GOLF SKINS GAME : No Such Thing as Form in This Event

The cast hasn’t changed nor has the site or the stakes, but Raymond Floyd doesn’t believe this seventh annual Skins Game will play the same as last year’s event.

“I don’t expect Curtis (Strange) to get blitzed,” said Floyd, who will defend his title against Strange, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus in the two-day, $450,000 golfing exhibition that begins today on the front nine holes of the Stadium Course at PGA West.

“Skins is an unpredictable animal,” Floyd said. “You can birdie four holes but tie, then three guys bogey and the other guy wins (the next hole) with a par. But I still say the player who makes six or seven birdies is going to have the best chance. If you can just keep parring and birdieing . . . “

Floyd won 12 skins and $290,000 last year, when his nine-foot birdie putt on No. 16 was worth $165,000. This was the kind of moment the Skins Game was made for.

“(The Skins) is the most exciting competition I’ve ever played in--every hole is like a tournament,” Floyd said. “It’s also the most pressure I’ve ever performed under. The pressure is nearly as strong in Skins as in the Ryder Cup.”

Floyd, captain of the 1989 U.S. Ryder Cup team, said he has practiced hard the past three weeks.

“The course is playing longer than I’ve ever played it,” Floyd said after the pro-am Friday. “The grass has a thick cover of overseed and a new strand of grass mixed in with the rye. I’m only getting four or five yards of roll maximum.

“On a short course, you can hide it. But with two- and three-irons and fairway woods you can’t hide anything. Jack is the longest hitter, and Curtis and I drive the same. Lee hits a little shorter. But it all depends how you’re playing.”

Which, in his case, is very well, said Floyd, who believes he is hitting as solidly as ever. Floyd tied with Nicklaus for fourth place in last week’s Ronald McDonald Charity tournament.

In this made-for-television exhibition, each hole that is won outright is one skin. Nine holes are played each day. The first six holes are worth $15,000 each, the next six $25,000 each and the final six holes $35,000 each. If no golfer wins a hole outright, the money from that hole carries over.

“In my career, I have gambled huge stakes of my own, and it’s the same feeling,” Floyd said. “I think if you took four guys and had them put up so much money each, the pressure would not vary.

“If you miss a putt in a (regular) tournament, you may miss making $100,000 but still make $75,000. In Skins, you lose it all and don’t make anything. Like Curtis last year, he played the entire tournament and made no money.”

Few imagined that Strange, who won the U.S. Open and more than $1 million in 1988, would get skinned last year.

“It’s embarrassing not to win a thing, “ Strange said Friday. “But I don’t feel like I have something to prove. The thing about Skins is making the putts at the right time. I had my chances last year, but I didn’t play well. I won’t be settled in until I get that first skin.”

Strange, who also won the U.S. Open this year and finished seventh on the the PGA Tour money list, said the Skins Game takes him out of his game plan.

“This is a different type of pressure,” he said. “I don’t play a course trying to make things happen. I don’t play aggressively. Skins is different, and a lot of it is because you don’t want to get shut out.”

Nicklaus knows how it is to get skinned. It happened to him once, in 1986, the same year he won the Masters. That’s the year Fuzzy Zoeller won all but four holes. Maybe there’s a correlation--win a major, get skinned?

But being the veteran at this business, Nicklaus came back in 1987 to win four skins and $70,000. He is the second-leading money winner in this event, with $490,000. And most of that came on one shot--a 10-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole in 1984 for $240,000.

Trevino has been skinned once, but not in this tournament.

“I was shut out when Muirfield Village (in Dublin, Ohio,) opened, about 15 years ago,” Trevino said. “We played for $1,000 a hole and closest to the flag. Every time I made a birdie someone would tie me. But that was the only time.”