PGA TOUR Commisioner, Tim Finchem, adressed the media today by conference call and had the following to say about the St. Jude Classic in Memphis, TN and references from Saturday Night Live...

"With regard to sponsorship in '10, we view the TOUR in 2010 being fully sponsored from a television and tournament charitable standpoint. Now, when we entered the year, we had four situations, one of which in Memphis, the Stanford Company, virtually imploding; and then three bankruptcy-related issues, two with General Motors, which is Buick Open in Michigan and the Buick Invitational in San Diego, and then one with Chrysler, which was the Bob Hope Chrysler Open.

Of those four, the Buick Open has been replaced. Memphis is in a bridge situation probably for the second year, although we continue to talk to potential longer term sponsors, but will be operational and fine and a steady purse and charitable giving level in Memphis."

"Lastly, let me turn for a few moments to the question of what's the effect of not having Tiger play the TOUR. I've been interested to see commentary from a different number of directions in the last week, specifically since Friday, since Tiger's announcement, that projects significant doom and gloom for the PGA TOUR, even to the point where Saturday Night Live got involved and had us losing most of our sponsors. Let me just parenthetically say that the rumor that I keep on flask on my desk is not true, that was spawned by the Saturday Night Live telecast on Saturday night.

Here's the real world: I know some pundits will try to say Tim is trying to spin this and spin that, but facts are facts. I could go on and on about the facts on this situation, but I just want to mention two or three things. First of all, I've been answering the question about what we do with tournaments where Tiger doesn't play for 13 years. How is it that the TOUR has 46, 47 events, Tiger plays in 16, how do the other tournaments make it happen? Scratching of heads. I've explained this many, many times.

The reason is there's value. There's real value to sponsorship. There's real value to television, and there's tremendous charitable commitment. Those three things come together to put together viable, well-funded tournaments.

I'll just give you two pieces of data to take away on this. One is if you consider that the top six charitable generators, top six tournaments in terms of charitable generation, and I'm sure everybody on the call knows all of our tournaments are organized for a charitable purpose. If you consider the top six; the Waste Management now sponsored by Waste Management event in Phoenix; the Valero Texas Open; the HP Byron Nelson; John Deere Classic; the AT&T Pebble Beach pro-am, these tournaments -- and the Crowne Plaza event at Colonial, Tiger hasn't played in any of those events since -- Byron maybe four years ago or five years ago, but most of these tournaments not in the last five years, and yet they're generating millions and millions of dollars to charity because they sell.

So why is that? It's because there's other factors. One factor is we've got a lot of players who the fans like. They'll buy tickets to come out and see them play. They're exciting. The second reason is the brand is strong. The third reason is that you have dedicated volunteer organizations in those communities reaching out and using our product to raise money for charity."