FORD SENIOR PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

June 27, 1999

Tim Finchem

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, before we finish up here in about an hour, I just thought I'd stop in and see if you all have any questions. I don't have any announcements or anything. We're pleased with the championship this year. We had an all-time record for attendance, I think through yesterday. Apparently, that will be the case for the week. The promotion and support of the event was better than ever this year. The golf course continues to mature, and it's terrific. A little softer, perhaps, this week with the rain than we would have liked, frankly, but you just can't do anything about the rain. The SENIOR TOUR is enjoying another good year. Everything is up. Purses are up. Charitable contributions are up. We're looking forward to next year with Tom Kite, Tom Watson and Lanny Wadkins joined the TOUR, which starts about a five-year stretch when there's just a constant stream of good name players coming over from the PGA TOUR. And the context of The SENIOR TOUR is really going to change in the next five years in terms of the leaderboard look. And we think the best years of The SENIOR TOUR are still ahead of us. So, we're delighted, and Hale has just played lights out this week. Apparently, he's going to -- unless something very strange happens, he'll walk away with it. And with the slow start he had, it's kind of interesting that he's right back playing to the level he's been playing at the last two, two and a half years. For six or eight weeks at the first of the year, you started to wonder whether he had -- whether it was a different era for him. But, he's right there, and that's good for him; so, we're pleased. But I'll be happy to try to answer any questions you have.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, there's no time in history that -- there's no five-year period of history in The SENIOR TOUR when we ever got the kind of -- the number of top players we'll get over the next five years. And, really, when you look at the next seven years, some people think seven years is a long time, but it will be here tomorrow. It's amazing. It really is amazing that we'll have such a huge turnover. It's going to be a very exciting time for the SENIOR TOUR. And, the interesting thing, too, is these players are planning -- I talked to Payne Stewart about a month ago. And Payne's 42, and he was telling me about his career and his plans and then he said: "Of course, The SENIOR TOUR." And, you hear that more and more and more. And, you also see players who play actually more golf on The SENIOR TOUR than they did the last five or six years they played on the regular TOUR. Certainly, that's going to be the case with Watson. He'll play more. Kite and Wadkins will probably play much or more. Bruce Lietzke will clearly play more; so, it's a combination of players pointing toward The SENIOR TOUR. Their children get grown, they take off with their wife, play a lot of golf on The SENIOR TOUR. That also is going to help us in terms of growing The SENIOR TOUR.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Dave can get you that list. But we have Bruce Lietzke, Fuzzy Zoeller, Ben Crenshaw, and of course, couple years later, Curtis Strange, and right on down the list. It's just very, very strong. For a number of years, I've been predicting that Hale, in my judgment, may be the first player to play at this level after he's 55. Most of the players who win a multiple number of times in a year, Trevino, Rodriguez, the players who have come off the regular TOUR that come out here and win, five, six, seven times, typically about the time they got to be 55, slacks off a little bit. And, with Hale's physical condition, and his athleticism, I've always been one who has predicted that that may be different with Hale; that he'll continue to play at this level way past that. It will be interesting to see. But, obviously, the way he's playing now and the way he and Gil have played the last two and a half, three years, as good as these new players play, they are going to have a tough time beating them. It's going to be very interesting. We don't see any reason to change the no-cut format right now and, a lot of reasons not to. Obviously, we'd like to accommodate more players. That would be a good reason to. But on the other hand, once you go to a cut, we have an awful lot of name players that get cut on the weekend. That has a lot to do with the bread and butter of The SENIOR TOUR. People want to see those players on the weekend and, the corporate sponsor wants them in the Pro-Am. While we don't get a cut to the weekend, if they are going to get cut every week, they are not going to play; so, the whole package is structured differently than the regular TOUR. It's worked very well and at this juncture, we don't see any reason to change. We see a lot of reason not to.