The Wire for Thursday, November 1, 2001

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A Look Back: Nov. 1

1964: Billy Casper wins the Almaden Open.

1976: Mark Hayes wins the Pensacola Open by two strokes over Lee Elder.

1987: Tom Watson wins the Nabisco Championships of Golf, later named the Tour Championship, by two strokes over Chip Beck.

1992: Paul Azinger wins the Tour Championship by three strokes over Lee Janzen and Corey Pavin.

1998: Hal Sutton defeats Vijay Singh in a playoff to win the Tour Championship.

Equipment
Cobra introduces the King Cobra SS 350 driver, the first club in a series of next-generation King Cobra products, which will be launched at the 2002 PGA Merchandise Show in January. The King Cobra SS 350 driver line will be available in four lofts -- 7.5, 9.0, 10.5, 12.0 -- in both right-hand and left-hand options as well as for women and seniors.
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According to an independent third-party study, E-Z-GO was determined to be the No. 1 golf car in the United States, capturing 46.5 percent of the golf car market in 2000. Its closest competitor was at 37 percent. The study also showed that E-Z-GO was No. 1 in 1999 with 43.4 percent of the market.
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Courses
Royal Canadian Golf Association and Bell Canada confirm that the West-South Course at Hamilton Golf & Country Club in Ontario will be the site of the 2003 Bell Canadian Open. Hamilton, which opened for play in 1894, is one of the founding clubs of the RCGA.
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Sponsorships
Florida Coca-Cola Bottling Company is the official provider of non-alcoholic beverages for the 2001 Tyco/ADT Championship, the LPGA Tour's season-ending event, Nov. 15-18, at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
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Copa Airlines signs an agreement with the Tour de las Americas to be the exclusive airline for staff transportation during the 2001-2002 season. In addition, the TLA, the only professional golf tour in Latin America and the Caribbean which hosts more than 20 events in 14 countries gives Copa a presence in all the televised coverage of the events.
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People
Art Wall, who won the 1959 Masters and 14 PGA Tour titles before helping form the Senior PGA Tour, died Wednesday morning in Scranton, Pa., as a result of respiratory failure. The 77-year-old Wall had been hospitalized the previous two weeks.
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Technology
Country Club Enterprises chooses PRONTO Software to provide a system for managing the sale, leasing, distribution, maintenance and repair of golf carts. Country Club Enterprises is one of the largest Club Car distributors in the U.S., serving the New England area.
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Business
Fortune Brands, parent company of the Acushnet Company and its brands Titleist, Cobra and Footjoy, announces a live webcast of its Nov. 6 presentation at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference. The company's Chairman and CEO Norm Wesley will speak.
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Golf event management firm Double Eagle Golf offers a new, free evaluation service for companies or individuals thinking of hosting a tournament. Company employees help potential clients determine if a golf event is the best way to achieve goals and that the event itself will produce optimum return on investment.
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Majority owner of The Golf Channel Comcast announces double-digit increases in revenue and operating cash flow for the cable network. While the parent company overall lost more than $106 million for the third quarter, it cited its golf programming as a bright spot.
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Associations
The United States Golf Association commits more than $2 million in 2002 for assistance to state and regional golf associations and their programs. Also, more than $1.3 million in grants will assist associations through the P.J. Boatwright Jr. Internship Program.
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Five Questions
Tim Finchem
PGA Tour Commissioner

On Wednesday, at the Tour Championship, PGA Tour comissioner Tim Finchem held a State of the PGA Tour press conference, reflecting on the events of the past season that included Tiger Woods winning five times, including the Masters, numerous players emerging as new young talent, and how the tragedies of Sept. 11 are affecting the Tour.

TIM FINCHEM: We haven't visited in a while. Delighted to see everyone here to be with us during The Tour Championship this year.

Let me say that I want to stress and talk mainly this morning about a couple of major points, but I'd like to start off this session by talking about this week and The Tour Championship presented by Dynegy before I get into the general business of the Tour.

Of course, we cherish our relationship with the Houston Golf Association and Jackie Burke and Champions, so we are delighted to announce this morning that we will be returning here with The Tour Championship presented by Dynegy in 2003.

We have had a good year this year on the PGA Tour. Certainly highlighted by Tiger's five wins, win at The Masters, win at The Players Championship. Phil's consistently good play, and I might say that we fully appreciate Phil's reasoning for not being here this week, with a new baby, a new baby that had to go back to the hospital for a few days. His priorities are situated correctly.

David Toms' special performance at the PGA Championship and developing into not just a real champion, but a fine young man, as well. And the other great performances, we are delighted the Tour has performed very well.

I'd like to make today just two major points and give some reasoning behind those points. We haven't been together in a while. This has been a strange year for our country, a difficult year for our country, and one that where we have had an interruption in our play for the first time that any of us can remember after the attacks in New York.

But as I stand here today, I am confident of two things: One, the PGA Tour is stronger than it has ever been; and two, over the next five years, it will be stronger still.

I have read some things recently about the recession, about the new television arrangements on the PGA Tour driving costs up, the questioning of our sponsorship base. I want to allay these questions, answer those questions to the extent that they are legitimate, if at all, by saying that we are stronger than we have ever been and we will be stronger in the next five years, and here's why: Why are we stronger than we have ever been?

No. 1, first and foremost, the image of our players and our overall structure conditions to continues to be very special in sport.

These tournaments this year have raised, with players' support, over $65 million for charity. Yet again, this year in every single poll I have seen that evaluates the opinion of sports fans in America, PGA Tour players, Senior Tour players are rated 25 to 30 percentage points above athletes in any other sport in terms of role models.

Click here for the complete transcript of Tim Finchem's comments Wednesday from the Tour Championship.