PGA Tour Commissioner Responds To Tough Tiger Questions
Posted on Fri Feb 19th, 2010 12:37pm PDT By X17 Staff
After Tiger laid it all out on the line this morning, the PGA Tour was hit with some tough questions about how the superstar's absence from the golf course will affect the organization.
Here's how PGA commissioner Tim Finchem handled the press:
How will the PGA tour be affected?
I think if there's anything about Tiger Woods that's been evident over the last 14 years is that when he sets his mind to do something and he brings the attention and focus that he can to do something, he's been successful. He laid out this morning, I think, what he feels like he needs to deal with. And from my personal perspective of watching him over the years, I give him an excellent chance to manage to do exactly that. I'll just take him for the roadmap that he laid out this morning and look forward to seeing how that progresses.
Did you feel sorry for him?
What I've heard from most people is mainly there's an anger in some quarters, but mainly there is a sense of sadness that he's an American hero and he's had these issues. But at the end of the day, he's a human being. We all make mistakes. We all have made mistakes. And when we're lucky, we learn from those mistakes and we get to be better people. And it seems to me that's the course that he is on.
Click after the jump to see what else Finchem had to say...
I haven't had any specific information from him in my conversations about what he plans to do. My sense is that, as candidly as always been the case, he will play when he's ready and when he thinks he can compete. Only he can make that decision. When he's prepared to say when he's prepared to do that, take that step, I'm sure he'll let us know. But I have no timeline in my own mind as to when that would be.
How difficult might it be for you to make sure that his escapades in the past are not the focus of the coverage and also to insulate him and the PGA Tour?
I really don't know the extent to which the American public generally, the media is part of that, allows him the opportunity to demonstrate where he's headed in a credible way is something that individuals will have to determine. But hopefully we can maintain the decorum that we've had historically for our golf tournaments, and we'll just call on our fans to react positively to his request this morning, which was to judge him by his actions, allow him the opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to the directions that he's mentioned today, and hopefully most people are going to do just that.
No mention of whether El Tigre will be playing in this year's Masters Golf Tournament. Should he play in the biggest tourney of the year?
