Australian and European Tours Baker-Finch turned professional in 1979. Baker-Finch had a 10-year exemption from the PGA Tour for his Open Championship win, leaving him exempt until 2001. He achieved a runner-up finish in
The Players Championship in 1992, but otherwise never came close to contending on the PGA Tour again. He picked up wins in Australia in 1992 and 1993 but his form then went into a steep and accelerating decline. He began to lose confidence in his game and tinkered with his swing often. His last top-10 finish on the PGA Tour was a tie for 10th in the 1994
Masters Tournament. Baker-Finch then famously suffered a complete collapse of his game. The problems were often psychological: he would hit shots flawlessly on the practice range, and then go to the first tee and hit a weak drive into the wrong fairway. In the 1995 Open Championship at
St Andrews, he notoriously
hooked his first round tee shot at the first out-of-bounds on the left side of the fairway shared with the 18th, with attention focused on him as his playing partner was
Arnold Palmer, competing in his final Open. In 1995 and 1996 he missed the cut, withdrew after one round or was disqualified in all 29 PGA Tour events that he entered. Baker-Finch later said: "I lost my confidence. I got to the point where I didn't even want to be out on the golf course because I was playing so poorly. I would try my hardest but when I came out to play, I managed to find a way to miss the cut time and time again. It became a habit." After shooting a 92 in the first round of the 1997 Open at
Royal Troon, an extraordinarily bad score by tournament professional standards, Baker-Finch admitted that he cried in the locker room that afternoon. He withdrew from the championship after one round and retired from tournament golf. He was hired by
ESPN and
ABC Sports to comment on golf tournaments in 1998, and did so until 2006. During this time, Baker-Finch served as the lead analyst for ESPN and as a hole announcer for ABC, though on many occasions he filled in as ABC's lead analyst. In 2007, he was hired by
CBS Sports as a hole announcer, a position he held until his retirement on August 3, 2025. During this era, Baker-Finch served as
Gary Player's captain's assistant for the International team in the
Presidents Cup in 2003, 2005 and 2007. Reporting for CBS at the 2007
Barclays tournament, Baker-Finch was one of the thousands gathered around the 18th green as
Rich Beem hit his approach shot. The errant shot hit straight on Baker-Finch's cheek and knocked him down, causing him to fall on his back behind the green. Baker-Finch recovered before Beem got to his ball. ==Personal life==