Two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange beams while reflecting on the Skins Game.
“Why do some things work?,” he says. “That one really seemed to work.”
It has been 16 years since the silly season golf competition was last played. But once upon a time, it was as synonymous with Thanksgiving weekend as turkey and football.
“It was certainly a much-watch spectacle on TV,” says Strange, speaking recently to Sports Illustrated. “And I don’t think you can underplay the magnitude of the viewership, it was something so special—unheard of. Skins game, Arnie [Palmer], Jack [Nicklaus], Lee [Trevino] and Tom [Watson] together.
“It was just perfect.”
The Skins Game was such a success that different people have tried to take credit for creating it. In the 1990s, Bob Halloran, the former head of sports for the Mirage Hotel, filed a lawsuit claiming he, not TV producer Don Ohlmeyer, brought the idea to life. Nicklaus ended up being deposed, but said he didn’t know who Halloran was.
“Well, lo and behold, Jack Nicklaus, under oath of the deposition, said, ‘The reason I went to the Skins Game was, the guy who asked me to do it was Alastair Johnston,’” says Johnston, an IMG Golf executive who played an integral part in creating the Skins Game.
Halloran, who died in 2022, received an out-of-court settlement, but afterward told the Los Angeles Times, “I would have rather owned a piece of the Skins Game.”
***
Nowadays, silly season events in golf are abundant, from the PNC Championship, Grant Thornton Invitational and “The Match.” Some 40 years ago, however, they were unprecedented.
Sometime around 1982, Johnston got a call from Barry Frank, who ran Trans World International, the television arm of IMG. Frank had been approached by Ohlmeyer, a former executive producer for NBC Sports, who founded Ohlmeyer Communications. Ohlmeyer wanted to start a new golf tournament after the official PGA Tour season ended.
The format he had in mind was a skins game, in which four players competed to win individual holes with a dollar value up for grabs on each hole. If two players tied than the hole was considered tied for all and the money rolled over to the next hole, setting up increasingly valuable putts. Eighteen holes would be played over two days.
“It is shootout scoring on each hole,” Ohlmeyer told the New York Times in 1983. “There's no safety factor. Players go for big drives and go for all long putts. Everyone tries for birdies and eagles. There is no concern for the overall 18-hole score.”
Beyond the idea, though, they had nothing.
Frank and Ohlmeyer would run the television production and Johnston would be the breakthrough in getting participation from Palmer and Gary Player, whom he represented as their agent with IMG. However, they wanted golf’s biggest star—the Golden Bear.
“I approached Jack, literally on the practice tee,” Johnston says to SI of a 1983 meeting at Bay Hill. “We’d only met briefly before, but he knew who I was, and I said, ‘Here’s an idea.’”
The Scot made his pitch and Nicklaus told him, “You’ve found me at the right time.”
Gary Player
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) April 6, 2022
Jack Nicklaus⁰Tom Watson
Arnold Palmer
Relive the 1983 Skins Game featuring four legends. pic.twitter.com/rDJFCYzkCg
Nicklaus had been designing Desert Highlands, a golf course that opened in 1983 in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Skins Game would help the course get exposure. Johnston went back to Ohlmeyer and Frank with the plan. Then, they arranged for Watson to sign on as the fourth player and NBC agreed to broadcast it live—not on tape delay.
The Skins Game was born.
Notable cash, and ratings
Shortly after the inaugural Skins Game, Johnston remembers seeing a headline in the news.
“NBC at last has its major.”
It was referring to the Skins Game, as NBC wouldn’t broadcast the U.S. Open for another 12 years.
The format had everything viewers could want—golf’s four most charismatic stars competing, legendary broadcaster Vin Scully doing play-by-play and a lump sum of cash at stake.
A total pot of $360,000 coming primarily from television sponsors didn’t count toward the PGA Tour’s official money list but the players took it seriously—and controversy erupted.
On the 16th hole, Watson accused Player of cheating by removing a leaf that was resting against his ball, claiming it was not a loose impediment. The South African denied the accusation, saying “I told (Watson) I didn't, and he accepted that. And that's the way we left it.”
The two halved that hole to make No. 17 worth $150,000, which Player took home by sinking a 5-foot putt. For context, the winner of the 1983 Masters won $90,000 and the U.S. Open champion claimed $72,000.
“I hate to even mention the money, because there’s so much mentioned about the money now, ridiculously, but it was about the money back in the day … that was part of the attraction,” says Strange, who earned $265,000 by triumphing in the 1989 Skins Game, $65,000 more than what he collected by winning his second straight U.S. Open five months earlier.
The cash on the line also triggered some candid reactions on the course, which made an impression on a young Phil Mickelson.
