wrong to the clean players. Maybe he thinks he can be the first commissioner to make a steroids inquiry vanish, but there is risk: he could make the situation worse for the Tour and for everyone who makes a living covering pro golf. He could have protected the Tour, its employees and the industry in general by being strong and proactive. Instead, his ignoring it leaves us all open more more serious repercussions should the Tour get engulfed in a scandal. He has to take action to divest the Tour from these issues. The really scary thing is that he may be incapable of doing that.”
Indeed, condemnation of Finchem was widespread. Steve Elling of CBS Sports had this to say:
“Thanks to Woods, golf news has been almost uniformly brutal for 21 days and counting. He has more alleged mistresses than majors. Porno videos are being shot with Woods’ life as the punch line and plotline. He has been linked to a controversial physician who is facing drug charges. Every day brings another hurtful revelation.
Nobody is suggesting that golf will crash and burn because Woods’ reputation is tainted or he’s gone underground. After all, the tour survived when he missed eight months in 2008-09. But Finchem’s insistence on soft-pedaling the impact, to use one of his favorite terms, is just plain counter-intuitive.”
During the call, when asked about whether Woods should be suspended, Finchem shrank: “I don’t have any facts to support anything that would trigger disciplinary action on the part of the TOUR.”
You know when Finchem finally showed some life? When he was his most assertive? When he lodged a flaming protest against the SNL skit that skewered him last Saturday. “The rumor that I keep a flask on my desk is not true.” He ought to take that kind of conviction against the real enemies of the game. Again, Elling teed him up and drove him further than a John Daly special:
“He must have had a few symbolic belts for breakfast, because much of what Finchem offered Thursday about the tour’s delicate position relating to the Woods disaster was as amusing as anything the commish has ever uttered.
Playing defense because of the manifold ties Woods has to the tour product, as well as the game’s general health, Finchem came out swinging with his driver, although plenty of the missives missed the mark. Deny and defy it loud enough, brother, and somebody might believe it.”
This was a man-or-a-mouse moment for the commissioner and the Tour. Were they going to stand up and be counted among the enemies of cheating and PEDs? Or were they going to shrink from the moment? Well the answer is in: don’t look to Tim Finchem to be proactive unless a wallet is involved.
Mark my words: The New York Daily News and The New York Times – experts in ferreting out PED cheats – are on this case, despite the plaintive requests of Mark Steinberg to “give the kid a break.” Moreover, now the tabloids have their bloodhounds on the scent. They will find every dark corner and shine a light on it ruthlessly, no matter who gets hurt.
All leaders face difficult decisions. It is by those decisions that they are judged. He’s been commissioner for 15 years, and every good thing he did stands at risk right now. Unless Finchem takes a tougher stand on the Galea issue and orders an investigation, bad news will follow bad news and embroil the Tour for their inaction as well as any possible users for their malfeasance.
Finchem is steering golf right to a Congressional hearing by repeating all the mistakes of MLB. And if the Tour suffers, so does everyone in the broadcasting and publishing industries as well. He must strengthen the testing policy, he must constantly amend the banned list to keep up with WADA and USADA standards, and he must allow for transparency and equality in the way punishments are handed out.
Otherwise the Tour policy is just as much of a sham as his presser yesterday morning.
[…] The Daily news agreed. So did CBS Sports. I wrote about it here and here. […]