These skins need a little spice

November 24, 2008

Richard Davison

These skins need a little spice

It's Thanksgiving week and that can mean lots of things, but for golfer's it means that the weekend will be filled with what was once the most fun and exciting event on the non-PGA Tour schedule, the Skins Game. I stress the words, "was once" in that statement because the Skins Game has gone from the days of Arnold Palmer, Fuzzy Zoeller, Lee Trevino to Stephen Ames and a few other guys who had nothing else going on that weekend or didn't mind travelling to the desert for a couple of days of golf. Sergio Garcia is going to jump in this year to try and spice this dead horse up, but it's going to take something special. It used to be that playing a hole for $25,000 was impressive, but for the guys nowadays that's barely enough to get out of bed for. The joking around used to be legendary; Trevino taking the micky out of his playing partners, standing over the ball at address in mid-conversation before hitting a low skidding wedge shot to a couple of feet. Not to sound old-fashioned, but those were the days. Now we have Ames taking his 2 practice swings in total silence before firing a shot towards the green and rolling in the putt for a very unexciting birdie. There have been a lot of things mentioned in the past about how to spice this event up and I think the best idea is to have the guys play for their own money, just like every other group that plays skins on the weekends. Phil Mickelson likes to gamble, let’s see him throw down $100,000 and play for it. Personally I think he'd revel in the idea of that. If Tiger focuses on a 10-footer for par to make the cut, just think what it would be like if he had a 10-footer to stop him from having to hand over $20,000 of his own money to Mickelson. And just to make it a little more interesting, you pay up right there and then, on the green or next tee. Can you imagine? Tiger misses from 10-feet to give Mickelson the skin and $20,000 so he calls his security guard in who is carrying the cash and hands Mickelson a nice crisp inch of cash. It might just be some of the most compelling golf on TV.

Keywords: Phil, skins, Tiger

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