® West, taking a break at the BMW Championship at Conway Farms in Lake Forest, Ill., knows working with tour pros isn’t always a picnic. CREDIT PHOTO 42 NOVEMBER 11, 2013 ❮ GOLFWORLD.COM t was a hot, humid June Monday at Congressional CC and Tim West was doing what he does most Mondays on the PGA Tour: putting out brushfires. Shortly before the first tee time of the AT&T Nation- al’s Monday pro-am, West got a phone call from Keith Nolan, one of 28 pros scheduled to play that day. “Whenever this phone rings, I know it’s not someone I calling to ask how my kids are doing,” West said, smiling the wry smile that most people on tour recognize right away. “It’s almost always a problem.” This one, in West-world, was relatively minor. It wasn’t a delayed plane or a broken-down courtesy car or, as some- times happens, “a weak excuse to try to get out of playing.” PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO Nolan doesn’t currently have PGA Tour status, but West There is no day quite like Monday on the PGA Tour. The had asked him to play that day because finding 28 “Monday locker room is close to empty because most players haven’t guys” in a 132-man field is never easy. “If you have 156, getting arrived yet. Some tournaments don’t even sell tickets 28 isn’t that tough,” he said. “When you’ve got an invitational for the day because the number of fans likely to show up like this one, 22 is a much better number. But the tournaments doesn’t justify the cost of getting the course up and running don’t want to turn away groups that want to play. Can’t say I for the public. blame them. You’re talking about real money here.” But for those who work on Monday, it is very important Nolan was running a little late but figured he would be on to get the day right. The amateurs aren’t paying as much time unless he had to stop at an ATM machine for cash. “I as those who pay to play in the more glamorous pro-am on need 100 bucks to tip my caddie,” he told West. On Mondays Wednesday, but they are ponying up a significant amount many players use local caddies rather than PGA Tour caddies. and expect an entertaining day in return. Especially someone like Nolan, who had been, as West put it, Monday is also the last real chance to find out if there is “called in from the bullpen” to play after a late dropout. anything on the course that needs to be fixed or tweaked: “Get over here right away,” West said. “I’ll find you a hun- Are the green speeds adequate? Is there enough sand in the dred bucks.” bunkers? Is the rough too high or too wet or too thick? Looking in his own wallet, West had $20. He couldn’t “When most guys show up on Tuesday to play practice a!ord the time to go find an ATM either because his job rounds, if something’s wrong with the golf course, we hear during the next three hours was to make sure all 28 pros got about it right away,” says tour rules o"cial Steve Rintoul. to their tee times and met their amateurs, who were paying “I’d rather hear about it Monday. If Tim [West] tips me o! $10,000 per group for four players to play with a pro who was that there’s an issue, I know it’s something I need to look into unlikely to resemble Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson or Rory right away.” McIlroy. Stars don’t play on Mondays although fallen stars Searching for the $100 he needed for Nolan, West looked sometimes do because the only way for them to get to play on around the range and saw Tommy (Two Gloves) Gainey Thursday is to show up on Monday. walking past. Gainey had volunteered to play on Monday 44 NOVEMBER 11, 2013 ❮ GOLFWORLD.COM Talk show: Conversation and relationship building is West’s stock in trade. Chatting up golfers such as Brian Gay (salmon pants) and Michael Thompson (blue shirt) at Conway Farms is part of the “Commissioner’s” job. got there,” West says. “I always told him he was one of the first of the tour’s vice presidents in charge of nothing. He may have invented the role. We Wests are trendsetters.” West spent most of his boyhood in Nashville (where he still lives) and went to Western Kentucky with no idea what he wanted to do in order to help out West. Having won the 2012 McGladrey after college. Genetics may have prevailed though, because his Classic, Gainey didn’t need to play on Monday, and he cer- first job was as a salesman—in golf. tainly didn’t need the $1,000 each pro receives for participat- He worked for Supreme Golf out of Cincinnati until he was ing. But he was there, knowing that West needed players. o"ered a job as a road representative for Ram. After West “Hey Gloves,” West said. “Can you spot me a hundred until spent a couple of years supplying stores and golf shops in tomorrow?” Tennessee and Kentucky, Ram decided to send him out on Gainey laughed, looked in his wallet and pulled out $100. tour. He had two assignments: Make sure Tom Watson, then He gave West the ritual hard time about it, but the next day, Ram’s most visible player, was happy and try to get as many after West had repaid him, he said without a trace of a smile: players as possible to play the Zebra putter. “Tim West is always good for it, I know that. [When] he gives “Watson was easy,” West says, laughing. “I look at some of you his word on anything, you can count on it.” these guys out here who won’t have careers that will match With Gainey’s money in hand, West headed toward the some of his months who act like bigger stars than Tom ever course. Play was about to get underway. did. He was about as low maintenance as any player you “Gotta go check on the kiddies,” he said. “Make sure could possibly work with. everyone’s behaving.” “I got lucky with the Zebra,” he continues. “We’d just signed Lee Janzen, and he was about to become a star. Then Nick n the PGA Tour, West is known as The Monday Price started using the putter when he was the best player in Commissioner. Almost everyone associated the world, and that put us completely back on the map.” with the tour in any capacity—from players to After four years on tour for Ram, West got itchy selling caddies to tournament directors to sponsors to just one product and decided to go independent. Over the media members to Tim Finchem, the commis- next few years he repped everything from grips to rain gear. sioner the other six days of the week, calls him Working for so many people in so many areas meant he was Oby that uno!cial title. in contact with just about everyone in golf. “Can’t remember who put it on me first,” West says one af- But it was an old friend of his father’s who changed his life. ternoon, standing on the back of the range at Hilton Head. “I Moose Wammock had worked for the tour as the tourna- think it actually might have been Tim [or as West calls him, ment manager for what was then the Tournament Players “the other commissioner,”] but I’m honestly not sure.” Championship in the 1970s and ’80s before starting his own West, 51, has been part of the PGA Tour’s traveling circus events company. In the late 1980s Monday pro-ams began since 1989. Even though he describes himself as someone who to appear on tour, and it was Wammock who worked with never played much golf, his roots in the game are deep: His tournament directors to put them together. father, Art West, worked for commissioner Deane Beman in The Monday pro-am is completely di"erent from those marketing starting in 1979, around the time Beman moved the played at most tour stops on Wednesday. Players must play, tour’s headquarters to Ponte Vedra Beach. if asked, on Wednesday. If you are in the Wednesday pro-am “They were still working out of trailers when my dad and you no-show, you can’t play on Thursday—unless you GOLFWORLD.COM ❯ NOVEMBER 11, 2013 45 are Phil Mickelson and you can’t get to Dallas because of bad Have cart will travel: knew everyone,” Hougham says. “When weather. Jim Furyk wasn’t as lucky in 2010 at the Barclays West, making the I told him who had been committed to rounds during the when his alarm didn’t go o! and he was late. The rule on pro-am at the BMW play, he actually told me who hadn’t showing up late for the pro-am has since been amended. The Championship shown up before I even told him. So I no-show rule still applies. in September, said to him, ‘Can you get me a field of is always on the Mondays are voluntary—sort of. Amateurs understand move—especially on guys who will actually show up?’ He did, that none of the tour’s current stars will be in their foursome.