TIM TALKS: PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem commented yesterday on Tiger Woods' dispute with the Tour over marketing issues: "We don't have any issues that can't be resolved. It's always in our interest to make our tour a marketing platform for all our players. In a lot of ways we're going to be working closely together. ... Our issues can be resolved in the existing framework of the Tour. We understand where Tiger wants to go, and we'll go down that path together." Finchem, on Woods playing in 20 Tour events this year: "I'd like to see him play a little more, but he plays a very solid schedule" (USA TODAY, 12/14). HE DOES NOT LOVE THIS GAME: Bucks coach George Karl said, "I don't like watching NBA basketball. To be honest with you, I think it's (shoddy) basketball, in general. I'm sure [NBA Commissioner] David Stern is going to love hearing that. The game's gotten individual, selfish, one-on-one oriented. ... We don't have enough great players who are respectful to coaching or respectful to practice habits" (CBS SportsLine, 12/13). Karl appeared on ESPN's "Up Close" yesterday and expressed the difficulties involved in motivating players, "The size of the contracts, the money and the guaranteed contracts is a problem in our game. There's no question in my mind it is going to become a bigger problem" ("Up Close," ESPN, 12/13). HOCKEYTOWN, USA? In Toronto, Al Strachan writes after attending the NHL meetings in FL that the league is "catching on in the U.S. and whatever erosion is occurring in Canada is more than compensated for by a flood of new fans catching the fever" in the U.S. While U.S. fans are "much less familiar with hockey's history" than are Canadians, they are "flooding to the game because they like it for what it is now" (TORONTO SUN, 12/14).
