Week Later, Reviews Still Coming In For Finchem's Performance
/Ken Willis says it was a rough week for the PGA Tour, what with Rory's tooth acting up at an inopportune time on the heels of Tim Finchem's high profile stance on behalf of the tour's anchorers.
Anyway, Finchem's claims that anchoring isn't an advantage would hold more sway if the anchormen didn't flip out at the mention of its pending demise. If it's no advantage, why the howling?
Finchem, like any good lawyer, is representing all of his clients. Most of them, we're guessing, are in favor of banning the “non-golfing” stroke, but many want to keep it as a way of life or an option – and some of the anchormen, by the way, are some of the game's best players and camera-friendly stars (Adam Scott, Ernie Els, Keegan Bradley among them).
Michael Bamberger thinks the European Tour's planned support of the R&A and USGA is the final nail in any bid by the PGA Tour to stop the anchoring ban. He predicts the governing bodies will get strong support from Augusta National as well.
Oddly, Bamberger feels Finchem made an "effective" case on television last week even though he fudged numbers and made some pretty absurd claims in support of anchoring. And 72% of over 800 voters here were not impressed.
As for the legal avenues for angry anchorers, Bamberger doesn't like their chances.
But it's hard to imagine how any court is going to say that the USGA, along with the R&A, does not have the right to make the rules by which golf is played. After all, we're talking about a game! There are no right-to-work issues here. Casey Martin had right-to-work issues. He needed a cart to play professional golf. Guys who anchor-putt can find another way to get the ball in the hole. Casey Martin needed a way up a hill. By the way, did Tim Finchem have Martin's back as he had the backs of the limited number of Tour players who anchor-putt? Absolutely not.
That's right, he pushed talking points that didn't pass a basic smell test on national television for Tim Clark, but took Casey Martin to the Supreme Court!
John Huggan was not impressed with Finchem and the PGA Tour's case, calling it a "career-low moment for PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem."
Pssssst….see Casey Martin reference above. Go on…
Long renowned for his utter indifference to golf outside the narrow confines (and thinking) of the PGA Tour – witness his attitude to the so-called “World Golf Championships” that have long been played almost exclusively in the USA – he is no friend to a game invented and popularised in Scotland. His smug countenance last Sunday had everything to do with bullying golf’s ruling bodies and nothing to do with any deep-seated problem he may have with anchoring.
Happily, however, this is a battle Finchem is destined to lose. Which is fine – many will celebrate that fact. The hope here is that the R&A and USGA will be just as uncompromising when the time comes for action on restricting the distance golf balls can fly when struck by leading players wielding drivers with heads closely resembling frying pans. Don’t hold your breath on that one though.
**A few readers wrote in to note Bamberger's remarkable flip from last Sunday when he wrote that the anchoring ban was all but doomed: "It's hard to see how they win this battle. Finchem and the PGA Tour will make sure of it."
And this...
The USGA has to realize that doing the right thing is not enough these days. You have to figure out how to win the war on Twitter, and the USGA failed there. A guess is that the USGA will see the handwriting on the wall and announce it will take the matter of anchored putting under advisement. And the next time it wants to make a significant rule change, it will gather the troops and circle the wagons and lawyer-up the cause and all that nonsense before issuing a single press release.
This week's column above:
There's a lot of guesswork in this sentence, but I think the USGA and the R&A are going to be able to institute the proposed rule change, beginning in 2016, just as they have been planning to do. Finchem, and this whole thing of course is not about Finchem, will have successfully covered himself with both groups and will be able to say to his players who are opposed to the ban, "We tried, but we can't institute our own rule and go against the rest of the world." The anchoring crowd might talk about hiring high-priced legal talent to take on the USGA. Shades of the old 1980s grooves suit against Ping.