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, we're changing the configuration of the schedule after 2000. All of our agreements are through 2000 from a television standpoint. We're going to be moving some of the majors to create a better overall structure of schedule and platform for the SENIOR TOUR, as well as avoid snow, perhaps. So, No. 1, we'll be moving the Tradition a little later. Two, we'll move the PGA Seniors later, still. I'm thinking right now my best guess is one, the Tradition, getting into mid-April. The PGA Seniors will be late May. Maybe, first week in June. This tournament will go back to it's traditional slot in July. And then a couple years after that, the U.S. Open -- the U.S. Senior Open is locked in with its television agreements and scheduling for a little bit longer. But the couple years after that, we'll get more separation between the Ford Senior Players and the U.S. Open. So, within the next several years, we'll have a pretty good spread for the major championships, and we'll build everything else around that. And, I think it will help where we play, also. Certainly, that's the case with the PGA Seniors.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, that's what I was just talking about. We've been working with them on this for a year. When they said that, it wasn't any surprise because we'd been working together. But, our objective in the PGA Seniors is a major championship on The SENIOR TOUR. And just like the Tradition or this championship, or the U.S. Senior Open, we want to make it as strong as it possibly can be. We believe that if it moves into later in the spring, and can play some different golf courses, it would be a stronger tournament. We're going to accomplish that by 2001.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: No, no. They are going to play -- that will be the last week of May, first week of June. They will be able to play in the Northeast, Midwest, they will have a lot of venue possibilities. And, we think that's also a plus for the SENIOR TOUR.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: As long as we can handle the parking for the media, then we're going to stick with it.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: No. We're delighted. Yes, this and the Tradition, staying in the same market. This is a good golf course. It's gotten better over the years. It's first-rate. The facilities work well. This is a great golf market. The fans are terrific. We had a super group of 12-, 1300 volunteers. We're in the shadow of the headquarters building of our title sponsor. Wonderful working relationship with the ambassadors here. We've raised over $4 million for local, major key charities and that seems to grow every year. It's just a very, very strong infrastructure to the championship here. And a wonderful working relationship with Ford. So we don't see any reason at all to think about moving.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: They have had some discussions out there about looking at options, and we are talking to them. I think that the date change may solve that issue. There may be some other issues from the standpoint of gallery movement or whatever. But I think Lyle has always been focused on making the Tradition the best it can possibly be as a major championship on The SENIOR TOUR. And you know, usually -- not usually, that always means change. Some cases it's a lot of little things you don't see. In other cases, maybe it's moving. But whatever it is, we're open to working with them to continue to improve it.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I hope so, because it's up. It's up now. I think that -- you know, I think so. You always look to the future, but you know, here you have -- it's not like the PGA TOUR where you really don't know. Occasionally, you get a player like a Sergio Garcia where you say: Here's a guy that is probably going to make it on the PGA TOUR, but typically you don't. You don't know whether a player that wins the NCAA or places first or second in the U.S. Amateur can make it on the PGA TOUR. Here, it's different. Here we know -- we can project out, we can look out five, six, seven, eight, nine years and look at the critical mass of really great players who have had stellar careers on the PGA TOUR, and you just know that they are going to be able to come over here and play; and consequently we should use that. We should market that. We should get people to thinking ahead what it's going to be like when Fuzzy Zoeller is out here, or Curtis Strange, and use that. We need to be -- and so, sure, we're talking about it, but the thing about The SENIOR TOUR today is that it is so strong structurally. Good, charitable relationships. Great title sponsor relationships. Very strong positive relationships with title sponsors. Good golf courses. Great golf and a deep list of well-known players that work for the two-day Pro-Am. They give us our galleries. Great charitable giving. It's very strong. It's just that in our judgment, the growth of The SENIOR TOUR from an attraction standpoint is very -- has a lot of potential in the next five years. We think it can be a lot stronger still and that's the direction we want to take.