What's Behind The Policy Board?

From drug testing to the new cut rule to the distribution of points for FedEx Cup playoff events, PGA Tour players have been more concerned with off-course news than on-course activity in 2008. Given the consternation the tour's rank-and-file has displayed over these decisions, one would think the commissioner's office in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., makes the rules, and that the players -- who are not unionized -- are forced unilaterally to go along. But that's giving Tim Finchem too much credit.

PGA Tour members rely on the Player Advisory Council (PAC) and the PGA Tour Policy Board to represent them on issues involving Finchem and his staff. The PAC, a 16-player committee, serves as a filter to the policy board, which is comprised of four players (Stewart Cink, Brad Faxon, Joe Ogilvie and David Toms) and four volunteer independent directors, all of whom are among the nation's most prominent businessmen and one member from the PGA of America. The latter includes Hearst Corporation president Vic Ganzi, who has replaced retiring Richard Ferris of United Airlines as chairman; Ed Whitacre, the former chairman and CEO of AT&T; and financial executives John McCoy of Bank One and Ken Thompson of Wachovia. The PGA of America director is Brian Whitcomb, the association's president. The Player directors are consulted but have little input in the appointment of independent directors. This nine-man council sits at the right hand of Finchem and governs the tour.

Player directors almost exclusively decide competition-related matters. The independent directors defer to the players in these cases, except when they are called on to levy fines and select venues for tour events. But when it comes to non-competitive issues -- such as devising and underwriting the FedEx Cup playoffs or financing construction of the new clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass -- the independent directors assume a more active role.

The policy board is the committee that approved the tour's much-scrutinized anti-doping plan last November. It will determine if any changes are forthcoming in the playoff's points system (provided the PAC submits recommendations it do so), and it created the floating-cut rule that was first implemented at the Sony Open three weeks ago and kept 19 players from weekend play at the Buick Invitational.

The decision to change the cut rule -- in effect, if more than 78 players qualify for the weekend, the official cut is lowered by a stroke -- began with discussions that go back three years. Tired of the slow play that was the result of expanded weekend fields, the PAC asked rules officials for feedback. They responded with the framework of the plan that ultimately was passed on to the policy board at its final meeting of 2007. The board agreed to implement the recommendations, and Finchem accepted the changes.

"The rule was passed to make a better tour," says Cink. "We knew it was going to ruffle some feathers, and obviously we've been called some horrendous names since Hawaii, but we believe it was a good decision. If we get to the end of the year and players are still making noise, we can always change it back. There are no egos involved. It was a business decision that [the board] made. We're standing by it."

This is how the system was designed to work, but sometimes there can be a communication breakdown. Players are notified of policy-board decisions online and through "green sheets" posted in locker rooms, but those are often ignored. That's when controversy and talk of a player union ensues. "After you do it for a while, you learn the players change, but you get the same kind of attitudes," says Davis Love III, who stepped down this year after a record third term on the board. "You have 20 to 30 guys who really want to help, and 20 to 30 guys that, no matter what you tell them, are just going to complain that everything is bad and nothing else is going to change. Everybody else just wants to hit balls and get better."

It takes a certain type of player to want to log the extra six-to-eight hours a week needed to sit on the boards and deal with disgruntled players. Brett Quigley is one of them. At the end of last season, council member Quigley was frustrated at the bureaucracy and the thanklessness that goes with being on the PAC. Recovering from knee surgery and adjusting to fatherhood (Quigley and his wife, Amy, have a 10-month-old daughter), the 12-year veteran was set to step down. But just before New Year's Day he received calls from Sid Wilson, the tour's vice president of player relations, and Faxon. "I felt I had given up on [caring about] the tour. Then they asked me to come back," Quigley says. "We had long talks about the tour, about sponsorships, about drug testing, whatever."