“I remember watching the Skins Game as a kid,” Mickelson said ahead of the 2008 edition, where he competed. “One of my best memories of the Skins Game was watching Nicklaus on 18 at Desert Highlands make a putt for $240,000 and throw his putter up in the air. I thought that was a pretty cool moment.”
In the following years, the prize money kept climbing—and so did the ratings.
For a while, the Skins Game was consistently the second-most watched golf tournament of the year, behind the Masters. In 1985 and ‘86, with the event having moved from Arizona to Palm Springs, Calif., it even matched the year's first major in the ratings.
Yes, the money, stars and holiday weekend time slot were pivotal to its success. But also, the entertainment product wasn’t the typical meat-and-potatoes golf telecast.
“From a TV standpoint, we were there to liven up the broadcast, to bring out the personalities of the players,” says Strange, who joined the Skins Game broadcast team when the event moved to ABC in the ‘90s. “And we had one or two on-course (reporters) to help us do that. It wasn’t about 155-yard 7-iron shots.”
But all good things come to an end.
“Like anything,” Strange said, “(the Skins Game) had a lifespan.”
The novelty runs out
The demise of the Skins Game can be attributed to several factors.
“Quite frankly, when you open up with Jack and Arnie and Lee and Tom, you’ve got one way to go—and that's down,” Strange says. “Other than Tiger Woods, there's nobody that’s gonna hold a candlestick to those four guys.”
After the fantastic four teed it up in the maiden event, more of the Tour’s familiar names were invited to participate, such as Lee Trevino, Fuzzy Zoeller, Payne Stewart, John Daly, Greg Norman and Fred Couples, who was known as “Mr. Skins” for his record five victories.
Tiger Woods made his Skins Game debut in 1996. In six tries, he never won. During the Woods era, Mickelson played in the event and Annika Sorenstam broke its gender barrier in 2003. Other players included Colin Montgomerie, Jesper Parnevik, Mark O’Meara and Tom Lehman – pros with exceptional careers but were not necessarily appointment television.
“The problem with the PGA Tour was that they started making stipulations about who should be in the event,” Johnston says. “We had to concede to it, but that really was the beginning of the end.”
One of the requisites was that the winner of the Players Championship would clinch one of the four spots. That paved the way for Fred Funk to win the 2005 Skins Game at 49 years old (the oldest champion in its history), followed by Stephen Ames in 2006.
By that point, the appetite for golf on television wasn’t as strong, because there was an ample amount of it. When the Skins Game began, Tour events in the autumn months weren’t televised. The first and second rounds of majors were starting to be broadcast, with regular Tour events to follow.
Plus, offseason events became more plentiful. The ‘90s brought the Wendy’s 3-Tour Challenge, the Father/Son Challenge (now the PNC Championship) and Monday Night Golf.
“Let's not forget that for lack of a better term, (the Skins Game) was the first season-ending event-slash-silly season event,” Strange says. “So there was no golf on TV for such a long time and caught the attention of everyone.”
The novelty of the cash wore off, too. Prize money on Tour skyrocketed after Woods made his mark on the sport. The Skins Game champions in the 2000s earned between $405,000-$1 million.
“The prize money started not to become distinct from the rest of the PGA Tour,” Johnston says. “By the 2000s, 2006, 2007, the Tour was starting to play for real money. So the idea of playing for the money and the excitement of holing a putt for $50,000 or tying a putt for $50,000 to carry over to a $75,000 hole waned.”
Woods’s final Skins Game in 2005 drew a 2.6 Sunday rating. The event’s farewell in 2008 when K.J. Choi defeated Ames, Mickelson and Funk, produced a 0.7 rating on Saturday and a 1.1 on Sunday.
After 25 years, the Skins Game’s euthanization came in May 2009 when LG pulled its title sponsorship.
“It’d run its course,” Johnston says.
Its influence remains today, though. TNT’s “The Match”, which has been played on several Thanksgiving weekends since 2018 (this year’s was one week prior), is based on the Skins Game according to its creator, Bryan Zuriff.
“I was a big fan of the Skins Game growing up,” Zuriff told Awful Announcing in 2023, “and so I naturally wanted to recreate something like that.”
Some, though, would be open to a reboot of the original concept.
“I would love (the Skins Game to return),” Sorenstam says to SI. “I think it's fun. I mean, I don't think it should be like a season-ending (event) or deciding factor. But as far as entertaining, I think it's perfect.”
However, those who were heavily involved in the competition during its heyday aren’t too keen on the idea of a revival.
“I would hate to see them try to re-invent the Skins Game,” Strange says. “It was a great show while it lasted. Those sequels never work, do they?”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Looking Back on the Skins Game, the Once-Great Thanksgiving Golf Tradition.