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: It's a little early to tell. We're in discussions with Cadillac and ESPN, but I suspect those discussions are going to go on for a number of weeks. We may be talking to some other folks; I don't know. But I think the basic structure we'll have done by the fall, and be ready to go. The other thing I should say, too, about the SENIOR TOUR is we've invested a lot in creating better -- creating better venues for the SENIOR TOUR. We have five SENIOR TOUR events moving to -- probably six moving to Tournament Players Clubs in the next two, three years. The TOUR Championship is moving to the Fazzio-designed TPC in Myrtle Beach this fall which we think is going to be well-received. There's no real estate development on the golf course. It's a TOUR golf course, like it is here, even with less development around it. And it will work very well for spectators. We have an Arnold Palmer design under construction in Minnesota, Twin Cities, which I think is going to be a very, very good golf course for spectators. We are in the design process in Cincinnati and Boston for those tournaments. And we have -- we'll be announcing in a couple of more here in the next three or four months the Tradition. So the quality of the venues where we play The SENIOR TOUR is also going to improve significantly as we go forward, and better for the spectators, which is -- we want to make sure that The SENIOR TOUR events are spectator-friendly. That's one of our objectives the next five years. Sometimes we've allowed ourselves to get on golf courses that frankly are difficult for spectators and the modern golf courses which maximizes real estate frontage, and that's fine. And any golf course is a good golf course for growing the game of golf, but we want to make sure we have a situation where the spectator can move around and watch who we want to watch.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I think that the symmetry of the three tours is about right. We have about the same time on The SENIOR TOUR and the regular TOUR. The players have about two months of the challenge season in November and December, which is unofficial money events during the challenge season, where they can either play in a few of those special events or take the time off. If we reduce the schedule, frankly, the challenges will just expand. There will be more made-for-TV events and, we'd have a lesser number of weeks when all of the eligible players could play; so I don't see us going in that direction. I think we're pretty comfortable, at least for the next few years, with the basic scheduling structure.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, yes, but I don't think you necessarily are going to see more of them. Reason we approved the Duval-Woods match, and when I say yes, I'm talking about challenge-season type events during the official money season. This is atypical for us to approve an event that would be during the official money season. The negatives are we don't like anything to take away attention from the official money season, what the players are playing for. Whether it's money list, Arnold Palmer award, Byron Nelson trophy, Players of the Year, Jack Nicklaus award, eligibility on the Presidents Cup, Ryder Cup teams, entering the major championships. You name it. That's all official-money related, and to divert public attention from that is just not good. On the other hand, this particular case, we felt that one an awful lot of people wanted to see this match right now. These players have been jockeying No. 1 and No. 2 in the world rankings for a good period of time. There's a lot of interest in a head-up match. Admittedly, it's unofficial money. Admittedly, it's not career-impactful. But we thought it would be a fun match to show. Secondly, to be able to do it with summer daylight so that we can capture those very late air times in the east, going to eleven o'clock at night in the normal Monday night football time frame, with ABC's first-rate, first-class first-team production crew was appealing to us in terms of reaching a lot of people, and bringing them into the game; so we decided to do it notwithstanding the concerns we had. Do we want to do this every week? Absolutely not. Do we want to do every month? No. Even if we do it again next year -- I doubt it. I don't see it being an annual thing. I think it's a special time, special set of reasons. It's not something we're going to make a habit of. So I would encourage you to watch it, because you may not see one for a while. Well, just about all of our senior golf is on television, or a lot of it, certainly, about two-thirds. You almost three-quarters. That's about right. We may add a little bit more. But we want to give our players -- a player who is playing well as much television exposure as we can. That's the way we are as a trade association. On the other hand, you don't want to have so much television out there that it's diluting the marketplace terribly. It's about right, now. However, on The SENIOR TOUR, we might add a little bit more in the next five years.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, they don't play, really. Typically, they play later, on television. We have that 5:30 to 7:00 time frame, which we like, and we would prefer to have a consistent, late time frame for the SENIOR TOUR. I don't know whether we can do that. But I think the only issue there in our minds, Jerry, is tape delay. You know there's three or four times a year when we play live, local to seven o'clock. It's tough to keep the gallery that late. The people just don't want to be out at a sporting event until seven o'clock at night. In those cases, we might opt for tape delay some, because we'd rather have our crowd on television. But other than that, I think we're pretty comfortable where we are. However, I don't know where we're going to come out in these discussions; so it would be premature for me to assume that we're going to have any kind of particular structure until we get further into the negotiations.