Strange’s $60,000 Putt Ends Drought : Skins Game: Memories of last year’s shutout are erased by shot that wins fifth hole. Final holes today are worth $310,000.

Curtis Strange left the course Saturday feeling much better than he did this time last year. About $60,000 better.

“You want to get that first skin and not be shut out,” Strange said, after winning four skins of a possible nine with one putt Saturday on the first day of the Skins Game on the Stadium Course at PGA West.

Strange won all four skins and $60,000 on the 553-yard, par-5 fifth hole, and in the process broke a spell of being shut out in this event.

“When Lee (Trevino) missed his putt, I shook,” Strange said. “I was nervous over that putt, and I kept thinking about the money.

“In a regular golf tournament you don’t think about the money, but in this game you don’t know when you may get your next chance to win, and you have to take advantage of it.”

Jack Nicklaus won three skins and $55,000. Raymond Floyd won one worth $25,000. Lee Trevino was shut out, but he is looking forward to the last nine holes today because there is $310,000 left to win.

Nicklaus took pressure off himself early with a $15,000 birdie putt for a skin on the first hole.

On that par-four, 440-yard first hole, Nicklaus’ second shot landed three feet from the cup. Strange, the only hope for a carryover, needed to make a 12-foot putt for a birdie.

“Whatever you do, just make it,” Trevino told Strange.

“When one guy makes a putt, the other three guys are partners,” Trevino explained later.

Strange missed, and Nicklaus birdied.

Skins is a game of misses, and miss they did on the second, third and fourth holes, which set up a three-skin carryover and a $60,000 pot on the fifth hole.

“On that fifth hole, Jack hit his tee shot into the water, and he was history,” Strange said.

“Raymond was going for the green on his second shot, and he pushed it into the water. I laid up, and Lee was going for the green but had to lay up because Raymond was in the water.”

Strange’s tee shot landed in the middle of the fairway. His second shot stuck in the rough on the front side of the green. He pitched his third shot 60 yards to within five feet of the hole. Strange watched Trevino miss his birdie putt, then crouched, studied the lie, eased back and forth and sank a $60,000 putt. And then he smiled.

“I used a three-wood on that second shot because I tried to get closer, but in a normal tournament I would have used another club,” Strange said. “That’s why this is a frustrating game for me. You have to play aggressive and take chances. And a little mistake may end up being a big mistake.”

Strange and Floyd halved the sixth hole to set up a $40,000 payoff on the par-four seventh hole.

Trevino eagled the seventh in 1986, holing a wedge shot over the water. But Saturday, the hole belonged to Nicklaus, who sank a seven-foot putt to win two skins and $40,000.

“Curtis was in the water and Ray was unplayable,” Nicklaus said. “I had a hard-time reading the lie, but I said, ‘Let’s hit it straight,’ and it held the line and went in.”

Floyd, who spent much of the day in the water, in the bushes and in the gallery, played it safe on the par-5, 557-yard eighth hole--the only way he could play it.

“I couldn’t reach the green in two, so I hit a two-iron about 210 yards to lay up in front of the green,” Floyd said.

All four were on the green within birdie distance, but Floyd made his six-foot putt to win his first skin of the day and $25,000.

“We were all in makeable distance of the putt,” Floyd said. “But that’s what this game is all about. The putts you think you are going to make, you don’t. And the ones you think you’re going to halve, you make.”

Floyd said he almost birdied the fourth hole. And although that miss didn’t frustrate him, it didn’t make him happy.

“My putt hit the lip of an old cup--you know, the kind they replace--and the cup diverted it, and that miss set up the $60,000 fifth hole,” Floyd said. “When a putt is on line like that, and is the perfect speed and than that happens, well, that hurts.”

That’s Skins.

Skins Game Notes

NBC will carry the Skins Game tape-delayed today at 4 p.m. . . . The four-player field is selected this way: The leading money winner from the previous year’s event, Raymond Floyd; one chosen by a panel of experts, Curtis Strange; and two sponsors exemptions, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus . . . Nicklaus, surrounded by secret service agents in golf clothes, spent Friday playing in the Pro-Amateur with Vice President Dan Quayle . . . Jim McLean, head professional at Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Scarborough, N.Y., and his amateur partner, George Zahringer III, won the third annual USF&G; National Skins Team Championship Friday at PGA West.