Dow up 50 years later

Tuesday afternoon at the PGA Championship provided a pleasant surprise for the few reporters who bothered to get up from their laptops and venture in to listen to a 78-year-old man.

Dow Finsterwald was at Oakland Hills reminiscing about his victory 50 years ago when he won the first medal-play PGA Championship at Llanerch Country Club in Havertown, Pa. He prefers to be known for that instead of being the last man to lose the match-play version to Lionel Hebert in the finals the year before.

"So I guess I'm a little prejudiced about stroke play," Finsterwald said. "But it was the logical thing to do and the time to do it."

Some say that the PGA lost its major identity when it gave up the match-play format to adhere to the more telegenic 72-hole stroke play. But Finsterwald understood even then that the world was changing with the advent of TV and sometimes tournaments needed to change with it to survive.

He pointed out the jam-packed conclusion of this year's U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, when Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate played 19 holes alone on Monday in front of more than 25,000 fans, as proof.

"Just watching on TV, we all could see that the gallery was having a tough time getting into position to see," Finsterwald said.

 Here's a few other things the 11-time PGA Tour winner had to say on a variety of subjects:

On the Ryder Cup evolution since he captained the U.S. team against the Great Britain & Ireland team in 1977: "I was not aware it was seriously being considered to include the Europeans. Later on in the week, I was told and asked my opinion. I said, well, it's such a great event the way it is, as much tradition and history, I'm not sure they should be included. In fact, if you're trying to make it closer, you could take our players and put them against the world and we would still kick their something or other. Well, that just shows you how wrong I was."

On the greatest players he's ever seen: "We certainly have a guy on the ailing list right now (Tiger Woods) that certainly would be right there. ... But you have a (Bobby) Jones, a (Sam) Snead, a (Byron) Nelson, (Ben) Hogan, Arnold (Palmer), Jack (Nicklaus) ... these guys, I think would be winners whenever they would have played.

"What a wonderful couple of years of golf it would be if we could resurrect those guys and get them all out there playing in their prime. It would really be something to see, I think."

On playing for a fraction of the modern money available today: "We did it for love. My father told me early on that if a person were able to make a living doing something he likes, the chances of him having a happy life are greatly enhanced. I bet you guys out there, if you weren't writing you wouldn't be enjoying life as much as you do."

Amen.