Skins Game to Have Annika, Not Tiger

What’s a Skins Game without Tiger Woods? The golf world will find out again at the 21st version of the Skins Game, Nov. 29-30, when Annika Sorenstam, Phil Mickelson, Fred Couples and Mark O’Meara play for $1 million.

Woods, whose three-year contract with ABC allows him to miss one Skins Game, has chosen this year’s, so it’s up to the novelty of Sorenstam and the rest of the field at Trilogy Golf Club in La Quinta to beef up ratings that have been in a general decline, often when Woods does not play.

Last year’s event on ABC had a 3.1 Nielsen rating, even with Woods playing. In 2001, Woods, Jesper Parnevik, Greg Norman and Colin Montgomerie delivered a 4.3 rating, the highest since a 6.2 rating in 1996 when a 20-year-old Woods played the event for the first time.

In its 20 years, the Skins Game has had better ratings only three times. The lowest rating was a 2.6 for another Woods-less grouping of Montgomerie, Couples, Sergio Garcia and Vijay Singh in 2000.

-- Thomas Bonk